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But she did it anyway.
She went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face to his chest. Since she had no idea what she should say, she said nothing. Keaton’s palms found her cheeks and he lifted her face up toward his. His green eyes were swimming with emotion—regret, sorrow, hunger. It was an intoxicating combination.
And she couldn’t even think about resisting when he lowered his head toward hers, coaxing her lips open. He kissed her slow and deep, and it was like being lowered into a warm bath. Her body glowed. Her heart swelled. Her hands itched to be skin to skin.
She knew one thing for sure—there would be no resisting Keaton tonight.
He swept her hair to one side and kissed the tender spot on the side of her neck. The resulting sigh almost took his breath away. “I feel like I disappointed you.”
“I should be saying sorry.” She melted against him. “Your job is your business. I know you do everything in your power to take care of your family. It’s admirable.”
He wrapped his arms around her, simply holding her. Cradling her...or maybe he was leaning on her. It was so hard to tell and he wasn’t sure what that was supposed to feel like, because he’d never leaned on anyone, ever.
“But at what cost? You’re right.” He sighed into her hair. “For a long time I thought it didn’t matter ifIwasn’t paying the price. I have to protect my patch, my people. Damn anyone else.”
She said nothing, but he knew what she thought. August was categoricallynotthe type of person to take that mindset. She believed that everyone mattered and that a person’s actions should bring good to the world, not just to the people closest to you.
“Do you think I’m a terrible person?” The question slipped out raw and jagged, like a piece of rock that had dislodged itself from a slowly crumbling cliff face. That’s how he felt—like something that had stood strong for as long as it could and was now giving up the fight.
He couldn’t resist her anymore. He couldn’t ignore the doubts about his work. He couldn’t...keep being numb.
“Of course not.” Her hands reached up to clutch his arms, which were interlocked around her waist. Warmth seeped into him, like goodness transferring from her body to his. “You love your family with a ferocity that...”
“That?”
“I wish I knew what that was like, to be loved so wholly.”
I can love you wholly.
The thought should have scared him. It should have fucking terrified him. Because he was never supposed to put himself through this again. But it dawned on Keaton that these feelings were...familiar. They weren’t the shock of a new discovery. They weren’t the jolt of a realization.
They just...were.
Because he’d loved August a long time ago, when he was a disillusioned kid and she was the girl who wrote him long letters in girlie handwriting about everything that was going on back home. She was the girl who’d helped plan his “welcome home” party when he finally made it out, because his mother was struggling to do it herself. She was the young woman who’d attended his wife’s funeral with tears in her eyes and her arm wrapped solidly around his sister’s shoulders.
And now she was the woman who dropped everything to be here, to put up with his bullshit and peel down his walls brick by brick.
Of course he loved her. While he’d been married to someone else that love had transitioned to a platonic type of love, where he viewed her as one of his family. One of his small inner circle. But now, all these years later, he understood that the fire hadn’t been put out. It had simply been waiting for oxygen.
“I...” The words clogged the back of his throat. But he couldn’t find the strength to say it out loud. Because admitting to himself that he loved her was one thing, but acting on it was an entirely different prospect. “You deserve someone who’s going to give you the world.”
“No.” She turned, fire in her eyes and her face shining with sincerity. “I can get the world myself, Keaton. But I want someone who’s going to stand with me when I do.”
“That’s the hottest thing you’ve ever said.”
The sincerity turned to smoldering heat as she planted her hands against his chest and gave him a little shove so he stumbled back and landed on the bed. Looking up, he drank in the sight of her standing strong and majestic before him. August was the strongest person he’d ever known—nothing held her back. No matter how many knocks she received, she got back on her feet and dug her heels in for the next round.
She stepped toward him, hazel eyes dark with intent as she lowered herself to straddle him. Keaton’s hands automatically went to her thighs and he smoothed them up and down, his mind already starting to go foggy with lust. She had awoken an insatiable appetite in him, where before he thought he’d be happy to starve the rest of his life.
She circled her hips, giving him the barest hint of contact. It was enough to fully ignite him—turning his resolutions to ash.
“You like ambition, huh,” she said with a wicked smile.
“I like a woman who doesn’t hesitate to reach out and grab what’s rightfully hers.”
“Like this...” She reached down, brushing her palm along the hard length of him. He let out a soft moan and tugged her face to his, capturing her mouth in a searing kiss. “Are you rightfully mine tonight?”
The end was coming. Neither one of them believed this would last the second they headed back to Manhattan, and that was proof. Because here, in the middle of nowhere, they could pretend. But back home, with memories embedded in the walls, she would be competing with an army of ghosts.
