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Vision blurring, I met his intense gaze. Those steel-blues searing with focus that could melt me to his floor. For once in my life, words failed me, leaving me to give him a watery nod as my ribs constricted.
Before I knew what was happening, Chloe had been displaced as he lifted me from my spot on the floor and brought me to straddle his lap. His big hand came to settle against my back, the other cradling my face to make me look at him.
“Thank fuck,” he breathed before his lips came down like molten lava in the kiss to end all kisses. Oxygen fled the premises, tension seeming to melt from those broad shoulders.
Head spinning when we finally came up for air, I admitted, “I thought I would be way too much for you in the long run.”
“What?” He huffed, the chagrin making me smile.
“I’m just…I guess I’m used to being too much for everyone in my life. Too much energy. Too muchcolor,” I said pointedly, trying to keep my tone light despite the way the confession tore at my soul. We were cutting down to the bone, here. The things I didn’t even say to Brex or Jos. Because the reality was, I worked so hard to make other people smile and feel seen because I knew what it felt like to never be accepted at my full power…to grapple with decades of rejection. “I mean, Vallie keeps up if I caffeinate her adequately, but my siblings and everyone else—” we both knew whose name nearly spilled off my tongue. “Even Brex, more often than not. When you and I first met—”
“I said some stupid shit,” he cut in. “Look, baby, you scared the daylights out of me.”
“Iscaredyou?” I asked incredulously, memorizing the lines of him as he stroked his thumbs over my face, still cradling me to him.
“Christ, baby,yeah.” That glorious jaw clenched and unclenched, the furrow between his brows begging to be smoothed out by a thumb or my lips. “I wasn’t supposed to fall foranyone, Skittles. Certainly not a spitfire eight years younger than me who could hand me my ass in ten seconds flat.”
I choked on a laugh, sliding my hands around to settle on his broad shoulders as he continued. My brain took a second to catch up as it wrapped around the words ‘fall for’.
“You’re not too much. You’venever beentoo much. You’re exactly what the world needs. And even if you were, there’s nothing you could do that could ever justify being treated likethat. Do you understand me?” When my eyes fell, he gently wrapped my hair into a fist to tilt me up, keeping his other hand where he cradled my cheek, forcing me to look at him. “His violence and lack of control is a reflection ofhisweak character, not you. Don’t you ever tell yourself otherwise.”
Throat thick, I admitted, “I thought he loved me enough to get better.”
“That’snot love, baby.” The dangerous blade in his graveled tone was somehow soothing. Maybe it was the lengths he’d already gone to in protecting me. Maybe it was the vulnerability in his eyes as he studied mine for something I couldn’t place. Nobody else had ever felt…safe enough…to lay these pieces of my bruised heart bare. Not until Jameson.
“No,” I finally agreed. He waited patiently as I composed my thoughts. The unspoken truth I’d lived with all this time in stubborn solitude. When his tolerance for the silence evidently waned, his rough hand gently squeezed the back of my neck in silent prompting. “I thought I could help him, you know?” The naïve reality planted an ache in my chest I couldn’t articulate. “Knew he had some issues. But…I didn’t mean to make him break like that.”
“Baby, it was never your job to fix him, and the way he treated you was never—never—your fault. That’s onhim, not you.” His rough thumb traced over my cheekbone, thick fingers weaving between strands of my hair as a bird called somewhere beyond the window. Jameson’s eyes softened as he studied me, his bottom lip rolling between his teeth. When he spoke, his voice was softer, cocooning around my senses and silencing the outside world, like we’d ensconced ourselves in our own little bubble. “A wise woman recently reminded me that real men protect and serve. Cowards use their strength to control.”
“A wise woman?” I said, sniffling as his words settled in my chest. He was right. I knew he was right. Had known it all the whole time, somehow thinking I could fix things along the way. Ignorantly believing he could change for me. That I was enough for Eric to heal, to stop drinking, to let me help him glue his broken pieces back together.
“Imight’vebeen in a panic, worried you’d think Eric and I were the same breed of monster.” Horror roiled in my stomach, because never in my worst nightmares had Jameson ever been grouped in withhim. What he did for me last night was terrifying, but it was terrifying because I could have lost him, not because I ever feared he could hurt me. When my mouth popped open, he set a gentle thumb against my lips, lowering his eyes to meet mine reassuringly. “Junipermayhave talked some sense into me this morning.”
So, that’s where he’d gone. He wasn’t runningfrom me. He was talking all of this out with his mom. Honestly, the strategy had merit, and maybe if I tried that from time to time, I wouldn’t feel so bottled up inside. Finally pouring the words out for Jameson had already been exhausting. So I just mumbled, “An angel, that woman.”
“She’d pay you to say that in public.”
I laughed, burying my face against his shoulder and locking my arms around his neck like I could stay there forever. Jameson rubbed soothing circles up and down my back, resting his own against my neck, breathing me in as I did the same. Finally, I asked, “You mean all of that?”
“I’d swear it on my life.”
“Good,” I said simply, moving in for a kiss. As Jameson met me, movement for precious movement, my mind rolled through everything that happened. He’d brought my fur baby here, a piece of home now in Mistyvale. Which meant…Jameson had been thinking about me being here long-term for more than twenty-four hours.
He’d asked me to stay. Gratitude heated my chest, that dangerous glowy sensation I refused to acknowledge solidifying into an irrefutable reality. It made no sense—was blatantly ill-advised, given the cataclysmic timing. But I couldn’t change it, not even if I wanted to.
I was in love with Jameson Rhodes.
Tender touches turned more urgent as the truth of that settled in my soul, and for the first time, I didn’t push the thought away as our fingers grappled for purchase. Because there was no part of this kiss that belonged to anything beyondus. I’d just slipped my hands beneath his T-shirt when he peeled away, serrated breaths sawing between us.
“Wait,” he panted, urgent hands stroking the hair away from my face as he rasped the word again. “Wait.”
My stomach churned uneasily. “Okay?” I breathed back. Nipples hard with arousal—effectively negating the point of my bra as they attempted to cut through it—heat pooling between my legs where his hardening erection strained against his jeans. Our chests grazed, and we steadied ourselves, my eyes locked on steel-blues. The suffocating desire to feel him inside me collided with the anxiety at what needed to be said. There was too much going on, and anything more might just kill me.
He studied me as I did the same to him. The anticipation had nerves tying knots in my gut, an oily feeling under my skin threatening my composure. When, at last, he spoke, my world tilted on its axis.
“I love you,” he said slowly, deliberately. “I amin love…with you. And I know that it’s madness. We’ve only known each other for a few months. But…do you remember the day this started—you said sometimes you just…know?” I nodded, remembering the salvation of his arm around me and the comforting, subtle thump of his pulse as I buried my face against his chest, knowing I was safe with him. “Iknow…You’re it for me, baby—”
It was my turn to cut him off, my kiss pilfering his words away as my heart sprinted off the starting line, threatening to compose the most off-key musical he’d ever seen.
