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“You know it because you like your life better when you’re with me, too.”
He closes the last bit of space between us, catches my face up in his hands, gazes down at me with those pulse-tripping eyes and, God, I can barely breathe, much less pull away.
“I know you love Rae and always have and, again, you’ve done an amazing job with her by yourself. But I love her, too, and she loves both of us. There’s no reason for you to do things by yourself anymore.I’mwith you now.”
Tears prick at my eyes as his words force their way into my brain.
I do like my life better with him in it. Of course I do. I unquestionably do. And I know how much he cares about Rae.
But I’mscared.I’m so scared of getting lost in him and leaving her to pay the price.
“I can’t put myself ahead of her,” I whimper.
His thumbs brush at my cheeks as he regards me with nothing but softness once more. “I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to put yourself on the same level as her. Please just think about it.”
He lets out a humorless breath of a laugh.
“Actually, don’t. Don’t think about it. Just look at how you feel, because you aresohappy with me when you’re not thinking about how you shouldn’t be.”
How I feel is anxious.
Guilty.
Stupid.
But also….
One of his hands slips into my hair and smooths through it even more wonderfully than it did those few long minutes ago. My eyes fall shut, and I try my hardest not to let the deliberate caress rock down my spine like then.
In a near-whisper, he requests again, “Tell me what happens when I touch you.”
Knots form in my throat, my chest, my stomach.
I remember how he just told menotto think. I wish so badly that I could listen, but that’s something demons steal from you: your ability to shut off the poison, the fear, the lingering torment.
Yet Landon has helped me reclaim that ability. I remember the way he held me when I told him about Bud and Thad. I remember how safe and content I felt the next morning, which was safer and more content than I’d felt my whole life.
I remember every good feeling he’s ever ignited in me.
“When you touch me,” I wobble out, “I feel like—likeI work.”
Breathing fragilely, I open my eyes, causing tears to swell out of them, and look at him with all the earnest pain in me.
“You make me feel like I’m not some broken thing left—left on a shelf to just—to just—but that’s the—the trick, isn’t it? It starts with feeling like this and then—”
“Please,” he says lowly, his eyes earnest and pained, too, “don’t act like you and I are the fucked-up people in your past. We aren’t them. We’re so, so much better than them.”
His face drops a little closer to mine, and my hands are gripping his shirt before I can stop them because I feel like the tempest in me is going to tear me apart.
“It’s so easy with us, baby, and it’s because it’sright, not because you’re slipping into your mom’s mistakes. It’s not some terrible thing that we like each other. We haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not what we planned on, but don’t you—don’t you remember what I said about accidents not always being disasters?We are not a disaster, Liv.”
At the touch of his forehead to mine, my eyes shut again, and I could just scream for how close and far he is.
“Whenyoutouchme,” he whispers, “and when you let your guard down for me, I feel it deeper than I’ve ever felt anything else.”
I love it, I love it, I love it.
But if I can’t keep promises to myself, how will I ever keep them to Rae? If I can’t control myself, how can I control what happens to her?
