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“I want five minutes with you.” I smell her in the air I breathe. I taste her on my tongue. And then I remember the kiss we shared two nights ago. The interrupted bridge we’d begun mending until that dickhead Raul wandered in. “Hannah, I want—”
“Youwant.” She spins so fast, her gown flourishes and her hair whips around to sit on her shoulder. “Youwant.Youwant. It’s always about what you want, Axel! But that only works for as long as you’re running the show.”
“Hannah—”
“But this ismyshow now. Whatever this,” she points from her to me, “is, whatever role you think I should play, the fact is I’m in charge of me. And I’m saying no.” She spins again and strides away.
Guests smile at her and open their mouths to chat, but she moves fast—too fast—and leaves them in her dust.
“I’m choosing to disengage,” she tosses at me over her shoulder. “So it doesn’t actually matter anymore whatyouwant. Because for as long as you want it from me, I’m choosing no.”
“Just two minutes,” I groan. The fact my legs are longer than hers is the only reason I can keep up. “I know I screwed us over. Hannah, I—” I grab her wrist and yank her around so I get to see her face while I speak to her.
But when she turns and her eyes burn with unshed tears, I regret my decision.
I already have so many memories of her crying because of me.
Even one time is too many, and I recall so much more often than once.
“I know I screwed us over,” I murmur. “I know I was cruel.”
“You hurt me.” She tugs her wrist from my hand, balls her fist, and slams it to her own chest. “You hurt me in a way I’ll always remember. And I get it, okay? I get that you were in a bad place. I know you were going through a lot. I can even accept that in a horrible, twisted way, you were trying to protect me. I get it. But when I look at you, when I look into your eyes, I’m not seeing you anymore.”
“Hannah—”
“I seeme.” A lone tear springs free of her lashes and tracks over her cheek. “I see the version of me you painted that day. Worthless. Pathetic. I see me as a dirty little whore nobody ever wanted. And I’ve worked my ass off, come too far, shedding that girl since you left, for me to circle back around and let her in again.”
“You were never unwanted.” I take her hand and step closer. Closer, until our shoes touch and her heaving breath bathes my tongue. “You were all I wanted, Sully. But I was terrified to have you.”
“I won’t let those thoughts back in.” Her hair swishes as she frantically shakes her head. “I won’t let your presence derail my life the way your absence did. And when I look at you, I see cruelty. I see unnecessary hurt.”
My heart aches. My brain thuds and searches for a way to make this better, but all I manage is to look around and see a door instead. A physical escape route.
Licking my dry bottom lip and reaching out with my free hand to open the door, I peek inside for a beat and deem it perfect. Nodding, then glancing around to partygoers who wander past, I decidefuck it. Everyone here already knows about our past, so there won’t be any true scandal if we’re caught in here alone.
So I yank Hannah closer until she loses balance and slams against my chest, then I half-carry her into the tiny room, and slam the door shut so we’re bathed in darkness.
“Axel, what are you—”
I set my hands on her hips, feeling but without violating. Touching, but without taking so much that she feels used. I pull her close and lean until I taste her breath again.
I can’t see, so I depend on my sense of smell… taste… touch, to know she’s close.
“What the hell are you doing?” her voice trembles with fear and,do I dare hope, exhilaration. “Axel?”
“You don’t want to look at me.” I wrap my arms around her torso and slide my hands to the small of her back.
Not her ass. I don’t have that right. But her back, those dimples I’ve studied a million times every single summer since we met.
Yeah, I’m claiming those.
“So now you can’t see me.” I fold closer and bring my nose to the column of her neck. To smell. To inhale her all the way to the bottoms of my lungs. “Talk to me here,” I whisper. “In the dark.”
“Axel…” her voice breaks with heartache. “The dark is where—”
“Where you think of me?” I press a kiss to her jaw. Gentle. So very fucking gentle. “Is it where you lie awake, wondering, thinking, missing me, Hannah Sullivan?”
“I can’t…” But when I press a second kiss to her buttery soft skin, she drops her head back on a groan and makes room for me. “Axel.”
