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“No. I’m sorry.” He catches my wrists. Draws my hands away from my forehead to fold them in his instead. “You shouldn’t have to pay for my past mistakes. You shouldn’t be suffering for my problems.”
“You shouldn’t either,” I counter, my lower lip trembling. “I can’t imagine what all of that was like…”
He laughs faintly, bitterly. “That wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg. God, there was the time she set my car on fire…”
“She what?”
“The time she tried to poke holes in all the condoms, back when we were still together—”
“Fuck, Zayne.”
“I’m sorry, Clove. I’m a mess. I’m messed up, after all of that. I should have told you, but it was so…” He shuts his eyes. I fight the urge to kiss him, to kiss away the pain that’s written so obviously across his face. “Embarrassing, really. And just, an old wound I hate reopening. I didn’t know how to explain, how to talk about it. And I don’t know why she would do this now, why she would come back to try and hurt you.”
I give in to the urge and press a faint kiss to the corner of his mouth. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay that you didn’t tell me the truth, but I understand why you hesitated.”
He opens his eyes to meet mine. Runs a hand through my hair, smoothing it back from my forehead. “I should have trusted you.”
“We don’t know one another that well yet,” I point out.
He shakes his head so hard his hair flops across his forehead, almost into his eyes too. “We do, Clove. I know it’s crazy, I know we’ve only been talking like this for a few days, only seeing each other up close for that long, but it feels like I’ve known you forever already. It feels like this is right, this is where we’re meant to wind up.”
I can feel myself nodding, agreeing. “That’s why it hurt when you didn’t tell me about your ex. When I found out someone had leaked photos like this before around you…”
“I know. I get it, Clove, really. And I never meant to hurt you. I swear I won’t again.”
I can hear myself laughing. “All this from a stupid dating app.”
He laughs, too. “You know, much as I’m glad it helped us find one another…” He smooths my hair back again, gazes into my eyes. “I’m deleting that app tonight. I don’t need it anymore.”
My breath catches in my throat. “Me too,” I hear myself whispering.
His smile widens. But then it catches, snags, sags a little. “I just don’t want to hurt you, to hurt your career, over this mistake.”
“You were right too,” I counter, shaking my head now. “We’ll figure this out. Especially now that we know who’s behind this.”
“Clove, I don’t know what to say…”
“Then don’t,” I suggest. Then his lips are on mine, and I don’t need another apology. This is explanation enough. I collide with him, let my head fall to one side and my mouth part as his lips work against mine and his tongue slips between my lips to tangle with my own. He knows me already, after just three days. Knows how to kiss me, how to turn his head at the right moment to deepen that kiss, and how to wrap his arms around my waist and lift me against him so that I can forget everything else in the world except for the feeling of his arms around me.
When he sets me back on my feet, we’re both smiling faintly, despite the knot of worry still buried deep in my stomach. Somehow, I still need to find a way to solve this. But that feels possible here, wrapped safely in Zayne’s arms. With him by my side, we can manage anything.
He kisses my forehead lightly. “Can I take this as a sign that we’re okay again?” he murmurs softly.
“As long as you promise you’re not hiding any other dark skeletons in your closet from me,” I reply.
He laughs. “My closet is open wide. You can have a look anytime you want.”
“What if I’d rather steal a peek under your clothes instead?” I counter with a raised eyebrow.
His grin deepens. “Hmm. That could also be arranged. But first, I’m afraid there’s something else I really need to do.”
“Oh? And what might that be?”
Without responding, he steps back and catches the hem of my shirt. In one smooth motion, he pulls it up and over my head and drops it to the floor beside us. “I’m very hungry, Ms. Walker. I need to eat something. Preferably you.”
I laugh, which turns into a shiver as he catches me in a tight grip and lifts me onto the kitchen counter. He spreads my legs and starts the slow process of peeling my jeans off. I lean back, my head grazing the flowers that sit in the vase beside me, perfuming the air. I breathe in the scent deeply, sigh it out again as he yanks my jeans off my legs and tosses them aside with my blouse.
He kisses his way back up the inside of my leg, from my ankle up to my knee, then past it, along my inner thigh.
