It took me a moment to make sense of his words. “Why not?”
“Because you can’t feed a starving man, then take away his food.” If his voice hadn’t been so low and raucous, I might’ve poked fun at him for that metaphor, but his timbre told me he was serious.
“You’ll find better food,” I finally said, heart fluttering the gray cotton that had coiled around my torso.
The fingers cupping the back of my head relaxed, slid to the nape of my neck, then back up. “How long?”
I thought he was asking me how long I was planning on staying, and I said until the morning.
“No, Ness. How long have you felt this way about me?”
Oh. Oh…
I lowered my eyelashes, heat snaking up my chest like a warm current. “For a while now. Since the lake. But this link… it confuses me. Every time you touch me… even when you do it by mistake-”
“I never do anything by mistake.”
I jerked my attention back to his face, the warm current spreading and heating up every part of me. “Well, when it happens, it does things to me, August. Things I don’t think I should be feeling. Things I don’t think I should be telling you about.”
But here I was, confessing my deepest, darkest secrets.
“Is that why you got mad at me for calling you Dimples or kid? Because you thought it meant I only saw you as a little girl?”
I nodded, and the audacity that had taken ahold of me began to slip through my fingers like crumbling rock.
He stayed quiet so long that I said, “If you don’t say something soon, I’m going to die of embarrassment.”
His fingers spiraled up the column of my neck and stilled on the back of my scalp again, tipping it infinitesimally upward. “What would you like me to say?”
I twisted up my lips before mumbling, “That you feel a little bit of the same things I do.”
“But if I said that, I’d be lying.”
My heart squeezed in humiliation, and then my lids clinched.
“I’d be lying because whatever you feel, I feel it tenfold. But I’ve been feeling this way since you walked into that living room with that chin held so high. Since before this link snapped into place between us, which makes me reticent of letting this kiss happen at all.”
I opened my eyes, humiliation replaced by something else entirely. Something that made the tether between us thrum. “Why?”
“Because once you’re far from Boulder, far from me and our link, you’ll stop wanting me, but I won’t stop wanting you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“That I won’t stop wanting you? Yeah. I do. I was in-” He licked his lush lips, making them glisten. “There was an ocean separating us, and I couldn’t get you out of my mind, Ness. And it screwed me up real bad. I wasn’t focused on the team, on the mission. All I could think of was you and what the pack was putting you through, and what you were feeling. And then when Cole told me Liam-”
He rolled onto his back, releasing my hand but curling the other around my shoulders. I laid my head in the crook of his shoulder, my hair fanning over his arm. He wove his fingers through it, making my scalp tingle, making all of me tingle.
“When Cole told me Liam made a move on you, I was blinded by such jealousy that I made a grave tactical error that put one of my buddies at risk. It was bad, Ness.” He shuddered and closed his eyes a long second.
I placed my palm over his beating heart, trapping its brisk rhythm with my fingertips. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, sweetheart. I left you. Not the other way around.”
And now I was the one talking about leaving. What if he did find better food? The mere thought of that waitress or Sienna resting where I lay had me gritting my teeth.
“I lied,” I said, trying to ease the tension in my jaw. I kept my gaze on the palm flattened against his chest. “I’ve had a crush on you since I was a kid. A real kid. Which I know is disturbing. But you were everything to me. You meant everything to me. Remember the day you let me tag along on that movie date of yours with Betsy, or whatever her name was?” Her face flashed behind my lids. “I hated that she had curves and brown hair, and that I was as flat as a board and blonde. I hated that you kept touching her hair. Her hand. I hated it so much that I faked a stomachache so you’d take me home. So that you’d stay with me. So that you’d touch my hair.”
He didn’t say anything for a little while, as though trying to locate the memory. Or maybe he was rethinking what he’d told me, about liking me after my declaration.
“Her name was Carrie.”
Oh, goodie. He remembered her. Worse, he smiled as he reminisced. A punch in the ribs would’ve hurt less.
He looped the ends of my hair around his fingers. “She broke up with me that night, because I chose you over her.” His smile grew a little broader. “I knew you had a crush on me, but-”
“It really wasn’t a crush; it was an infatuation.” I grimaced. “And I honestly have no idea why I’m telling you all this.”
“I think I know.”
“Really?”
He rolled onto his side. “Because you’re trying to test my willpower.” He stared into my eyes. “Or break it… ”
“Is it working?”
“When have you ever failed at anything?”
I smiled, but then I didn’t. Then, in a rush of boldness-or foolishness-I closed the distance between our mouths, fitting mine on top of his.
A groan rumbled out of his chest, and he skated his mouth off mine. “Are you staying?” His chest rose and fell.
“I don’t think I can-”
He winced.
“Let me finish my sentence. You didn’t let me finish my sentence.”
His gaze tripped over my face. “Finish your sentence.”
Heart palpitating against my jaw, my lips, my chin, my forehead, I repeated what I’d said, but added the final word, the one that would change everything.
For him.
For me.
For us.
“I don’t think I can leave.”