Page 103 of The Long Way Home
“Once I do something—once Iacton it—I won’t be able to stop, Sunny.” My voice drops, rough with everything I’ve swallowed for years. “I won’t be able to pretend I don’t feel this. You’re not some fling to me, Rachel. These aren’t spur-of-the-moment feelings.” I swallow, the truth heavy and unmovable in my chest.“You’reitfor me.It has only ever beenyou.”
Her eyes go wide, and the sight of it sends something fierce and reckless through me. I’ve never felt so good letting the words exist out loud. Letting her hear them.
“If I don’t create some distance,” I continue, “I’ll close what little space is left between us, and everything I’ve spent years holding back will come undone. Every look. Every touch I’ve imagined—” My hand lifts slowly, to her face. I graze her cheek with my knuckles. “None of it will stay in my head anymore.”
Her breath catches. It is soft, almost nothing, but it hits me like heat flaring underneath my skin.
“I’ll lose myself to you, Sunny,” I murmur. “My hands won’t be able to keep still. I’ll touch you like I’ve wanted to touch you for years. I’ll learn every place that makes you gasp.” My hand hovers near her jaw as I place my thumb on her bottom lip. “Every sound you make will be mine.”
Her eyes go wide, pupils blown dark. Her palms flatten behind her on the island like she needs something solid to keep herself upright. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t tell me to stop. Her lips part just barely, like she’s trying to form a thought and can’t quite find it.
I swear I can hear her heartbeat from where I stand.
The words are finally out of me, and for a moment, I feel weightless. I’ve finally stopped lying to us both. But the silencestretches, and that weightlessness turns sharp. I need her to say something. To step toward me.
My hand drops to the counter beside hers, knuckles brushing her fingers. The contact is accidental, too light to matter, and she still shivers. Goosebumps rise along her skin, and my jaw pulls as I watch it happen. Her throat works as she swallows, her eyes flicking to my mouth before she forces them back up.
“Why the fuck are you even with him, Sunny?” The words come out strangled, scraped raw from a place I don’t let anyone see. Even whispered, the desperation bleeds through.
Her eyes flare. I know I’ve hit something sharp. Her mouth opens, then snaps shut, and finally she blurts, “I’m not with him!”
I almost don’t believe the words as I hear them.
My body goes rigid, lungs forgetting their job as my pulse roars in my ears. I’ve dreamed about hearing those words. Prayed for them in the quiet corners of my head where no one could see. And now they’re real.
“Is that what you wanted to hear, Rhett?” she asks. “That I’m not with him?”
Her anger fractures, softening at the edges, and the truth spills out in a whisper meant only for me. “That’s what that was all about,” she says. “I broke up with him when I came home from your house. I told him I was done—that I don’t love him. I made him move out, Rhett.”
She is pinned between my arms now, the countertop solid at her back. There is nowhere left for her to retreat to, though the way she looks at me tells me she wouldn’t even if she could. Her gaze drifts to my mouth again, slower this time, then crawls back up to my eyes.
My control is hanging on by a thread.
I lift a hand and sweep a strand of hair behind her ear, looking for any excuse to be closer to her. My fingers linger there, not quite touching her neck.
“No one touches you like that anymore,” I say, my voice low, dangerous. “Do you understand me, Sunny?”
Fire lights behind her eyes. She steps into me, and her breath warms my jaw. “You don’t get to decide who touches me, Rhett.”
I cup her chin, tilting her face up, forcing her to look at me. My thumb grazes her cheek, slow enough to feel the tremor run through her. “Yeah?” I murmur. “Maybe I should. It would’ve saved us some time.”
She huffs a quiet, breathy laugh, but her eyes are glowing with something dark and wanting. “Do you think you have the right?”
“You,” I say softly, my thumb sliding to hover over her lower lip, “have always been mine. You’re just too damn stubborn to admit it.”
She lets out a stuttered breath, while her hands curl tighter around the edge of the counter.
“Show me then,” she whispers. “Show me how badly I’m yours.”
I don’t move, yet.
If I touch her now, everything changes.
Then, before I know it, she is in my hands—soft, warm, trembling—and I pull her against me like gravity finally figured out where I belong. Her fingers fist in my shirt, dragging me down, and her breath stumbles against my throat.
Her lips hover a breath from mine. So close I can feel her inhale.
“Rhett…” Her voice is nothing but need, shaping my name.
