Page 92 of The Space Between Heartbeats
“Sawyer…”
She shakes her head, clutching the pillow tighter. “Don’t try to make me feel better about it.”
I sit on the bed beside her, and her body drifts closer, until our thighs are touching. I grab her hand, taking a closer look at the ring, before meeting her bloodshot eyes. “Why are you wearing it?”
She pulls her hand away to look at it. “Because it’s all I have left of him.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “Try again.”
She closes her eyes, and I watch a tear streak down her face. “Because it proves he wanted me. That I’m not a terrible person. That I’m not…unloveable.”
I reach out and catch her tear with the pad of my thumb, watching her swallow roughly.
“You’re not unloveable,” I say. “You’re so fucking far from unloveable it’s not even a question in my mind.”
She opens her eyes, and the pain in them guts me. “Don’t say things like that to me. Not here. Not now.”
“Owen loved you more than anything. And that had nothing to do with whether you deserved it or not. He just did.”
“Then why do I feel like I failed him? Like if I’d loved him enough, if I’d been better, none of this would have happened?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Grief is fucking with your head?”
She lays back, tossing the pillow to the side, her hair around her head like a halo. “Do you feel guilty?”
The question hits me like a blow. I don’t need to ask her for clarification, I already know exactly what she’s talking about. All the things she’s talking about.
Yeah. I feel guilty. I feel guilty every second of every day. Guilty for kissing her. Guilty for wanting her. Guilty for sitting here right now, in my dead brother’s room, feeling her skin under my palm and thinking about all the places I’d love to touch her again.
“Of course I do.”
She sits up on her elbows. “Can I be honest with you? Without you tormenting me later?”
“Sawyer…I?—”
“Don’t fucking say you’d never torment me, Knox, because that’s a lie. You’ve been making my life hell for years.”
I love that her fiery personality is coming out. “What were you going to say?”
“Nevermind.” Her back hits the mattress again, and she stares up at the ceiling. Voices drift in from outside the door, but I don’t care, they can all go to hell.
I move and hover over her, taking in her gorgeous blue eyes, wet with tears, the curve of her neck, the rise and fall of her chest, the way she’s looking up at me like I’m the only person to exist in this world. “Tell me.”
“No.”
“Thorne, tell me right fucking now, so I can make you feel better.”
Her hand slides to the back of my neck, pulling me closer. “I don’t want you to make me feel better.” Her lips are inches from mine. “I want you to make me feel worse.”
Chapter 21
Sawyer
Iwatch Knox’s expression shift as the words hang between us. His eyes darken, his tongue darts out to wet his lips, and heat pools low in my stomach.
I mean it. Every word. We’re terrible people who did terrible things and didn’t deserve Owen. We don’t deserve comfort or forgiveness or each other.
But that doesn’t stop me from wanting anyway.
