Page 58 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

I'm tired of living as if the only choices left to me are going backward into a house that might not want me or staying perfectly still until wanting dies from disuse.

I step around the island.

Dash tracks the movement, his shoulders tightening as I come closer. He doesn't reach for me. The choice stays mine all the way across the kitchen, and that makes every step feel like mine too.

“I don’t know how to do this without bringing all of that with me,” I whisper.

“Then bring it.” His voice is low, nearly unsteady. “We don’t have to pretend you’re untouched by what happened.”

“I want to kiss you again.”

His breath leaves him slowly, almost like pain. “This only goes as far as you need it to.”

I nod, and this time when I lift my face, he meets me halfway.

The second kiss is slower. Deeper. His hands come to my waist after I put mine on his chest, and he holds me like he's learning the language of my body one careful word at a time. His mouthmoves over mine with a restraint that makes the hunger under it more obvious, and I press closer because I want to feel that hunger. I want to know it is there. I want to know he isn't touching me out of pity or patience or the strange obligation kind men sometimes mistake for love.

He wants me.

The knowledge moves through me hot and aching, and I open for him with a soft sound I can't swallow. Dash answers with a low noise against my mouth, his hand sliding from my waist to my back, then stopping there as if every inch needs permission. I give it by leaning into him. I give it with my fingers curling into his sweater. I give it by staying.

His mouth leaves mine to trace my cheek, the corner of my jaw, the spot beneath my ear that makes my knees soften. He pauses when they do, pulling back enough to look at me.

“Still with me?” he asks.

“Yes.” I sound breathless and young and more certain than I feel. “I’m here.”

He kisses me again, then bends and grips my hips with careful strength. “Can I lift you?”

The question itself sends heat through me. I nod, then remember he deserves words. “Yes.”

Dash lifts me onto the counter like I weigh nothing and still sets me down as though the landing matters. The stone is cool beneath me through my clothes. He stands between my knees without crowding, hands braced on either side of my hips until I reach for him. When I do, something in his face breaks open.

He worships slowly.

There is no other word for it. He kisses me until my lips feel tender, then kisses the line of my jaw, my throat, the hollow beneath it. His hands move over my sides and back, firm enough to make me feel held and careful enough that I never lose the sense of choice. He learns where I shiver. He learns where I still.When his mouth nears the place beneath my cardigan where Sloane’s bite marks my shoulder, he stops before contact and looks up at me from under lowered lashes.

The grief comes with the want, tangled together so tightly I can't pull one free without tearing the other.

“You can touch it,” I say, my voice barely there.

Dash’s hand tightens once at my waist. “Are you sure?”

“No.” I laugh a little, but it breaks before it becomes a sound. “But I don’t want it to be a locked room anymore.”

He rests his forehead against my shoulder first. No mouth. No claim. Just warmth and breath and the weight of his choice not to take even this from me. Then he kisses the fabric beside the hidden mark, not the bite itself, not yet, and my body folds toward him with a sob I don't expect.

Dash catches me instantly.

“I’ve got you,” he says, arms around me, voice rough near my ear. “We stop here if you need.”

I shake my head against his shoulder. The tears are hot and humiliating, but my hands are still in his sweater, holding on with everything I have. “I don’t want to stop. I just need you to know I might cry.”

His mouth presses to my temple. “Then cry.”

That undoes me more than anything else could have.

I cry while he holds me on the kitchen counter, his body warm between my knees, one hand moving slowly along my back. He doesn't hush me. He doesn't make the tears into a problem to solve. When I lift my face again, he looks wrecked in a way I can feel under my palms.