Page 240 of The Lies We Play

“I know,” he says again, and clips it into place.

His knuckles brush my hip.

That is all.

That is enough.

I look at him.

He looks at me.

The car pulls away from the curb.

The pressure of the last nine days fills the back seat. Annaline. The call. His red eyes through a screen. Creed saying, ‘He told me.’ Me, lying awake early in the morning with my phone against my chest, trying not to book an earlier flight because Halston said maybe and then stayed. Because I said I would respect it, because love can’t always mean arriving immediately with a suitcase and no plan.

“Come here,” he says.

Soft.

I move before I think better of it.

His hand comes to my jaw. Mine finds the front of his coat. Our mouths meet in the center of the back seat, and the first kiss is too gentle for the way I have missed him.

I make a sound of protest against his mouth.

He understands.

Of course he does.

The second kiss is not gentle.

His hand slides into my hair, careful of the pins, then not carefully at all when I pull him closer. My mouth opens under his, and his control slips by one breath, one angle, one warm, devastating press of his tongue against mine. The car turns, and my shoulder bumps the leather seat. He follows me there, one hand braced beside my head, the other at my waist, holding me without trapping me.

I kiss him like I’m angry at the ocean that was between us.

I kiss him like I’m sorry I wasn’t there.

I kiss him like I need his body to answer the question my mind has been too tired to stop asking.

Are we still us?

His mouth says yes.

His hands say yes.

The way he stops, forehead near mine, breathing hard and trying to keep himself decent in the back of a car with a driver on the other side of a partition says yes too.

“I missed you,” he says.

The words are simple.

They wreck me anyway.

“I missed you too.”

His thumb moves along my cheek. “I’m sorry.”

That makes me pull back.