Page 103 of Blitz

His lips crash into mine in a forceful kiss. Before I can so much as blink, we’re twisted, he has my back pinned against the door, and his tongue licks into my mouth. His thick body presses against mine in all the right ways. His fingers bury themselves in my hair.

It’s like my world shifts slowly back into place.

Our tongues tangle, speaking the words neither of us are able to convey verbally. Our bodies speak a language only the two of us understand.

I love you. I want you. I need you.

Tucker’s teeth scrape against my bottom lip. He soothes the sharp ache with his tongue. Abruptly, he pulls away.

“No. We can’t.”

“We can, and we should.” Tightening my arms around him, he bows his head, his forehead pressed to mine as he takes a deep, shuddering breath. “King, we owe it to ourselves to try again. A real, honest try. We’ll both put in the work. We’ve both made mistakes. But we can get past this.”

His eyes squeeze shut. “I want to. I want to so fucking bad. But I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

I cup his cheek, forcing his eyes to meet mine. “Why?”

“We crash and burn. We—”

“We lasted three and a half years before I got insecure and freaked out,” I remind him. “We made it three weeks now before our worlds imploded. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but at least we’ll know for sure.”

“You broke something in me. You destroyed everything that was good about my life,” he tells me. “I stopped being a functional person when you left. I don’t want to ever go through that again.”

“And yet you had the strength to walk away when it wasn’t working,” I remind him. “You drew a line in the sand and refused to let me compromise your boundaries. That’s healthy. That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do, baby. You got yourself help. There’s no magic cure. There’s no prescription you can take or button you can press to make everything all better. It takes time, and work, and maybe a few tears along the way. We’re going to have fights. We’re going to have disagreements. But that doesn’t mean we give up. It means we work through them.”

Tucker swallows. “I love you, I do, but Mason…”

“We can work through whatever it is.”

He sighs, straightening his shoulders. He seems to realize he still has me pinned to the door because he takes a step back, then another, until he’s crossing the room and sitting on his unmade bed. He pats the spot beside him.

I cross the room and take a seat next to him. We sit cross-legged and stare at each other.

“The drinking,” he finally says. “It concerns me.”

“I can dial it back,” I admit readily. “I don’t like blacking out. I don’t enjoy hangovers. I need to learn how to have one or two and still have a good time.”

He nods, swallowing again. “I really don’t like the drinking the night before a meet. You can’t run your best, baby, if you’re—”

My heart aches. I didn’t realize it was weighing so heavily on him.

“I can try to abstain the night before a meet,” I tell him. “I really do try to limit it to one or two.”

Tucker chews on his lip. “I’m not trying to control you. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life. But maybe a little less drinking and frat parties?”

“As long as I get to spend those nights with you, I’m okay with that.” I reach for his hand and am mollified when he takes mine, lacing our fingers together. “I don’t want to stay in every night. We need to go out on dates. I’m not asking you to wine and dine me. I just need—”

“I know,” he says. “I need it, too.”

“We should date. Get to know each other again as the people we are now and not the kids we used to be. We jumped directly into a serious, committed relationship. We need to keep things more casual for a while.”

He doesn’t look nearly as upset by this prospect as I expected. “I don’t have a lot of money. I can’t keep a job while I’m playing football. We start spring camp in three weeks, and then I’m going to have even less time.”

“I can deal with that. We can have picnics in the library for all I care. All I want is to spend quality time with you. I don’t care if that time is limited. I don’t care if we keep all our clothes on. I just want to be with you.”

He kisses the back of my hand. “Yeah, clothes are staying on. For a while.”

I frown. “King…”