“When did they start again?”
“A few weeks ago.”
Her answer sends the palm of my hand colliding with my steering wheel. “Weeks?”
Her eyes narrow with defiance. “Prior to a week ago, we weren’t talking. I wasn’t going to come to you about this.”
“Did you tell anyone? The cops? Paxton? Your parents?” I know she didn’t because Pax sure as shit would have told me.
Her jaw is tense as she stares at me. “I know you’re probably coming at this from a place that isn’t straight out of the depths of asshole, but right now, it feels like that. So rather than me getting offended and us yelling at each other, I’m going to ask you to drive me to Poppy’s.”
“No. You’re going to the house with me.”
Her brow flattens. “Like hell I am.”
“Someone slashed your fucking tires. You’re not going to be by yourself.”
“Did you miss me mentioning going to Poppy’s?”
I put the truck into reverse and then hit drive. My foot falls heavier on the gas pedal when we hit the road.
“Is this seriously how you’re going to react?”
I keep my gaze on the road, wishing I could go faster, my shoulders tense as I lose my head to the one thing that has always been my greatest vice: fearing she’ll leave—whether she chooses to or otherwise.
“You can’t just ignore me,” she says. “We need to talk. You need to use words, Lincoln.”
“You already know what I’m thinking.”
“That you’ve lost your mind?”
A sardonic laugh cuts through my lips and the silence.
“The last notes weren’t creepy. They seemed almost … sad.”
“Let’s go back to your idea of not talking about this right now.”
She growls with irritation. “You’re infuriating. This is absolutely unnecessary and ridiculous. Poppy is expecting me, and I have no desire to sleep on your guys’ couch.”
My tires eat the miles until we pull into my neighborhood, where I finally slow down.
“Will you respond?” she cries.
I slide into my parking spot and turn my truck off. I track over her menacing stare, the annoyance and impatience sitting heavily on her drawn shoulders, the twist of her lips that I want to go to war with.
I shove my door open and head toward the front door, hearing her slam the passenger door before I reach the first step.
“What are you doing?” she yells.
I unlock the door and shove it open. Inside, the house is dark. Caleb is likely gaming in his room or has already gone to bed, and Arlo and Pax’s cars were absent from their spots. I close the door after she stalks inside, locking it before I turn toward the stairs and take them two and three at a time, wishing I could outrun these feelings that are crashing down on me, one blow after the other, each with more impact.
“You don’t get to just walk away whenever things get messy,” she says, following me, albeit, at a slower, more measured pace. Maybe this is where the advantage of having siblings plays a role. Or perhaps it was having parents who previously worked through their shit rather than threw it in each other’s faces and then ignored the other one like they didn’t exist. “Lincoln.”
I turn, facing her as she strides toward me. She stops abruptly, nearly running into me. The annoyance is still visible in her eyes, but along with it is confusion and vulnerability and something that looks way too damn similar to disappointment. It’s a look that undoes me, strips me of my anger and sense. “I can’t do it again.”
Her blue eyes shift between mine for several seconds, attempting to read through my words. “Do what again?”
“I nearly lost you to a fucking ocean, I’m not about to let you go test the threat level of some psycho. It’s not happening. You can be mad at me, you can stomp your foot, you can call me an asshole, but you’re not leaving.”
Raegan parts her lips, and I know before hearing her words, they’re going to be of doubt. “This is insane. I don’t even understand why you think you get a say in—”
I tag her around the waist, hauling her flush against me, my lips bracing her fall. Her muscles are rigid, her mouth closed. She pulls back, her eyes flashing to mine.
“I need you. I need you to stay here and have some fucking self-preservation. I need you in ways I’ve never needed anyone—in ways that scare the shit out of me. I need you because I don’t feel like myself without you.” I can’t even manage to regret my admission because it’s a thin shave off the surface of my feelings and thoughts.
Rae closes her eyes, her lips falling to mine, meeting in a dance that reminds me of middle school with darkened gymnasiums and our teachers filing around with rulers in their hands, everyone unsure about where to place their hands and what something so simple might mean. But those trepidations have never existed, not with her.
With our lips still clumsily trying to sort through the mess we’ve created, I back up into my room, closing the door with the toe of my shoe before locking the door and pressing her against it. It’s nearly black in the space, a thin filter of light creeping in through the window shade because a street light is directly below. She wraps her hands around my shoulders, and I slant my head, gaining a better angle of her mouth. I slide my tongue along hers, demanding everything she has to offer while giving what’s left of me that she hasn’t already taken. I press against her, so close that doubt can’t reach either of us as we lose ourselves in this kiss that I know will define the rest of my days.
I slide my hands to her waist, her sweatshirt and shirt bunching as I reach for her skin, needing to feel her flesh against mine. The heat of her hits my palms, and her hips tip closer, a soft moan touching her lips that I lick the traces clean from. She grabs the bottom of my sweatshirt, tugging it upward, her fingers cold as they graze my skin. I press a searing kiss to her mouth, taking her bottom lip between my teeth before I pull away to rid my sweatshirt and tee, dropping them to the floor. Her fingers brush over my chest, my stomach, my shoulders. Her eyes are hooded, heavy with lust and something I want to capture and memorize while also running away and forgetting it.
“We’re complicating things,” she says, her voice as soft as her touch.
“Words complicate things. Rationalizing complicates things. Expectations complicate things. This—us, this is the only thing that doesn’t feel complicated.”
Raegan kisses me again, the gentleness gone, replaced with the same desire that’s been burning inside of me for months. We’re a set of fumbling hands and limbs and jumbled kisses as we strive to free the layers separating us, neither willing to stop kissing for more than a fraction of a second as we tug on zippers and buttons and fabrics until we’re both in our underwear. Her chest is rising and falling with heavy, needy breaths that make her breasts swell beneath the blue-green fabric of her bra that I’d left on in an attempt to slow things down. I trace the line where her skin meets the silky fabric with my fingers and eyes, my breaths growing short and ragged.
This moment deserves a conversation, an understanding, and a full-fledged agreement that won’t be rewritten by regrets later. I kiss her, searching for that familiar hit of dopamine she offers. The moment her lips meet mine, pressing her chest against mine, our skin basking in a moment of celebration has me losing myself in our shared kiss, my tongue stroking hers, her breaths fast, hungry. She moves her hands from my shoulders, and then the nearly silent clip of metal is followed by her bra falling against my chest before she unthreads her arms and lets it fall to the floor. Her breasts are perfect and distracting as I consider all the ways I’d like to please her.