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“Oh, fuck that. You never did a damn thing, Gabrielle. You didn’t initiate shit, you sure as hell ran in the other direction whenever I was in your vicinity, and we never even fucking touched. You did nothing wrong. It was all me, and fuck calling me a boy. I’m three years younger than you. I knew what I wanted. I’ve always been the type of person to know that; it was true then, just as it is now. So don’t tell me I was immature or naive, I’ve never been those things in my goddamn life, ask anyone.”
She refuses to give me an inch, not meeting my eyes, and I want to rattle her. I want to knock that suit of armor she always seems to be equipped with and get to the heart of the woman. She has to know that if she’d allow it, neither of us would be able to disengage from the other.
“That last night I saw you was not the time to get into it. Not then.”
She brings up the forbidden night, the one where it all almost came crashing down over our heads.
“So, when was I supposed to address it then, huh? You fell off the face of the earth. Not that I had much to go on since you wouldn’t give me your number in the first place, much less create any social media profile I could find. Yeah, that makes me sound like a fucking stalker, but all I wanted to do was talk to you after I graduated. That night at the canal, I thought maybe …” I trail off because I’ll sound like even more of a lunatic if I confess to her that it felt like I was falling. I hadn’t said more than a couple sentences to her in a public setting up to that point, and it wasn’t like I’d taken her on a date or even flirted with her. Something deep down inside me just knew, though, when I looked at her that we were bigger than all of that. It felt like the kind of intangible thing I’d only find once in my lifetime.
“I didn’t want you calling, Liam. It wasn’t appropriate. You were a student, and I was your teacher.”
“And now I’m a thirty-two-year-old man asking the same thing. For a chance. Just one goddamn shot. Which you’re still scared shitless of because you think someone will judge you for it? That’s bullshit, Gabrielle. I think we both know what would happen if we stopped putting up roadblocks.”
I’m panting at this point, turned on and angered beyond belief that she won’t relent.
“You sound insane! We don’t even know each other.”
Maybe I do, maybe I am. All I know, though, is that the moment she fled Hope Crest, something inside me fundamentally changed. I went from this somewhat friendly, marginally cocky guy to a shell of myself. The world seemed to dim; the prospects I had seemed so bland and uninteresting. Colors dulled, and other women seemed boring.
That all sounds so dramatic, and I’m the farthest thing from that word. But I’m tired of being angry, of trying to beat her at her own game. I’m exhausted from pretending I don’t want her, that I want her to leave town as soon as possible because we all know I don’t want that. If this is the only shot I get, I better take it.
So, I tell her the truth because it’s all I have. “I turned down a woman at the bar tonight. I’m always turning down women. For twelve years, any experience or moment I’ve had with a woman has felt off, not enough. Not since I looked at you for the first time has anything ever felt right. I know that sounds insane, I know I’ve never touched you, talked for hours with you, taken you out, or had you in my bed. I know all of this. But sometimes, a feeling like this can’t be explained. It’s not rational. Isn’t that what chemistry is, though? Isn’t a connection, that spark of indefinability and undeniability, not a logical thing? Or else, why would human beings attempt to go up to the ones they find attractive? For twelve years, I’ve not felt an ounce of the spark I did when I was in the same room as you. Then you walked back into town and it was like … it was like I was getting one last shot at ever finding that thing in my life. Tell me I’m wrong. You have to say it or I won’t be able to stop spiraling about this. You have to feel this. I’m fucking tired of feeling insane, like everything between us is only one sided.”
After I’m finished, my chest is light as air. It feels like I’ve emptied a ton off my soul and deposited it at her feet to either pick up or discard. I wait on the edge, wondering if she’ll send me into oblivion or help me soar.
Gabrielle looks away. Looks back at me. Looks away again. There is so much indecision and panic clouding those beautiful green eyes.
“It’s not one-sided.”
Her whisper is so quiet I can almost imagine I dreamed her saying that. But I know I didn’t, I can’t have, because now she’s looking at me with such raw want in her eyes that my lungs seize up.
Air ceases to exist. The world stutters before it feels like it’s spinning a million miles per hour.
And then, for the first time in my life, I claim this woman’s lips. Suddenly, every single fiber of my being is reminded of why I was put on this earth.
5
GABRIELLE
Perfection.
The word repeats over and over in my brain, pounding at my skull as Liam devours my mouth. As we suck the air from each other’s lungs. As our lips brand the other’s like tattoos only made to fit him and me.
It’s the only word that makes sense at this moment, and it’s the only thing I feel. Every man I’ve kissed in my life, dated, been with … none of it compares to this. To him. To this kiss that feels like it’s ending a self-induced sentence of longing and misery.
His tongue wraps around mine, coaxing it in a way that I feel I know exactly how he’d use it when he got me naked and spread open. This kiss is passionate, erotic, heady, and grounding. Its opposition personified because while it feels like the rightest thing in the world, my head is yelling that it’s wrong. That I’ve denied myself this for so long, and it’s for a reason.
But Liam doesn’t give me time to unpack that because one moment, I’m standing on the front porch steps of my grandmother’s bookshop, and the next, I’m floating.
Liam picks me up, his strong arm banding around my waist with the other under my butt, and caries me deftly back inside the old shop. The night is dark, and we’re in a particularly empty part of Hope Crest; Grandma Lucy’s store is on the outskirts of Newton Street, so there isn’t as much foot traffic but also not as many residential properties either.
With a booted foot, I hear him kick the front door closed, and I come up for air.
“What are we doing?” I ask, even as my fingers plow through his brown locks and his lips skate down the column of my neck.
“The thing we were always meant to.” He says it so surely, like he’s known forever that it would come to this.
My entire body tingles, my panties are slick with wetness, and the goose bumps on my skin won’t seem to rub off even as our limbs meet in several places each second. As he sets me down on the old checkout counter in front of the big bay windows, he comes between my legs, and I feel him, hard and thick, at my center.
