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I petted her hair, loving how the warm strands wrapped around my fingers. “I’ll give you anything, everything—whatever you want. Just stay with me.” I leaned up, using my abdominal muscles to hold me as I brushed my lips over hers. It was a soft, sweet kiss. A question, a request.
She sealed her mouth over mine with enough force to allow me to lower back to the pillow. Then she took over, her tongue sliding past my lips. Again and again, she mated her tongue to mine, stoking a fire within me. We broke apart, gasping.
“I like kissing you,” she murmured, resting her chin on my chest.
I ran my fingers through her hair, careful not to tug too hard. “Same.”
“Why did you choose to move to Barton Creek?”
“Austin’s my home, and after traveling so much for so long, I needed low-key. This place, this city—it’s real, Ay. It’s alive and fresh and smells like...like earth and trees and life.”
She nodded, absorbed in some memory. “I missed it, too. This is where I want to be.”
She blinked away whatever worried her, her gaze flashing to mine. Ah, no, she was trying hard not to fall back into the rabbit hole of our miscommunication and the breakdown of our relationship. I appreciated the gesture. I wasn’t as exhausted as I’d been last night, but I wasn’t ready to go another round through the emotional minefield.
“When did you move here?” she asked.
“I bought the place about five months ago. Bridger wanted to stay in Seattle, but thankfully, Jax hated the gray skies, too. So we decided to set up base here. We’ll still do some of our recording in Seattle, but Cam has a sweet setup near his place.”
“I remember.”
“Right. Never got you into that studio. Anyway, either we can travel up to Seattle to meet with Asher and finalize songs, or he can come here. And…well, I feel solid. I need the sunshine, heat.”
“I get that. I’ve always found England depressing.”
Silence grew between us.
“What do you think it would have been like? If I’d stayed?” she asked.
I sighed. “Much as I hate to say it, I would have fucked up something else, and you still would have left. I think, as bad as it was, I needed to work through my parents’ divorce, my mother…” I swallowed. Still things I needed to work through there. “And then, my grandfather. It wasn’t pretty, not any of that, and I’m not proud of how I handled it.”
“I’m sorry about your parents, Nash,” she whispered. “And Pop Syad. I liked him, even though he was kind of tyrannical.”
“He was an overbearing dick, and I miss him.”
She shifted, restless, her eyes darkening. “I should have written and told you so.”
I shook my head. “Let’s not rehash the past again. It’s over. And more importantly, I’ve been wracking my brain for how to get more time with you moving forward.”
“Well, as I’m currently unemployed, you can have as much of my time as you’d like.”
I frowned. “What?”
She sighed, her gaze dropping to my chest where she swirled a pattern through the hair with her forefinger. “My father had his friend—the owner of the company I worked for—sack me.”
Everything in me stilled.
“He said he’d get me back my job if I promised to marry Alistair.”
I tightened my hold on her waist with my good hand.
“Do you want it back? We can fight—”
“No.” She sighed. “It’s not worth the emotion.” She bit her lip. “I’m not committed to electric vehicles.” She shook her head. “I love building things, but the work at these places—none of it excited me. I just…I don’t know.” She flopped on her back and stared up at the ceiling.
“Most people would want to get back what was taken from them.”
She shrugged. “It’s not that I’m without ambition.” She sighed. “I need to feel connected to something.”
