The anger pulsed inside me, and I debated whether to stand up and box it out or drop to the floor and push it out.
But before I could do anything, Robin’s hand turned my face toward her. “Hey, look at me. You’re entitled to feel angry. What she does is wrong. Don’t act like it’s a failing on your part to be mad at her.”
I let out a quick breath. She was right, I knew she was right. But years of bottling shit up made me all too aware of when I couldn’t keep it in anymore. “You don’t understand . . . the anger I feel, it’s like I’m a pop can that’s been shook up, and if I don’t pull the tab I’m going to explode. It feels chemical.”
“You’re right, I don’t understand. But I do know that the way your mother treats you is appalling and unfair, addiction or not. She doesn’t deserve your loyalty, but part of the reason that I love you is that you will still give it to her, no matter what she does. I really admire that.”
I froze, stunned by what she had just said, both by how vehement she had been that my mom sucked and the other part . . . the part that made my nostrils flare and my chest to tighten. “What do you mean, you love me?” She must mean generically speaking. Not love, as in love love. Just more like the way when you care for someone.
But she gave me a smile, and her fingers brushed over my chest and gripped my T-shirt. She looked up at me from under her long eyelashes, expression sheepish. “I know it’s probably pathetically soon to say something like that, but this, what I feel, it’s so strong and real, it has to be love. And if I love you, it only seems right that you know that, whether you think it’s insane or not.”
Girlfriends had told me them loved me before, but I never believed them, because they didn’t. And I figured that if I was so sure I knew when a girl didn’t actually love me, I would be sure of it when she did love me. But for a second those words hung there, between us, while I tried to absorb what they meant. While I tried to remember this moment, to capture it and own it. “It might be a little insane that you love me, I’m not going to lie,” I murmured, capturing her neck with my hand and pulling her mouth toward mine. “But what’s not insane at all is that I love you. Because you’re probably the sweetest, most amazing girl I’ve ever met. I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes, you do,” she whispered. “You deserve everything you’ve ever wanted, Phoenix.”
When she looked at me like that, her big brown eyes shining with emotion, expression wide open and honest, I could almost believe her.
“What I want is you.” My hand was shaking, and this time it wasn’t from anger, but from something else I couldn’t really define in any words that made sense. I just knew that I had basically jumped off a fucking cliff and there was no net.
Because I was in love with Robin. Like real, hard-core, all-consuming, how-the-fucking-hell-did-this-happen love.
“Really?” she asked, and her vulnerable uncertainty nearly undid me.
My anger was completely gone, replaced by an urgent, possessive need to show her how truly and deeply I had fallen for her. “Yes, I love you. God, so much.”
I kissed her. Hard. “Let’s go to your room.” Maybe sex wasn’t the best way to express my feelings, but I didn’t know the right words, and I felt caged, contained. Too much emotion.
But she didn’t seem to think it was weird. Robin stood up and reached for my hand.
The second we were in her room, she tugged at my shirt, lifting it up to expose my chest. I finished the job, yanking it over my head. Then I pressed her against the door I’d closed behind us and lowered my mouth to hers. She tasted sweet and delicious and like mine, all mine. I crowded her with my body, kissing her hard and sliding my hands all over her. She had the most perfect curves, the most perfect lips, the most perfect response to my touches.
Emotion, passion, made my movements aggressive, sharp, my blood running thick and hot, thoughts scattered in all directions as I pulled up her dress so I could feel the warm heat of her skin.
“Can I?” I murmured, moving up her thigh.
“Yes,” she whispered, head falling back to expose her neck to me.
That she didn’t even question what I was asking for made me love her even more. This was it, the real thing, the end of the line for me, the moment that made everything else that came before it unimportant. Robin loved me, and that was all I needed to know.
Listening to her heavy breathing, her soft cries as I touched her, her knees falling apart, I fumbled in my jeans for a condom, knowing this had to happen, right here, right now, against this door.
“Oh, God,” she said, eyes going wide with shock, when I lifted her hip to rest on mine and pushed inside her.
She didn’t even know the half of it.
“This okay?” I asked, even as I moved. She was just so tight, so hot, I couldn’t believe how amazing it felt, how perfect we were.
“Yes,” she said, and her voice was breathy, eyes half closed. “It’s good, so good.”
That’s what I was talking about. “Hold me,” I said, “so you don’t slip. Dig in hard, I like that.”
Robin’s fingernail scraped across my back, pressing into my flesh, and the sharpness matched the intensity of my emotion perfectly. I came inside her, gritting my teeth, enjoying the way she squeezed her inner muscles onto me in some instinctive chick voodoo that had me feeling like I’d do anything she wanted, now and forever.
Not wanting her to lose the momentum, I pulled out and dropped down in a squat so I could finish her, her hands in my hair, her shocked exclamation when my tongue touched her almost as satisfying as my orgasm. She couldn’t see the smile I didn’t prevent from spreading across my face as I slipped a finger inside her, tongue still working the swollen button in front of me. There was something about that sound she made, that little moan that was a whole octave higher than her natural voice, that drove me crazy. She was so damn sexy.
“Yeah, babe.” But she didn’t really need my encouragement. She was already there, yanking hard on my hair as she shuddered through her pleasure.
Leaning back on my heels, I wiped my mouth and stared up at her. “I want you to remember that forever,” I told her. “Because I will.”
Chapter Ten
Robin
I swallowed hard, my mouth hot, thighs burning from strain, as I stared down at Phoenix. His eyes watched me from under that fall of dark hair, his gaze piercing and glassy and intense. I nodded in agreement, afraid to speak, scared that I actually might start crying. What was happening between us was so much, so passionate, so beyond anything I’d ever felt, it was overwhelming in the best possible way. It was like I couldn’t contain it inside me, and my fingers shook, goose bumps rose over my body, my throat was tight.
We all wonder when we will fall in love, wonder how we’ll know that our feelings are real, if someone is the right one for us.
Then it happens, and those questions seem laughable.
Because when it’s real, you feel it in every inch of you, every cell, every vein, every nook and cranny. It moves, it rises with each breath, it’s alive, and the world around you becomes sharper, crisper, in focus.
There is no question, only the answer.
Phoenix rose up, his body brushing against mine, and he smiled. “Hey,” he whispered, kissing the lobe of my ear, his arms coming around me to gather me close.