“Fuck off. Not everything in my life is about you.” He turned and stormed into the cabin, leaving me to sob uncontrollably on the porch.
God, why couldn’t I have minded my own business? Why hadn’t I just asked him directly what I wanted to know? Why couldn’t he and I make this work, and was it even worth trying? If our start was this rocky, should we just forget it?
I collapsed onto the porch steps and cried hard into my arms.
Up in the loft, I threw the fucking notebook on the floor and sat down hard on the edge of the bed. I was mad as fuck, and I was horrified. Skylar had seen really fucked-up things that I’d written—things that I wasn’t comfortable sharing with her yet, so I’d lashed out. The SUDS list was one thing, I might have talked with her about that eventually anyway, but the stuff about her…God. She’d seen the exercise Ken had recommended where I imagine the worst—I’d written that the night I’d seen her at the beach in the attempt to lessen the impact of the thought, to wrest control away from it. I’d written in graphic detail about strangling her—my God, what she must think? She was probably down there calling the police!
It was a matter of time, anyway.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe that was true.
Still, I’d treated her cruelly. As if I didn’t know what it was like to mess up and be sorry for it. And yet she’d apologized and asked my forgiveness.
I was a monster.
You warned her. She can’t say you didn’t.
“So now what, asshole?” I muttered, rubbing my face with my hands.
From downstairs I heard the screen door shut, and a moment later I saw her messy blonde head coming up the ladder. She got to the top, struggled with the sheet, then stood up tall. Her face was tearstained and her eyes were red, but the set of her chin was defiant.
“Here’s the thing,” she announced. “I’m not letting us ruin this.”
“Ruin what?”
“Our beginning. I don’t care what you wrote in that book, you are not a monster and I’ll never think that. So if that’s what has you all in knots right now, let’s just get that out of the way.”
I was too stunned to say anything.
“And I was completely wrong to look in your notebook the way I did. I’m sorry.” She lifted her shoulders. “I wanted to know how you felt.”
I’m falling in love with you.
“Sebastian.” She walked toward me, and I focused on the sheet wrapped around her body. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” I said lamely. I stared at her bare feet, toe to toe with mine.
“Yes, you do. You’re scared. I am too.” She put her hand under my chin and forced me to meet her eyes. “I was there last night, remember? I heard the things you said. I said things back to you, and I meant them.”
Finally, I looked up and met her eyes. “I meant the things I said too.”
“OK.” She rubbed my arm. “Then we have something worth fighting for, something young and a little unsteady on its legs, but it can get stronger.”
“What if this is just too much work?” I blurted, hating myself for sounding like a coward.
“For who?”
“Both of us. What if I keep fucking up and you get tired of having to forgive me?”
“Hey.” She knelt at my feet. “I don’t want you to be anyone other than who you are. I don’t know how else to tell you that. And look, it was me today that fucked up and needed forgiveness, right?”
“I guess so.”
“And I’ll never do that again. Your journal is your business. Your therapy is your business. I was totally wrong to look in it.” She hesitated. “Even if your words about me did give me goose bumps.”
I laughed a little, embarrassed but pleased. “Did they?”
“Yes.” She looked up at me with wide, searching eyes, and I felt my dick begin to stiffen. “But why did you say I had a foolish heart? Do you think I’m a fool? Sometimes I think I’m not smart enough for you.”
My chest caved. “Skylar. I didn’t mean it like that.” Leaning down, I took her head in my hands and kissed her softly, then reached for the sheet wrapped around her. She stood and let it fall, and I grabbed her beneath the arms, tipping her back on the bed. I stretched out over her, covering her naked body with my clothed one, brushing her hair back from her face.
“I don’t think I’m good enough for you, you know that. And I’m going to frustrate and confuse you, just like you said. Maybe it’s the OCD, maybe I’m just difficult—I have no fucking clue. But I won’t deserve all the chances you’ll have to give me.”
She wrapped her legs around me and took my face in her hands. “I’m going to give them, though. And if that makes me a fool, well…” She smiled. “At least I’ll be your fool.”
I buried my face in her neck, not at all sure I wouldn’t tear up. “Mine,” I said hoarsely, kissing my way down her chest.
“Yours,” she whispered, arching her back when I took the tip of one breast in my mouth. “Yours,” she whimpered a few minutes later when I licked two fingers and circled them over her clit, slid them inside her pussy. “Yours,” she cried a few minutes later as I brought her to orgasm with my hand, my teeth biting down on one hardened nipple.
I hated taking my lips from her skin even briefly, but somehow she managed to pull off my shirt, and undo my jeans. After shoving them off, I settled between her thighs again, sliding my cock along her clit.
She dug her heels into my legs and clawed at my back. “Inside me. Please. I miss you there already.”
Another time I might have teased her, made her wait a little longer, but this morning I just wanted to do as she asked. Our mouths were open and hot and panting against one another’s as I slid inside her and began to move, slowly at first, reveling in every inch of slick, tight friction. She writhed and bucked beneath me, grabbing my ass with both hands, pulling me in deep and gasping in pain when I stabbed too deep.
“Too hard? I don’t want to hurt you,” I whispered, but my hips rocked harder and faster, taking orders from her hands.
“You won’t, you won’t,” she said, her eyes shiny and wild. “I love it deep like that. You have no idea how good it feels.”
I almost laughed. “I do, I promise.”
“Oh, God.” She picked up her head, burying it in the crook of my neck, licking my throat, lifting her hips to meet mine thrust for thrust, driving me to the breaking point. “You make me come so easily, it’s like fucking magic.”
“Yes. Come with me,” I growled low in her ear, feeling that invincibility surge inside me. “Come hard on my cock, let me feel it.”
“Yes!” Her climax hit and she dug her nails in deep and held on tight, her lower body going stiff as I drove inside her, again and again. Then I buried myself as deep as I could, coming long and hard, and still felt like I wanted more of her, wanted to give her more of me. I miss you there already, she’d said, and I hadn’t even been inside her yet. But I knew exactly what she meant.
Even as I held her trembling body close to mine, I mourned the inevitable loss of her.
Nothing gold can stay.
“Hello?”
“Hello, I’m calling for Mia Fournier.” I tried to sound less nervous than I felt. Sebastian and even Natalie had encouraged me to make this call on Monday, but it had taken me three more days to work up the nerve. I wanted to be prepared in case she asked about experience, a college degree, why I’d been fired from Rivard, or even Save a Horse, on the off chance she’d watched.