reins in control.
“No. I won’t accept it. The second we had you in that room, you were back to yourself again. You might be able to deny it with words, but your body doesn’t lie. You’re right, though. What we did was a mistake. Because it reminded me what has been missing for the past ten fucking years.”
Tears sting my eyes because he’s not wrong.
His gaze tracks one of those tears where it rolls down my cheek. Catching it with the tip of his finger, he grins again.
“See what I mean? Your body tells the truth.”
And then he kisses me. Like a man who hasn’t breathed in years. Like a soul taking its first and last taste of everything good in this world. He kisses me with every ounce of the wild passion inside him that always drives me crazy, and I can’t help but kiss him back.
Because I do love him.
Just not enough.
Not like I love Ezra.
A buzzing sounds from his pocket and Damon breaks the kiss, heavy breath pouring over both of our lips as he pulls his phone out and glances at the screen.
I recognize what rolls behind his eyes.
And I sure as hell don’t like it.
“Who is it?”
Rather than answering, he backs away from me and heads toward the door.
“I have to go.”
“Damon! Who is it?”
Stopping with his hand on the knob, he stands silent for several seconds before finally answering.
“It’s my dad.”
He glances over his shoulder, and I see nightmares in his eyes that he attempts to disguise with a cheesy smile.
“I told you your body doesn’t lie, Red. And that kiss? It was the truth.”
“That can’t happen again, Damon.”
Rejection flashes across his expression. Damon attempts to hide it, to disguise the thoughts that might as well be screaming between us.
It was never him.
“We’ll see.”
He lets himself out and closes the door before I can say another word, and I’m left sitting in place with a crushed heart in my chest and no idea how I’ll fix this.
What’s worse is that the look I saw on his face as he walked out of here is the same one I used to see in high school.
The same one Ezra had at the engagement party after talking to his father.
The same one they both had when they would come back from those weekends I hated so much.
The weekends that left them bruised.
That left them scarred.
That left them broken.
Ezra
Two weeks before the last time I saw Emily, we took a trip out to a beach house my family owned.
It was a three-hour drive to reach it, but the property was expansive, and you could do whatever the hell you wanted out there without worry of someone finding you.
I’d wanted it to be just Em and me, but we couldn’t leave without Damon, and then Shane tagged along because he was being a little bitch and didn’t want to be left behind.
It wasn’t a problem having Shane around. He often partied with us and knew what we were doing with Emily. He wasn’t the type to give a damn about it or say a word.
Not that I cared if anybody knew, but Emily had to keep up appearances. If it ever got back to her parents what she was doing, they’d lock her down until the day she was marched down the aisle to marry Mason.
The trip was nothing more than an opportunity to get away and be alone. I hadn’t expected much more than the usual.
Emily would get to be herself for a while, Shane would most likely drink himself stupid, and Damon and I would have the entire night with a girl who’d somehow managed to carve her name into our bones with an ease that left us both stunned.
Maybe it was something as simple as like recognizing like, but six weeks with her somehow became a lifetime...and a lifeline.
For me, at least.
Damon enjoyed being around her. She calmed him down as much as she did me. But it was my leash held constantly and comfortably in her hand, even when she didn’t know it.
After one week with her, I would have done anything she asked, which is why I was panicking as time ran out. Our six weeks of fun with no strings attached was all too quickly bound by chains that I knew I’d never break.
I couldn’t let her go.
I knew it.
Yet time was running out for me to do anything about it.
Later that night, we’d built a bonfire on the beach. Shane and Damon