Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,85

celebration and I looked up and met his eyes.

Steady and blue and calm.

In a heartbeat, I understood what that calm hid. A grief so wide and deep a man could drown in it if he wasn’t careful. And he’d been swimming in that grief his whole life.

He knows, I realized. He knows he has to leave. And somehow that made this worse.

It made it so bittersweet my stomach ached. I grabbed my long necklace and looped it around my neck twice.

“What’s your real name?” he asked.

“Why does it matter?” I wasn’t looking at him. I couldn’t.

“Because I don’t even know your name. And we’ve been through some shit, you and I.” I didn’t want jokes. I didn’t want this to end as friends because I would spend my whole life—my whole life—regretting that we’d said goodbye at all.

I needed this to be sharp and painful and final.

“Why?” I asked.

“What if I want to come find you?”

“And what? Play house?”

“I’m not a guy who plays house,” he said. He pushed himself up on the bed.

“Neither am I,” I said. “So why are you trying to pretend you are? What do you want?”

To fuck me sideways. To make good on this thing happening between us. To satisfy this curiosity that had settled in under our skin. An itch we couldn’t quite reach.

All of this we’d said to each other a few days ago. We’d thrown around the words like they meant nothing. A few days ago everything meant nothing. But now…now the degree to which I wanted him was something else. Something different. And now I couldn’t throw around the words in fear that they might reveal more than I wanted.

To keep you safe.

That’s what I really wanted.

For him to be safe.

Happy.

And that couldn’t happen if he was with me.

I had to end this. I pushed away from the dresser and opened my mouth ready to tell him to get dressed and get out, but he shifted up on the bed, getting up on his good leg and he snagged my wrist.

“Don’t,” I said, suddenly scared. Suddenly terrified. Not because he would hurt me.

But because he wouldn’t.

He ignored my struggling and pulled me down onto the bed, half on him, half at his side.

The heat of his body was hotter than the shower, and where we touched, I felt scorched.

“Look at me,” he said, but I kept my head averted. He had my wrists in one of his large hands, my hands locked together in between us. But slowly he lifted my hands until they were over my head, pressed to the pillow. The cold iron of the headboard was against my fingers.

Excitement sizzled through me. Unwanted, but there so much the same.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he told me.

“No,” I said. But my struggle was not real. It was a flimsy pretense that he pushed right through. Unable to stop myself, I looked at him. His blue eyes so radiant and getting closer as he leaned toward me.

I closed my eyes in surrender.

And I wasn’t sure what I expected, but he was careful and soft.

He kissed me like we were new to it. New to each other.

Our first kiss. Our last kiss.

Tears burned behind my eyes and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.

Come on! I urged myself. Fight him. Pull your hands away. Push him back.

But I didn’t. I didn’t do any of that. I lay there, shaking. Taking in every moment of this kiss like a memory I would need for later. Like this kiss would sustain me through the hungry years ahead.

He sucked my lip into his mouth and I moaned, coming undone beneath him. My arms lost their tension and he let go of my wrists like he knew I wasn’t going to fight him. He put his hands to my chin, holding my face.

He moaned, too, arching into me just a little. And I arched back, opening my mouth to him so he could take what he wanted. His tongue touched my lip and then my tongue and then finally, we were kissing for real. Long, slow, soft, deep kisses. Open mouths. Grasping hands. It was him and it was me and it was nothing else. My arms came around his neck, pulling him down against me until our bodies were flush. Until the weight of him pushed away all my fears. His hands slid over my top, raking it up until he got to my skin.

He groaned when he touched it. Like it was too much,