I Have Lived and I Have Loved - Willow Winters Page 0,73

to smolder.

God.

I’d forgotten how tall he was.

“Have you gotten taller?” I asked breathlessly.

A smirk pulled at his lips, and he shifted again. His hips were almost touching mine, but he still braced himself with a hand above my head.

I was fast forgetting what I was going to say, and I wet my lips. “Ryan.”

“Mmm?” His eyes were on my mouth.

I touched his chest but pushed him back an inch. “You’re making me not be able to think.”

His free hand went to my waist. “Is that a bad thing?” He didn’t move back. I could feel his chest moving up and down with shallow breaths and his muscles shifting under my touch.

He was as affected as I was.

“You’re reserving the right to respond to my text.”

“Yes.” I nodded again, trying to clear my head. I was remembering the first time he’d kissed me at the college party, when we’d kissed again in my theater room, and how he’d felt sliding inside me. “I’m a mess.”

He chuckled, and good gracious, even that was a caress.

“Ryan,” I murmured.

“Yes?” He dipped closer.

I closed my eyes because I could feel him, his breath on my face. I felt him straining under my hand, holding himself back, and I couldn’t help myself. I moved my thumb side to side over his chest. It was a small touch, but it elicited a groan from him.

“You want to take this somewhere else?”

Yes! But I groaned. “I promised my mom I wouldn’t skip.”

“And that’s important.”

It was. Wait, he was agreeing with me?

I opened my eyes, and he was right there. If I tilted my head a fraction, he’d be kissing me.

What had I been saying before? It felt important, too important to go a day without saying.

I was a mess. Yes. That was it.

I began again, clearing my throat first. “Things are just getting to be a little normal at my house. I don’t know if it’s going to last or what’s going to happen, but I’ve been a mess.” I still was. The hole was still there. She was still gone. I kept going before a different ache had me sobbing in his arms. “I’m trying to tell you that—” I flattened myself back, giving me an inch, and I looked up to his eyes. “When I return your text, I don’t want it to be because you said it. I want to feel it, and I want to mean it, and I want . . .”

Some of the smoldering dampened. “You don’t feel it?”

I pressed my hand against his stomach. “It isn’t that I don’t feel it; it’s that I have too much other stuff going on inside me. My parents are home today. Robbie is back today. Willow . . .”

My stomach knotted, but it was too important that he understood what I was saying for me to stop. “I’ve been trying to ignore that she was gone.” I’ve been trying to ignore a lot of things. “I used you to do that. I skipped school to run away. I tried tequila.” Deep breath, Mackenzie. My heart beat in a rapid staccato. My hand wrapped around his shirt and tugged. “There are layers of pain inside me. Pain that I can’t put into words, and underneath it all is hell. It’s raw and bloody. Agony. Suffering. Torture.”

And denial. That lined the bottom of me. It was a dark, black hole.

His hand curved around my waist, but the touch took on a different feeling. It was more soothing than sensual.

“I can’t text you that back because it isn’t fair to you, or me. I want to say it when I’m feeling that and only that. Willow’s gone, and I’ll always feel as if half of me has been ripped away, but I know someday those wounds might heal over. I’m not saying I’ll completely be right one day, but I’m saying that until most of those layers of pain have gone away, I can’t say it back. There isn’t enough room inside to say it back. Not yet.”

I pulled him against me, feeling his surprise before he caught himself so he wasn’t crushing me against the building. He put an inch of space between us, but that was too far in my mind. I wanted all of him against me, his whole body plastered against mine.

That soothed me, but I wanted more than soothing.

Ryan’s hand cradled the back of my head. His thumb brushed over my cheek. “I know what you’re saying, and I’m not mad.”

“You aren’t?”

He