the railing of his porch, the scent of him reminding me of the danger he just escaped. “I’ve never seen anything like it. There were casualties, but all of our men got out okay. I’m okay. You didn’t need to come here. I don’t need you to take care of me, haven’t I said that? Now, go home.”
And just like that, I’m dismissed. Bowen Nash has no time for me or the feelings that will never leave my heart. It crushes me, my soul literally dropping to its knees. If I’d lost him tonight, not that he was mine to lose, but if he’d …
I don’t know how I could go on living in a world that he wasn’t a part of, no matter how much he didn’t love me back now.
Rising from his porch, I walk off of it, my head hung low with shame.
Bowen doesn’t thank me, or say good night, or even pat me on the back for coming to make sure he was okay. And that angers me. So much so that a few angry drops graze my cheeks on their way down.
Thank God I’m already on the sidewalk, in the dark, where he can’t see me cry.
But the question on the tip of my tongue won’t let me leave. I whip around, squaring my shoulders.
“If I were the one in the burning building, would you even save me?”
I say this to his back, his body already halfway to his own front door. The massive figure of brawn and grace stops, the muscles on his back under his T-shirt rippling with tension.
When Bowen turns, his eyes are feral. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” I spit back. “I came here, worried out of my mind, to see if you were alive, and you can’t even bother to look at me. If I was gone, would you even notice?”
The last sentence out of my mouth is so raw, so honest, that it burns all the way up my throat. Because that’s the thought I’ve been wondering all these years. If I disappeared tomorrow, would he even care?
I feel him before I see him, that’s how fast he moves. Like a panther catching its prey, one minute Bowen is on the porch, and the next, he’s grabbing me, hoisting me up by the waist.
And crushing his mouth to mine.
Complete shock. Sensory overload. A million memories and a thrilling new secret that is heady and lustful and so many other emotions I can’t process.
The man I have loved for my entire life is kissing me for the first time in ten years, and it takes me a second to realize I need to take this opportunity to kiss him back.
To pour every ounce of pain and admiration I’ve harbored for the last decade into this display of love.
Because even if this all ends in a few minutes, even if he puts me down, lets me go, pretends this never happened …
I can make it through another ten years knowing that we had this. Even if I don’t understand it. Or whether Bowen is doing this out of spite or because he hurts as much as I do.
Right here. Right now. We have this.
18
Lily
“Bow—” I pull back, my lips grazing his, but he doesn’t let me speak.
The way he pulls my mouth back to his, forcefully, with the hand that isn’t looped around my waist and holding me up … it’s possessive. My body is his, it always has been, and he knows it. With one flick of his tongue, he undoes me. Bowen unwinds the barbed wire that has held my heart hostage for ten years. The lock he placed on it springs open.
In the middle of the sidewalk, at God knows what hour of the night, here we stand. Two star-crossed lovers, the man holding the woman up as she clings to him, not able to get close enough to each other as they express wordlessly all that has come between them.
His mouth is hot and unrelenting. We’re making love with our lips, tongues, and teeth. The kisses are sharp, direct, but also fumbling and unpracticed.
Bowen’s body is hard and rough beneath my fingertips, beneath the legs wrapped around his waist. He’s grown from a boy into a man in the time we’ve been apart, and my hands ache to touch all of that bare muscle.
Our mouths still fused; he carries me in long strides to the house. Up the front porch, in through the front door where