Long Way Home (Thunder Road #3)(57)

“I told Oz we needed time.” I push off the wall, turn off the light and join her on the bed. I allow her space if she should need it, but she shifts in my direction. Her shoulder brushes against mine, and I won’t lie, that simple contact causes my restless soul to settle. “He and Razor have our backs.”

“They do,” she agrees, and it’s the first sign of her trusting anyone beyond me in the Terror. “I also miss them.”

“There’s nothing they wouldn’t do for you.” Nothing I wouldn’t do for her either.

“Want to talk about it?” she asks, switching subjects. I’m not sure if she’s talking about football or how I unleashed on Cyrus. Possibly both.

“No. I’d like to pretend the last few weeks didn’t happen.”

She snorts. “Can we pretend the last year didn’t happen?”

“Works for me.” More than she could imagine.

Violet chooses a movie we’ve seen a hundred times, but it’s one of those you don’t mind watching again. Even though it’s a favorite, a movie Razor, Oz and I will say the lines with while we’re together, I don’t watch the screen. I watch Violet.

As time continues to pass, she leans further into me. Her head on my shoulder until I move so I can wrap my arm around her. She then rests her head on my chest and places an arm over my stomach. My fingers caress the skin of her arm, and because I am pretending the past year didn’t happen, I nuzzle her hair and sometimes press my lips to her head.

We’ve melted into each other, creating a warm bubble.

My skin tickles as Violet begins to brush her fingernails gently across the bare skin of my arm. I briefly close my eyes and bite back the need to moan. The touch is so sweet it’s almost an ache. The drought of her touch has been too long and a flood of emotion breaks as her fingers trail up my arm, along my shoulder and onto my collarbone.

Violet raises her head and the smoldering look in her eyes nearly undoes me. I know what she’s searching for, what the silent plea in her expression means, but I can’t. “I can’t kiss you unless you tell me it’s what you want.”

I can’t mess us up. I can’t keep leading us down bad roads.

“I don’t know what I want,” she whispers. “I don’t want to hurt anymore, I don’t want to be broken, I don’t want to be with you, but I can’t live without you. Last thing I want to do right now is make another mistake that’s going to cause me to bleed, but the only thing I do know is that if I don’t kiss you tonight, I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life.”

Her spirit is hurting, weak and in need, and so is mine. I don’t know much either. I’m confused and blinded by the fog we’ve stumbled into, but Violet is real and warm and a fortress by which I fall to my knees whenever I come into contact. I need her, she needs me and tonight we just need to hold each other.

“I can’t make promises,” she says like we’re in a church.

But I do have a promise for her. “I love you. I always have, always will. I understand the promises you’re talking about and I understand why you can’t make them, but I’m going to make a promise to you. No matter which way this plays out, I promise to love you and do my best to make sure whatever path we go down together or separately will be the one that hurts you the least.”

Violet tilts her head as if my words hurt her while at the same time hugged her. She reaches up, her fingertips sliding across my face, and before she has a chance to pull away, I capture her hand and press it against my chest.

“I love you,” I repeat.

“Please kiss me.”

I release her hand, it remains on my chest, over my heart, and I tunnel my fingers into her hair. My thumb caresses the smooth skin of her cheek, and as I lean forward, adrenaline hits my bloodstream.

There’s a pull to her, there’s always been a pull. Violet’s the gravitational force that rights my world, but this time, this kiss, it’ll be imprinted in my brain, a memory that will last until my last breath.

Our mouths are only centimeters apart, and I can hear and feel her slight intake of air. When she wets her lips, I draw in closer and kiss. A light brush, a slight shake as if this is the first time, as if this is the last time.

Another press and her sweet familiar scent envelops me. I lick her lips and Violet gives, becoming liquid in my arms. She opens herself to me, her fingers in my hair, her legs tangling with mine, our mouths and tongues moving in ways that only come with years of understanding what makes the other shiver, what makes the other yearn for more, what makes the other feel as if the only way to be complete is to be of one body and skin.

Fire. Waves of flames lick through my veins and my fingers lift the fabric of her shirt in an effort to help the growing heat. We shift as we continue to kiss, her hands just as greedily taking off my shirt, helping me with hers, and then we’re shedding more, touching more, remembering, retracing, rememorizing, reliving all that was and is glorious between us.

There’s a rhythm, one that had been relegated only to dreams. Holding her in my arms, feeling her caresses along my spine, her kisses along my chest, her body moving in a way that causes my mind to become fuzzy and warm, I want nothing more than to crawl inside her, to become one.

I move my hips, Violet gasps and curls further into me, but then she shakes her head, allowing her nose to rub against my cheek. “We can do things, but not that. My heart won’t recover if we do that.”