Quarterback Sneak (Red Zone Rivals #3)(64)

I shook my head, over and over.

“You are a great sister, and a great daughter, and a great person. Have you made some mistakes? Maybe. But we all do.” His eyes searched mine. “What matters is that you’re still here, and you’re trying. You are working on it.” He swallowed. “That’s all we can do.”

Something of a laugh came out of my nose, and I looked down, away from him, wanting so desperately to believe him even while everything inside of me pushed that sentiment away.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Want to know why?” I looked him right in the eye. “Because in the end, we all die. And to be honest, I can’t wait for my time to come. I can’t wait to be free.”

It was the only thing I’d said that night that made him crack.

I saw it the moment I said it, I saw how his breath hitched, how tears pricked his eyes, how his jaw tightened and his throat constricted. I waited for him to explode, to tell me I was selfish for thinking that way.

Instead, he slid his hands back, cradling my neck, his thumbs on my jaw and holding me still as his eyes bore into mine.

“It does matter,” he breathed. “You matter.”

I blinked, setting free two teardrops that went racing down each of my cheeks.

“You are enough, Julep,” he whispered, the words wrecking me and healing me all at once. “And you are needed. Most of all by me.”

He swallowed the cry that those words elicited from me, pulling me into him and kissing me as if to seal that sentiment inside of me until I believed it. He didn’t kiss me with the passion to take my clothes off, he kissed me with the desperation to save me.

And I was hanging on just enough to let him.

I melted, and he took my weight as he kissed one wet cheek and then the other, over and over, tracing the trails my tears had made before finding my lips again. I tasted my pain when he kissed me, felt myself trembling in his lap as he wrapped me in his arms and held me as tightly as he could.

He kissed me until my tears dried up. He kissed me until my lips were raw. He kissed me, and then I pulled him down onto me, tearing at his clothes until we were bare and pressed against each other.

I couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t satiate my need for him until he was inside me.

Once he was, everything slowed — my heart, his breath, my panic, his thrusts. His fingertips curled around my shoulders, and he held me there as he plunged into me, as I wrapped my arms and legs around him and pleaded for more.

This wasn’t my thigh hiked up and him fucking me in a dark closet, it wasn’t me bent over a desk with my pants around my ankles, it wasn’t fast and furious and filthy like so many of our times together had been.

This was passion, pure and raw and soul deep.

This was Holden Moore seeing me for absolutely everything that I was — every chaotic, fucked-up, maimed piece of me.

And somehow finding it beautiful enough that he wanted to claim it.

So, I let him. I opened in every way that I could, invited him inside every dark crack of my being and asked him to fill it with his light.

I need you, I told him with every kiss.

I’m here, he said back with every thrust of his hips.

Don’t leave me, I begged with every bite of my nails into his back.

And when we finished, and he sat against the window, pulling me into his lap and kissing me hard and long and relentlessly until I was straddling him and we were connected again, I knew his answer without him uttering a single word.

I never could.

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Holden



Sunlight streamed in through my window too early that morning, the endless night blending into day as if it hadn’t existed at all. In so many ways, it felt like a dream.

In so many others, it felt like an awakening.

I held Julep against me, both of us naked and wrapped up in my sheets and comforter, our body heat keeping one another warm. I had my arm under her and wrapped around her shoulder while the other held her waist. She had one leg threaded between mine, and she scrawled secret messages into my skin with a lazy fingertip.

If we’d slept, it hadn’t been much. Neither of us had wanted to stop touching, to stop kissing and tasting and feeling every bit of connection humanly possible. My body hummed with a vibration I’d never felt — not like the usual sated buzz after a good fucking, but something deeper, something… heavier.

It had been the most sensual, erotic experience of my entire fucking life.

Julep rolled in my arms, turning until her back was pressed against my chest. I curled around her, fitting myself to her seamlessly and resting my chin in the crook of her neck. I kissed the skin there, and a long, sweet sigh left her lips at the touch.

I knew I needed to get up soon. I didn’t have to look at the time to know I probably had less than an hour before I needed to head to the stadium. But I held her tighter, closer, praying for time to hold still for just a few moments longer.

More than anything, I wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone. I wanted to share something with her that I never shared with anyone, something that showed none of us react to death in “the right way.”

There was no right way.

“I wanted to quit.”

I said the words against the back of her neck, and Julep froze for a moment before she wiggled back against me, letting me know she was listening.