Until the End (Sea Breeze #9)(34)

Tonight Krit was going to spend the night with Green, and his band was going to practice. They weren’t getting actual gigs yet, but they were practicing enough for someone to think they were. Surprisingly, they were good, too. Krit could sing. It had been a shock the first time I’d heard them practice.

So I had Trisha all to myself. All night. I was saving every penny I had to get us an apartment the moment I turned eighteen. But I wanted to do something special for Trisha tonight. I had let her take it slow. I hadn’t said shit that I wanted to because I was afraid she’d freak out.

Last week I had worked nights for the first time, stocking at the local grocery store. With that money I was getting us a hotel room in the next town over. I wanted to hold Trisha all night in a bed. Because I was saving my money, this was all I could afford. I wouldn’t be able to take her out to eat too. So I’d made us sandwiches and bought some of the chocolate chip cookies she loved. I also bought her favorite soda and got a bag of chips and dip.

I had checked in earlier and set the cooler in the room with the sandwiches and dip. Dewayne had snagged me some candles from his house that his mother wouldn’t miss. After setting them around the room, I had left a lighter by the bed so I could light them later.

The reason I hadn’t told Trisha what we were doing was because I wanted to surprise her with a night somewhere she didn’t have to worry about Krit or Fandora coming home. I wanted to hold her while she slept and know she was safe in my arms. What I hadn’t thought about was how Trisha would read into this. Until I parked the truck and glanced over at her.

The wide-eyed look on her as she stared up at the hotel in front of us told me I had made a serious mistake. She didn’t get why I had done this. She was thinking something completely different. We hadn’t done anything more than kiss. I’d wanted to do more, but I was afraid to with her. I didn’t want to lose her or scare her. I’d been a f**king saint with her.

Then I go and do something like this.

Dammit.

“Trisha, babe, this isn’t what you think. I didn’t bring you here . . . for that. I just wanted us to have a night we could sleep with no fear or worry. I wanted to hold you. Nothing more. I swear, baby.”

She didn’t look at me. She continued to stare at the building in front of us. Shit!

“I swear to God I would never have brought you here expecting anything. I wasn’t thinking about that. I just wanted us to have a place that was ours. Where we didn’t have to worry about anyone else coming along or coming home. Just us.”

She nodded slightly, but she didn’t look at me yet. So I waited. I gave her a moment to process what I was saying to her. I was about to tell her I’d sleep on the floor, although I really wanted to hold her all night, when she finally turned her head and met my gaze.

“Okay,” she whispered.

She didn’t look like she meant it.

I reached over and pulled her up against me. “Listen to me,” I pleaded, taking her face in my hands and tilting it so she had to look at me. “If all we ever do is kiss, then I’ll be the luckiest f**king man on the planet. Because I have you. I . . . I love you, Trisha Corbin. I love you like crazy. You’ve got me so obsessed with you I can’t see anything or anyone beyond you. Every plan I make is because of you. Every morning when I wake up all I think about is seeing you. Every night when I go to sleep all I think about is how much I want to be holding you in my arms as you fall asleep. You are it. You’re my gift. You. Just you. This hotel room was to give us a place that was just ours. I have something to eat up there and I even rented us a couple movies. This isn’t about sex, baby. I swear to you.”

She blinked slowly, and her eyes misted over. I wasn’t sure what I had said to make her cry. I started to replay my ramblings in my head, and then her full lips moved. “You love me?”

I had been scared to say it before tonight. It had come out in my panic to reassure her. But it was true. I’d never love anyone else the way I loved Trisha.

“I think you may be the only person who doesn’t know that already,” I said, smiling at her surprise. She was so damn adorable sometimes.

A slow smile played on her lips before she leaned toward me. “I love you, too,” she said softly, before kissing me.

I could’ve died right then and known I had lived.

Trisha

Rock opened the door to the hotel room he had gotten us for the night. My heart was still so full from hearing him tell me he loved me that I couldn’t stop smiling. I had been in love with Rock for months now. I wouldn’t tell him because I wasn’t sure he had wanted to hear that.

He had said it to me. And he had also said a lot of other beautiful things that had made me love him even more, and I hadn’t thought that was possible.

“Cooler has our food in it. You hungry now?” he asked as I stepped inside the room. There was one big bed in the middle of the room and a television on the wall across from it. I could see the sink and mirror straight ahead, and then a door to the bathroom. It was the nicest place I’d ever stayed. Until last month when I went to the party at Marcus Hardy’s house, it would have been the nicest place I had ever been. But Marcus Hardy’s house had blown my mind. It was like nothing I had ever imagined.

This, however, was ours. For the night.

“I got you a grape soda. Several, actually,” Rock said, slipping his hand around my waist and kissing my temple.