99 Percent Mine(68)

“You don’t have to try anymore. Just be you. Do your best. Fuck up if you want.” I can see the strain that he’s been under. It’s in the set of his jaw and the tightness of his fists. He’s always the calm cornerstone holding everything together, since he was a kid, buying groceries and putting out the garbage. Every staff member left Aldo, except Tom.

He puts out every fire around him and he makes it look easy.

It’s not easy.

He shakes his head. “You have a hole in your roof and you have tears in your eyes. I am permanently falling short.”

“I think we’re going to decide that doesn’t apply anymore,” I say and the wind blows through us, rattling the back door. “No more perfect.”

“When you grow up dirt-poor, and adopted like a rescue dog, you will do anything to fit what you’re needed for. And I’m fucking up. I am, Darcy. I’ve fucked up my numbers.”

I feel a sense of dread when I look at his bleak face. “Fucked up how?”

“I told the crew I’d bring them over to my company on a better rate. And I had an error in my spreadsheet. The most basic error, right in my face. I have to pay them the rate I promised, plus their motel—so it’s coming out of my margin. I’m doing this for free, basically.” He sighs, resigned.

The overprotective part of me overrides everything. The anger and betrayal are now silver and bronze medalists. “I—”

“Don’t say you’re going to fix it. My problem, I am fixing it. If Jamie finds out about this, I’m done. He will never let me live it down.”

“Why do you care what my brother thinks of you?”

His mouth gets a wry twist. “Your twin brother.”

We’re close enough that I look at his mouth. Just quickly, a glance. Another gust of wind blows through my clothes and his hands tighten on me.

“Why do you work so hard for us?”

“Because I don’t want to know what it’s like to be locked out. Ever again.” His eyes are stark with honesty. “I will fit what I’m needed for. Don’t forget, I was the wrong fit once.”

“You’ve always been exactly right. I have measured every single man I’ve ever met against you. No one compares. That’s been scaring me a long time now, because what do you do when you can’t have your dream man?”

He says nothing, but inside he’s on fire. I feel it.

“You are perfect, Tom Valeska. Perfect for me. Do you want me, even though I’m hardly worthy?”

Lightning flashes. “I’ve wanted you my whole life.”

“Then have me. Choose me.”

He takes one last stab at deterring me. “I’ve fucked up. I’m not the person you expect me to be.”

“Don’t care.”

His unforgettable eyes are the last thing I see before he pulls me up onto my tiptoes and puts his mouth on mine. Thunder cracks above us and then, the world goes silent.

In a parallel dimension, we’ve always been right here in this doorway, since that night when I was an idiot eighteen-year-old and replied, I know. In this different timeline, he swallowed the hurt and decided to be patient one last time. He knocked on the house of destiny’s front door, put his mouth on mine, and we’ve been kissing ever since.

We’ve survived in that alternate reality, backlit by thunderstorms and summer days. Holiday fireworks illuminate our faces. Years have passed for us there, in daylight and darkness. My hair grew down to the ground. Autumn leaves gathered at our ankles, and the seasons turned like a kaleidoscope behind us.

We’ve never endured another’s touch, and we’ve never had to be apart. It’s the place my true heart has always existed, beating unfaltering and perfect, and it’s been safe, because it was with him.

Now we’re leaning through the web-thin layer into this dimension and sinking into these older bodies. Every other kiss I’ve had in my life has been wrong. I’ve always known it.

It’s why with other men, I never stay, I never sleep, and I never love.

Breaking from my mouth, he says in disbelief, “Is this how you kiss?”

Before I can think of how to answer, he puts a knee between my thighs and hitches me up a little higher. He returns to my lips with a groan caught in his throat. I have now found something I like better than sugar, and I’m an instant addict. Worse, a junkie. I’ve subsisted on his one-second glances my whole life, and now I’ve got his mouth on mine? I know what I’d do to keep him. He should feel afraid.

The first touch of his tongue loosens my knees and I’m grateful that he’s holding me up. I shudder a breath out. He inhales it, changes our angle, exhales it back to me. Air is better from his lungs. Life is better with his kiss.

The word mine is now something I need to make him understand.

The second touch of his tongue is an inward slide, and it’s not calculated to seduce me. I’m being licked for my flavor. I feel the point of his tooth, the scratch of his chin on mine. There’s a pause of deliberation for a moment, and then I feel his pleasure shivering out of his body, absorbed into my skin. I’ve been tasted, and I am exactly right.

I think the good boy pipes up in the fogged logic section of his brain—You’re being too wet for a first kiss, too hungry, too animal, check she’s okay—and he tries to end the kiss with a gentle squeeze on my waist.