Fighting Solitude (On The Ropes #3)(61)

“Don’t you dare!” I seethed. “You break your hand again, Davenport wins. Calm the f*ck down.”

His jaw ticked as he held my glare. His chest was puffed, filled with breath, but he wasn’t breathing. Thankfully, that was a good sign. It meant he was reigning himself in. With the exhale, his temper would fade—or so I thought.

“We are not wrong!” he roared.

I startled at the sudden outburst, but his body closed in on me, flattening me against the side of the truck. He bent down and took my mouth in a punishing kiss. As always, my arms instantly folded around him. His hand dropped to my thigh and lifted it to his hip, leaving me balanced on one heel.

“Tell me this feels wrong,” he ordered, fisting a hand into the back of my hair then slamming his mouth back over mine.

My lips ached under the force of his, but my tongue greedily swirled in his mouth.

“Tell me,” he gritted out.

I turned my head to answer, but he sucked hard on my neck before biting it. The pain seared through me only to transform into ecstasy as he rolled his cock against my core. A strangled cry tore from my throat.

“Tell me this doesn’t feel like everything you’ve ever wanted. Because that’s exactly how it f*cking feels to me.”

“Quarry,” I breathed—my only objection before I thrust my hips forward to find friction.

His mouth continued to assault me, breaking from my skin only long enough to growl, “Tell me you don’t want me.” Bite. “Don’t love me.” He soothed the spot with a lave of his tongue. “Tell me this doesn’t feel like the rest of your life and I’ll f*cking let it go right now.” Rake of his teeth. “Tell me, Liv.” His hands moved to my breasts, kneading before plucking my peaked nipples over the fabric of my dress.

I was about to mount him in the middle of a parking lot, and I cared not one single bit.

I couldn’t tell him any of those things.

There was no doubt that I wanted him.

Even when I’d tried not to, I’d always loved him.

It felt exactly like the rest of my life with him.

I couldn’t even stop my mind from firing off the random images of diamond rings, white dresses, hazel-eyed babies, my name on his tongue in climax, whispered I-love-yous before falling asleep in his arms. Forever.

And, for that reason alone, I said, “We’re not wrong.”

His mouth moved to my ear, his breath sending chills down my spine as he spoke. “I refuse to let you fight me on this. I refuse to deny the way I feel about you. And I absolutely refuse to let you deny what you feel for me. You want this. I get that you’re scared, but trust me. I will make this work for us.”

“Trust me.”

Right.

Even with that thought ricocheting through my mind, my only response was a nod.

“We deserve to be happy, Rocky. And I’m sorry if you have issues with this, but I dare you to tell me that Mia would have wanted us to be miserable and apart rather than happy and together.”

“I don’t know what she would have wanted,” I mumbled.

He froze. “Then you’re lying to yourself. There is nothing in this world, including dying alone, that she wouldn’t have done to see us happy.”

That’s when I froze.

“She did that, Liv. And I was mad at her for a lot of years because of it. But the truth is she didn’t just want to live the rest her days happy. She wanted us to live the rest of ours happy too.”

I swallowed around the emotion lodged in my throat. He was right. Deep down, I knew he was.

Still, it felt impossible to accept.

Dropping my forehead to his chest, I asked, “How are you the rational one here?”

“Because it’s you.”

I sighed. I knew that half of the reason I’d ended up being Quarry’s assistant was because I was the only one who could handle him. Over the last few years, I’d been able to talk him down, no matter how out of hand he got. Up until that moment, I’d always assumed I was just good at crisis management, but I was suddenly realizing that it had nothing to do with me at all—and everything to do with us.

“Did you love me first?” I asked for no other reason than I was curious as hell.

He chuckled. “I was thirteen when you took off. Love back then consisted of who had bigger boobs and was willing to let me touch them.” He grazed his hand up the side of my breast.

I slapped his chest, causing him to laugh, but he soon turned serious again.

“But, if you’re asking if, even as a kid, I felt an undeniable connection with you that I would never be able to explain, but I still recognized with every cell in my body, every breath in my lungs, and every beat of my heart that I needed to hold on to it no matter the consequences? Then my answer would have to be…” He paused and nuzzled his cheek against mine before whispering, “Every. Single. Day.”





“EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.”

Whether he’d loved me or not, I didn’t know. But Quarry Page had returned the only three words that could trump any declaration of love he ever had to offer. The war raging within me had come to a stalemate, leaving me to make a decision based solely on the hazel eyes I’d never been able to get over. I was officially going to give in to my innermost desires and, in turn, give Quarry his too. I didn’t know how anything was going to work between us. But, with three simple words, I vanquished the guilt and filled my heart with hopes of the future I’d wanted since I was a little girl.