Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1)(54)

It made him seem like falling leaves and spicy hot chocolate and a million things she probably shouldn’t think about right now, considering he was still mad. No texts for three days meant mad. He even looked mad, just standing there on his own without the armor of his buddies or a bunch of girls. Everyone seemed to know he needed a wide berth tonight, so it didn’t seem like that much of a reach.

Until he turned his head her way and held up one oddly hesitant, half-faltering hand—as though he had no idea if he should say hello. He could see Lydia was on her way back across the field with two beers in hand after all. Maybe a wave would give the game away. Expose them, in a way he knew she didn’t want.

So instead he folded that hand back down, waiting.

Good god, he had been waiting for her to say it was okay.

She could see he had, yet for a second that idea was so staggering to her it just cycled around and around in her mind without ever really making contact with anything. Lydia handed her a beer and she just accepted it mechanically, nodding at whatever her friend was saying but unable to hear it. She couldn’t even explain it. It felt like gravity had suddenly flipped, and now everyone was suddenly walking on the sky.

Tate was not the one ashamed of their relationship.

She, Letty Carmichael, thunder-thighed creature from the back of beyond, bane of their high school, scourge of anyone with eyesight, was the one.

She was the one ashamed of him.

And that was…god she didn’t know what that was. Her mouth wanted to both tense into a pained line and grin more wildly than she had ever done in her life. Feelings flooded her body, but she didn’t have a name for any of them. Most of them seemed too awful to name. They smelled like triumph, like victory, but they weren’t the kinds that she wanted anything to do with.

Maybe before he had kissed her by her door.

Or further back, when he had held her face.

When he had made amends.

And carried her.

But not now, never now.

Now she just wanted to go over to him. To tell him all the things she’d always longed for him to say to her: I didn’t mean it. I take it back. I’m sorry, I was a fool, I don’t know what I was thinking. All the things he had said to her, and was still saying right at this moment. She could practically see it written across his features. It was there when his brows knitted together as he waited for her to decide, and there again in the relief when she told Lydia she had to go see him and then started to walk his way.

Had anything been as beautiful as that relief?

That happiness, when she took hold of his hand?

She knew he wouldn’t pull away, she knew it, she knew she had nothing to fear—and it was glorious. All of the wonder of the world was in that one moment, when she threaded her fingers through his. It was like rewriting the past, and having it stick. Like time traveling, to put right what once went wrong.

And she knew he felt it, too.

If he hadn’t, he probably wouldn’t have brought her hand to his lips, to kiss. Right there in front of all the people milling around—his bros over by the keg and all the girls who adored him right down to their bones. In front of Lydia, who mouthed I knew it in a way that was both amazing and crazy, plastic cup raised in a silent salute that just about made it okay.

Things were going to be okay.

She could hear it in his voice when he asked, “Are you sure this is cool with you?”

“I’m sure. Are you sure?”

“You know I am.”

And she did. She did know.

How could anyone doubt, when he said it so softly, so gravely? He even glanced away after he’d told her, as if the emotion of doing it was just a little too much.

Though that might have been Lydia drawing his attention.

She pointed to her eyes and then pointed at him before turning to speak to Brad.

Who was in fact wearing a shirt that showed off his delightful chest.

“Your buddy looks kind of disapproving.”

“Well, in her defense, you did Stockholm me.”

“I want to deny it, but right now it kind of feels like I did.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret: I went willingly to my doom.”

“It will never be your doom. I promise you. I promise.”

He squeezed her hand tight. As if he could imprint that promise on her skin.

But really it was her, now, who needed to reassure him.

“Not even if I’m an * who keeps you like a dirty secret?”

“You weren’t an *. You protected yourself. I like that.”

“It doesn’t seem like you like it.”

“Not going to lie—it stings, too. But it’s a sweet kind of sting. Like the kind of thing you might get after taking a bullet in the shoulder for someone you love.”

She had something planned to say, after hearing that first sting.

But it started to melt at the idea of it being sweet. And then he got to the other part, the part about the bullet and the shoulder and the love, and the words dissolved altogether. She froze right where she was, looking up at him through the faintly smoky air. Half leaning on his arm, hand in his. Everything as it was, only he had just said those words.

And now he was slowly becoming aware of that fact.

She watched his eyes widen slightly, and then he jerked his gaze to her.

“Oh. Oh no, wait…no, I meant…you know what I meant.”