Something Real (Whiskey Men, #2)(37)

She looks at me curiously. She looks almost hopeful. I grab on to her hips, helping her grind against me. This may not be the time, but I can’t help it. “This is something real, Lily.”

She gives me a playful smirk as she bounces on my lap. “I’ll give it to you. It’s definitely something.”

Frustration consumes me, and I act before thinking. I flip her onto her back and hover over her, my body pressed to hers. I hold my hand to the side of her face, forcing her to look up at me. “No, Lily. You can deny it all you want. You can try to convince yourself this is a fling and something that needs to be hidden, but the truth is… this thing between me and you… this is something real.”

She blinks, and emotion clouds her face. “Ford?”

I position myself inside her and thrust slowly in and out. Our eyes are fixed on each other, and my heart is pounding in my chest. “This is something REAL.”

“But—” she starts, and I shake my head, grunting. “No, don’t make excuses… don’t act like you don’t want this. I don’t want to take anything from you. I don’t want you to push your dreams aside. I just want you to admit that this between us… it’s real, Lily.”

I lift her hips up and hit her at a different angle. Her face scrunches up, but her eyes never leave mine.

I put my hand at her pussy, circling her clit with my thumb. “Say it, Lily. I need to hear you say it.”

She’s so close. Her whole body is vibrating underneath me as her hips jerk. “It’s real, Ford. I know it is. It’s REAL!” she shouts as she topples into ecstasy. I come with her. I have no choice when she’s clamped onto me like a vise.

Our breathing is hectic, and I lean over her, watching her closely. Her expression is unguarded, and I want to tell her how I feel. I want her to know that I love her and I won’t be letting her go, but already, just with her confession, I can see she’s freaked out a bit. I press my lips to hers and pull back before lying down beside her.

We’re both quiet as we get cleaned up and then we lie back down in her bed. She has her T-shirt back on, and I’m in my underwear while we eat cake.

“What are your dreams, Lily? What do you want to do?”

She seems taken aback but recovers quickly. “I loved photography. That’s what I wanted to do.”

She looks at some portraits on the wall, and I notice them for the first time. I get out of bed and make my way across the room. “Did you take these?”

She nods, and I stare at the images. They are so beautiful. She’s captured sunsets, mountains, lakes, and flowing rivers, and each one looks almost magical. I point at the sunset. “How did I not know this about you?”

She shrugs. “It’s a hobby. All of those are taken here in Whiskey Run. I had to have a real job, and even though I wanted to travel and study the art of photography, I couldn’t.”

I stand with my back to her, looking at each of the images. They are not just point and shoot pictures. They each have emotion in them. “You missed your calling, Lily. Don’t get me wrong, you’re a great assistant. The best. But these… they should be hung in galleries, not in your room for no one to see.”

The mood in the room is palpable, and I turn to look at her. “Does Carrie know that you wanted to be a photographer? Does she know how good you are?”

She rolls her eyes. “She’s my sister. I could draw a stick figure and she’d think it was good. But yeah, she knows I wanted to be a photographer. Trust me, she’s bothered by it. She thinks I gave it all up for her, and I’ve tried to explain to her that it’s not her fault. I wouldn’t have wanted to travel and see the world. I wanted to be here for her.”

I recall what she told me in Vegas about her nightmares and the way she would cling to Lily. “You had to.”

She plays it off like it’s not a big deal. “I wanted to. And I think that’s why she’s on me now. She wants me to go for all the things she thought I gave up on.”

I walk over to her and sit next to her. “What about you? She worked through it in therapy, and she had you to help her. Who helped you?”

She lies back, putting her arms under her head as she stares at the ceiling. “I went to therapy a few times. I’m scared of falling in love. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love, and I have a hard time putting myself in a position to go through that again. And there’s parts of me that think I’ll never be good enough.”

I put one hand on each side of her head and lean over her. “You’re more than enough, Lily.”

She brings her hands from under her head and puts them on my chest. She plays with the patch of hair there, running her fingers through it. “You think I’m enough?”

Fuck, how could she not know? “Yeah, baby, enough doesn’t even cut it. You’re everything.”

At this moment, I know I can give her everything she wants. I can encourage her to reach for her dreams. I can help her with all of it. I can easily get a professional camera, I can set her up with the biggest photographer in New York, I can get her space in a gallery show. I can do all of it with just a few phone calls. But if I do all that and help her reach her dreams, will I end up losing her in the process?

I kiss her then, sealing my mouth over hers. It’s either that or I tell her that I love her and I can’t lose her—neither of which I think she wants to hear.