Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(5)

“Ransom…” she tried again, eyes blinking quick when I grazed my hand up her bicep. “I didn’t expect Ethan to…”

“It’s cool.” One smooth lie I knew she didn’t believe and my girl watched me close, those beautiful green eyes flickering over my features.

“Ransom…”

Aly didn’t flinch, didn’t move at all when I held both her arms in my large hands. “You love him?”

“What?”

“Easy question, sweetheart.” I saw the anger rising inside her. That was clear in the straightening of her spine and the rigid way she held her shoulders. Still, I ignored the warning. I’d loved this woman for most of my adult life. God knows I could read her. The way she held herself was a warning, but not one that would make me step away from her. “I hope to God you’d never agree to marry someone you don’t love. That’s not your style.”

“If you believe that then why bother asking?” A small blanket of chills skirted across her skin but I didn’t try to warm her, didn’t do more than hide my smirk when she curled her arms over her chest.

“Just making sure my girl is happy.” My body was drawn to hers, always. She stepped away, I came forward, wanting to be near her. No matter that it was no longer my place.

“Ransom.” Aly stepped back further, removed me from her space with a backtrack. I let it slide, too focused on her features, ones that I hadn’t seen up close for months. Ones that I thought I wouldn’t miss so much. “I haven’t been your girl for a long time.”

“You and me are end game.”

I’d meant that four years ago as Aly dressed, my smell still on her, her skin still flushed from our love making in her hasty retreat from our lives. I meant it still. Back then, when I first said it, she’d offered me a nod that I’d taken for confirmation. Now, I wasn’t so sure she was still in agreement.

I wouldn’t push her, but there was no way I’d let her brush me off like I didn’t matter at all. “You’ll always be my girl.” The sharp points of her chin, the soft angles of her cheekbones fit perfectly between my fingers as I held her face and tried to suppress a chuckle at how she leaned toward my hands.

It was only a moment—familiar, sure, content, and then Aly twisted from me, grabbing my wrists so I would stop touching her.

“Why…are you here?”

Jaw working, I considered her a moment longer than was comfortable, incapable of looking away from the worry, the temptation I knew cornered in her eyes. Still, I wasn’t an *, especially when it came to Aly. “You’ve met Makana, right?” My grin relaxed her, but she quickly recovered with an eye roll. “Little Kona-looking kid? Ten? Thinks she’s twenty? Bossier than you?”

She ignored my joke. “Why are you in this dressing room?”

“I told you. I wanted to make sure my girl was happy.” This time she didn’t bother knocking my hand away when I grabbed her fingers. “I wanted to make sure she wasn’t doing something she didn’t want to do just to save face.”

“I’m not saving face.”

Eyebrows up, the tension in my face tightened. “So you do love him.”

“That isn’t your business anymore.”

“It’s not?”

There was that spark again. The same combustible hint of heat and something…more thickening the air. The look she gave me spoke of things she’d never admit. There was irritation, sure, but behind that slow, long look, the stiff cast of her mouth, came the penetrating sensation of her desire. I’d seen that look a thousand, maybe a million times.

Six years I’d loved her. Six years she gave back every touch, every kiss. Six years with the taste of her always on my tongue and the reminder of how I could break her over and over again, how she’d beg me to do it, always there, right between us. That recollection of it coming in quick glances across crowded rooms when we wanted to be away from the bustle of our lives and all to ourselves. With the silent nights on planes, legs touching, knuckles grazing as we flew from one home to another. Behind it all was that hunger, the long ache that could only be quenched with our bodies. Only our bodies.

It was still there, heating our limbs. It was there, bubbling hard as I moved my hand up her arm, watching those beautiful eyes brighten with the sensation of my breath against her skin, across her lips as I stood closer.

But Aly would not be handled, not even by me. It wasn’t her way and no matter what her body wanted, no matter if it was me and not someone else that she craved, logic won out. She’d make sure I knew that being near me wouldn’t undo her.

“Did it hurt?” She nodded toward the door and with one glance smothered the spark itching to ignite. “Seeing that?”

She meant the proposal. She meant me seeing it all. I could read her like no one else, but she could do the same to me. My frustration must have shown on my face, something about the memory of Ethan on his knee and Aly’s smile, my lip curled into a faint snarl. There would be no hiding what I felt from her. Why bother trying at all?

“Like a knife right in my gut, nani.”

“Ransom…”

The pretense left just then. The battle over whose will was the strongest meant nothing. I wasn’t weak, not ever, except when it came to her. She knew that. I could no more hide that weakness from her than I could have hidden the million stares of desire that I’d sent her way over the years.