Page 131 of I'm Gonna Get You Back
That she loved me.
That shelovesme.
She curls her fingers around the lapels of my jacket, and my voice is unsteady, reacting to her touch.
“This is— I’m overwhelmed—”
Clara sank my words permanently into her skin. The poem I wrote in the dark of night in my bed, unable to sleep, thinking of her. Craving her.
The first poem I ever posted to an account I’ve told no one about. It isn’t technically a haiku, but I couldn’t alter it any further. It was exactly what I wanted to say. Exactly how I felt about us.
The love I’ve felt for her is a burning, blazing kind that has never—not once—dimmed.
She takes a step back. “I didn’t do this expecting anything. If this whole weekend has been about closure—I understand. I really wouldn’t blame you if you hate me.”
I huff out a laugh. “Hateyou?”
“Last year…” She trails off. “I messed up. I’d wanted only one thing my entire life, and I didn’t know how to handle wanting you just as much.”
Jesus, she’s trying to kill me.
But this is nothing like last year. She’s not hiding from me or pretending with me. Because we’re talking more openly, it no longer feels like she’s about to slip through my fingers any moment or like I’m pushing to make something work.
We sink to the couch that’s pressed up against a wall. I brush her hair off her shoulders, and when I cradle her face in my hand, she leans into my touch. I just want to look at her all the time.
“I tried to let you go,” I admit. I kiss her again, softly, then pull back and finally—finally—tell her what my feelings have been building to since she dared me to jump into that lake full of eels. “But I love you too much.”
I feel her smile again across my lips and we get lost in each other. She climbs onto me, her dress riding up to her hips. She gasps when I open the back of it just enough to look again.
There it is. I drag my lips across the inky words, press kisses into each of them, causing her to bare her throat and cling to me by the time I’m done.
Her name falls from my lips more than once. Her sighs and moansdrugging. I’m so delirious, so gone for her, nothing exists but this. No one exists but us.
She may not be engraved on my skin, but she’s under it in a way that’s just as permanent.
What was I thinking pushing her away? I know now that I never could.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTCLARA
REID KISSES ME LIKEhe has no intention of stopping.
All my senses flood with him. The slight scratch of stubble on his chin and the strong weight of his legs around mine and the soft, grumbly sound he makes against my lips when I wrench him closer. Urge him on.
I surrender completely. Somehow, we found our way back to each other. Somehow, we both showed the worst of ourselves and still believed in this enough to try again. I can’t bring myself to rush.
I thread my fingers through his hair and tug. He rumbles a hungry sound across my sternum in response and in one swift motion he flips me, so we’re lying on the couch, him hovering over me. I draw my fingertips across his face—his cheekbones and jaw and lips. The bruises and cuts. Our eyes meet, and we pause, absorbing each other.
“I never stopped loving you, Clara.” His voice is rough, barely above a whisper, and the words feel as igniting as a caress.
My heart is a hurricane, heat burning my cheeks as I stare up at him, amazed that we’re here—that he still loves me, too. That he’s as much mine as I’m his. It took us awhile, but it’s clear to me why now.
A love this big needed time to grow and settle into.
He captures my shaking hands, his unwavering gaze darkening as he draws his lips across my fingertips with a kind of reverence. The slow savoring between us picks up to a clutching, furious need. His hands are everywhere. Mine are, too. We never stop kissing—even as we shed our clothes, even as we laugh and fumble through the awkward bits.
He’s adoring and consumed. I follow his every move, melting against him, biting my lip hard to keep quiet. Reveling in the feeling of his strong hands squeezing my thighs, the short breaks he takes from my lips to whisper things across my throat and the shell of my ear.
“I love you,” I gasp over and over. An apology. A devotion. I’ll never be able to say it enough.
