Page 27 of Taurus

“What are you doing, Park?”

“I don’t know…” she admits, just as she twists my shirt tighter between her fingers and her knuckles brush along my abdomen, right under my navel.

That one little touch, the barely-there, featherlight movement, makes a guttural groan leave my lips and I lean forward, pressing my hands on the wall on either side of her head.

No matter how much time passes, no matter how many times we fight or disagree, we’ve never been able to resist this—each other.

We are face-to-face, nose to nose, but the only connection is a fist in the white cotton on my body. I can hear the rapid breaths leaving her chest.

“You’re trembling,” I whisper to her.

“I can’t help it,” she admits. “You overwhelm me.”

I know that I should be a gentleman at this moment. She’s drunk, sad, and vulnerable, likely searching for the closest source of physical comfort, but there’s so much history between us. Even one step farther could create a tornado of emotions and chaos that I’m not sure either of us would be able to control.

“Christ, Parker…” I lean in and place my forehead on hers. “You kill me. You’ve always killed me. Just being near you… smelling you… touching you… It’s like we’ve gone back in time.”

“Then why are you fighting it?” She pulls me closer to her.

“Because it’s messy… and you’re drunk.”

“Who cares?”

“I do. I care.”

Even as the words leave my mouth, my lips are moving closer to hers like they are in slow motion. I can smell the liquor on her breath and I can feel the heat of her skin. A moth to the flame. Icarus to the sun. I’m drawn in.

But before I can do what I know we’d both regret in due time, a loud crash sounds from the front porch, startling us both. I push away from her and take four steps back, like I’m running from a ghost.

And I guess, in a way, I am. The ghost of us, of what we used to be, of what could consume me, if I’d let it.

“Fuck.” I run my hand through my hair, tugging it just a bit in frustration. “I need to see what that was.”

She’s plastered to the wall like Velcro, but those big, beautiful eyes are filled with tears and I don’t say anything else. “Wait, Austin… I... I’m sorry, I…”

I don’t go to her. I don’t say a word.

I just walk out of the room to find Marjorie had knocked over a flower pot, shattering it on the wooden deck.

A goddamn chicken stopped me from crossing a line that can’t be uncrossed, even though I desperately want to shatter the line in my hands and reclaim Parker as mine.

She always has been and always will be.

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