Page 6 of Atonement

3

Saturday

9:45 p.m.

The airin the room is electric.

Suffocating.

Racing. Stimulating with arousing thoughts as I stare into her eyes.

My arms cross over my chest as I shift my weight to one side and lean against the door frame. My feet crossed at the ankles, her power gives away momentarily as her eyes graze down my front, pausing halfway to my feet. She licks her lips in wanting. With need, and I can’t help the smirk that fills my face as I take her in, teetering on the edge of her restraint. All too soon, her eyes quickly snap back up and glaze over with hatred.

Interesting.

“Say it,” I hiss out as she puts her hands on her hips and now demands back the power that she just let slip. “Now.”

She won’t. She never does. Not when I need her to most. Not when the demons from our past drag me under and threaten to never let go. They pull her under too when she thinks no one hears as she cries into her pillow at night, but I do. All I want is to hear her say the three words that she’s promised me for seven years I’ll never hear. I forgive you. But even if she was to surprise us both with that admission, I’d never forgive myself, so it’s a lost cause.

“Cut the bullshit, Declan,” she yells, snapping me out of my thoughts and making me forget all about forgiveness, her mercy for my sins is the last thing in the world I’ll ever be worthy of. “I’m too tired to deal with your shit.”

Her hands raise as she puts them on her sides and her fingers tap against her slender waist. I stand by silently, assessing how far I think I can push this. Push her. Before we both break. It’s just a matter of time, and the slight fear I see flash in the back of her icy stare tells me my assumption is right.

We’re both fucked because as much as we want to move forward, we refuse to let go of the past.

I wait her out a little longer, refusing to be the one to speak first. But as her eyes suddenly begin to soften, a sight I haven’t witnessed in years, I find myself losing the damn battle. I’m a fool, hopelessly in love with my only weakness, and that revelation both excites and devastates me at the same damn time.

“Sweetheart,” my heart betrays me, as my voice grovels slightly and I find myself pushing off the wall, miraculously being pulled closer to what I want most.

To what I’ll always need most, above all else.

“Magnolia,” she asserts.

“Semantics,” I wink as I take a step closer.

“Define... semantics,” she sasses, but her eyes lower again as she sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, and she studies me with lust-filled eyes as I come closer.

I bite my tongue to keep my harsh remarks at bay. The ones that want to scream, “what we’re fighting about is filled with no fucking logic.” But as I begin to take a few more steps in her direction, I know I’m wrong. If the reason we had to be fighting was irrelevant, it wouldn’t hurt so much.

“The Declan I know has no loyalty to logic,” she continues. “No sound reasoning. No intellect...”

“Mags,” I warn, as the words that fall from her lips stir something inside me that I haven’t felt in a dangerously long time. She’s wrong. My intuition is what has driven me, steered me, and never proven me wrong. I’m not giving up now until everyone involved pays for what they did. For how they ruined us.

“…he shows no rational way of thinking…”

Her gasp is loud as I take my last step and reach out quickly. Grabbing her wrist, I pull her hard against my chest. Her eyes show no fear as my grip tightens and her breaths slowly begin to match my own. She’s angry, furious about a past we can’t change and a future we won’t accept. Our heart rates quicken as rage simmers between us.

“It’s hard to be rational when I’m always looking at you, Sweetheart.”

“And you think I like working alongside you, Dec?” She taunts. “Save the dramatics for someone who actually cares. Last time I checked, that wasn’t me.”

I cock my head to the side and study her. She still cares, I can feel it. It’s in the way her breath hitches as I take a step closer. In the widening of her eyes, before they drop and study my mouth. It’s written all over her beautiful face. I can tell as she licks her lips and obviously looks like she’s waiting to taste mine.

“You care,” I whisper, as I back her up against the nearest wall. “Otherwise, you’d never have my back on the job.”

“I watch your back because I’m paid to, Ace,” she hisses as she tries to pull her hand free from my grasp. “Our little arrangement would be better off if you’d remember that.”

“Speaking of watching backs,” I rasp as I tighten my grip and refuse to free her. “Next time, watch your hot mouth when we’re on the job. Your little slip of my name may have cost us. Tell me, was that a slip of your own logic, Mags? Your own reasoning. Because let’s both be rational. I know you find it hard to think straight around me. Especially when you’re so wound-up, tense, stressed, needing a release you know only I can give you.”

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