Page 34 of Give Me Perfect Love

He shrugs. “It just happened, baby.”

“It just happened, baby,” I mock him and drop his chin. “All this shit we have going on and you leave me to go get into a bar fight?”

“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t plan to fight.”

I roll my eyes. God, he’s gorgeous, in the roughest of ways. He makes my skin hot and my insides hotter. I need to get out of this damn town, get away from all these fucked-up memories so I can get back to normal.

I need him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, tiredness brimming his blues.

“I could ask you the same.”

“You kill me.” His voice is rough, like waking up from a long sleep and still being exhausted. I stare too long at his lips, unable to help myself when it comes to this man.

The thrill of being alone with him sends a rush through my blood. I honestly don’t know if there is an us anymore.

“And you’re beautiful,” I say.

He shakes his head and runs a hand over his hair. I smile, because I’ve made him uneasy.

“You got a new tattoo.”

He looks down at it. “Yeah.” It’s the Mad Hatter’s hat with the sayingWe’re All Mad Here.

It’s sick and I wonder if he’s going to get color put in it, but I don’t feel like talking about tattoos right now.

Stepping closer to uneasy and too good to be true, I reach and run my own fingers over his short hair. His eyes close and he grabs my hips, pulling me closer and resting his forehead against my belly.

His hands move from my hips, dropping down and liftinghisshirt. Lips kiss the skin on my stomach and rough hands run over my backside.

“Damn, I love you,” he whispers.

I stand here, glued together glass, loving a man who’s just as scarred. Our past has made us who we are, and when we think of love, we think of pain.

He’s seen how too much of it can destroy a person, and I’ve felt how too little of it can constantly make you question if you’re good enough.

He’s made me see different.

I’ve made him face his fears.

Maybe together we’ll be okay.

Maybe we’ll tear each other to shreds and be worse for it.

But God, I hope it’s the former.

__________

I sit with my legs in the seat of his car, sucking down an orange soda while Bryce eats the rest of his food.

His black hoodie covers skin I want to feel, and his five o’clock shadow is fierce against his pale complexion.

Summer has gone and so have tans and less clothes.

“I can’t believe you ate there as a boy,” I say as we sit in the parking lot of a fast-food joint. Neither of us wanted to eat at the diner, deciding memory lane was beginning to be too much for us both. Plus, I’d already done that and it was too surreal. “Just think, only a few years later, I started working there.”

“I wish I would have known you then,” he says.

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