Page 86 of Royally Bad

“I know you can’t hear me, but I’m not mad at you anymore.”

I’d warned her before that the engine’s roar had a way of cutting up conversation and making it useless. But my ears were sharp, and she was so very close.

I smiled to myself, enjoying what she thought was a private confession.

“Actually, I think ... that I might even love you.”

The front tire of my bike kicked up grass; I nearly spun us off the road. Every firefly for miles fled in our wake, the world rocking with the weight of her admission.

Yanking my helmet off, I twisted to face her. She’d pulled hers aside as well, fresh fear from our near spill creating apples in her cheeks. Or maybe it was fear from what she’d let slip from her lips.

“Kain.” My name was the single breath she’d had in her lungs. “I—I didn’t think you could hear me!”

I couldn’t break our stare, I was locked on and trying so hard to understand what she’d said—what I would say in return.

Suddenly, she sat up straighter. The doubt marring her lovely face changed into something that dared me to tell her she was wrong for admitting her inner secret. Again and again, this woman and I, we faced off to see who would win.

But looking deep into the starbursts of her eyes ...

I realized I’d lost long ago.

Cupping her cheeks with a fury, I brought her to me. She was sweet and salty and more than my taste buds could make sense of. Love didn’t change who she was, it only made her more grounded. I was touching a woman who couldn’t be knocked down.

Sammy’s love for me was solid as steel.

Together we suffocated; oxygen was for the weak. But love doesn’t make you immortal, funny as that is.

She ripped away, gasping, with tears on the edges of her eyes. Was it from needing to breathe or from her emotions?

“Well?” she asked, her palms finding my jaw. She forced me to look at her. “Talk to me, because I’m about to feel really stupid if you don’t just say something.”

Say something? What the hell could I say?

The truth. Tell her.

But I didn’t know what the truth was—No. It’s not that.I did know, I’d known for some time. If I tried to tell her, what would happen?

And then my lips parted, and everything ran out of me before I could stop it. My voice was a syrup so thick that I couldn’t clean it up, a stain that would last an eternity.

“I love you, too.” I didn’t whisper it. It wasn’t a shout. Yet my admission rang between us, a song that would become so addicting we’d never forget the lyrics. “Fuck. Ilove you.” I said it again. It felt fucking amazing to feel it on my tongue.

I didn’t want to stop, but her two fingers on my lips shut me up. “Okay,” she said softly, a smile breaking over her glossy lips. “I heard you the first time.”

“I don’t give a damn if you heard me once.” Sinking my lips onto hers, I pulled her to me. My mouth demanded more of her—more than anyone should be able to give. Sammy rose to the challenge, her eyes shutting behind her rows of thick lashes. “I won’t ever stop saying it. I’m going to repeat it a million times, until my tongue dries out and my heart stops beating, and even then ... I might never quit.”

The wetness in her eyes finally tipped over the edges. Sammy had always hidden away when she cried. This time, she watched me dead-on and didn’t try to stop it.

I kissed the corner of her cheekbone, wiping away the wetness there. Her nose brushed my ear, her tone the sensation of silk over bare skin. “I also love you for not driving us into a ditch and killing us in an empty field.”

Hunching over with a laugh, I held her tighter. We lingered for a long while. The fireflies returned, the two of us trying to count them as we cuddled on my motorcycle.

Eventually, she looked at her phone. “We should go, I don’t want Mom to fall asleep. Explaining to her that we need to pack up and leave is going to be messy as is.”

The reminder that I’d offered to sweep them both away and off into the sunset should have been sobering. I was too busy relishing the blockade being gone from my heart. I’d never told a woman I loved her. I’d neverfeltlike I’d loved someone before. Sammy had opened me up without my say, she’d gotten inside of me before I’d realized.

But maybe I couldn’t have stopped her even if I’d seen this coming.

Maybe I wouldn’t have tried to.

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