Page 64 of This

“Wine,” I correct him on the dress color. “Finished.”

He straightens to see the mirror, then drops back to my level. “I look exactly the same.”

I shrug, setting the makeup next to me by my bouquet. Keaton insisted I not let it out of my sight until after pictures. “I can’t have you outshining Keats on her big day.”

He smiles, bringing his lips to mine in my favorite type of kiss, his mouth lazy against mine. I hitch my legs around him, pulling him with me until my back hits the cool mirror. Tomorrow, I’ll leave, putting five hundred miles between us. The rest of our day and night and most of the morning is spoken for, so I want whatever I can get of him now. Dane shows no objections, rubbing his erection against me through his suit pants. He moans, kissing across my jaw.

“Stay longer,” he says, his voice husky. “A day, a week.”

I tilt my chin up when his lips move to the hollow of my neck. “I can’t.”

“Then ask me to go with you.”

“Youcan’t,” I remind him. “You have work.”

The way he grinds against me is driving me crazy.

I grasp the back of his hair while he whispers in my ear, “Fuck work. I’ll throw my shit in the truck, and we’ll go somewhere new. Wherever you want. I already told the old man I’m leaving.”

He stops pressing into me as he reaches for the fly on his suit pants. It gives my love-drunk brain time to process what he said, and my eyes flutter open.

“Why would you do that?”

I got lipstick on his collar, a print of rose pink on a harsh backdrop of white. I want to wipe it away, but my arms are heavy, all of me really.

“Because I’m tired of not getting enough.” His lips leave my skin, and he looks up, cupping my face in his hands. “I don’t want the company if it means saying goodbye anymore. I want you and me. Us. This.” There’s that sense of more in the velvety pause he takes to kiss me with too-soft lips, more in his eyes behind long lashes, and in the touch of his thumb brushing my cheek. “I want it all the time,” he says. “Every day.”

I feel a warmth in my chest from him, but then a tightness takes over. Liam’s words from last night replay in my head an impossible number of times, given the single breath I’ve taken.Everything is moving too fast, and I shake my head, trying to understand what is happening right now. Dane has deep roots holding him here—family, a promise to his mom, their memories on a mantel.

“What about your house?” I ask.

“I’ll sell it,” he says, his lips turning up. “It doesn’t make sense to keep it, so once we—”

“No.” My voice sounds dry when I cut him off, the air dragging in and out of my body, but I can’t let him leave for me.

Dane’s brows draw in, his mouth dropping at the corners. “No what?”

“I don’t want you to.”

And then it all slows to a crawl. He studies me, like maybe I haven’t finished, but the seconds draw out without another word passing between us. The hint of confusion in his eyes gives way to something else. Hurt, irritation, and then the look.

“You don’t want me to sell the house, or”—he steps back, so no part of him touches me anymore—“you don’t want me to move to be with you?”

His breath stays smooth and even while he waits for an answer, mine struggling to find a rhythm. Dane has kept his word by not asking me to stay, but his offer to go feels worse. Unexpected. A reckless choice for the heart.

“He’ll follow you.”

“He’ll give up everything for you.”

Liam warned me. His timeline was just off.Dane’s willing to tear apart the life he has, only to build one with me that won’t last. And it won’t. I’m too broken to make those types of promises, and when he realizes what a mistake he’s made, he’ll have nothing to go back to. Then he’ll be broken, too, missing pieces of his own. What kind of a person would let that happen to him?

I’ve kept my eyes on his as long as I can, and I have to look away. The florist missed a thorn on one of the dark purple roses in my bouquet, a single spike, poking through the black lace wrapped around the stems. I press the pad of my finger onto the point and watch the indent deepen, the pain gradually becoming too much.

“Bennett.” Dane pulls my hand away before it punctures the skin, and I look up, burying the tears. “Tell me which one you don’t want.”

We’re back to don’t-wants, but this one is the most difficult to say.

“Both,” I tell him. “I don’t want any of it.”

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