Page 118 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

Right here next to me.

“Draven,” Max said. “I don’t want to sleep alone, and I know you don’t, either. I want to be with you.”

I could feel the resistance inside me being chipped away, bit by bit.

“Fuck,” I said softly.

“Just say it. Tell me what you actually feel,” he demanded, his voice getting more insistent. “Because I can’t sleep over there in your big, beautiful fuckingmuseumof a room. I can’t sleep there alone. I feel like I’m an alien in this place, and you’re always just one step away from me. Close, but never too close. Rushing in to protect me or whisk me away, but leaving me cold in another room once I’m here. Justtalk to me, Draven, tell me the truth?—”

“You’re right,” I exploded. “You’re fucking right, okay?”

“Then justsharethat with me.”

“I don’t want to sleep alone,” I interjected. “I want to sleep with you. I want you to be near me all of the time, and when you’re not near me I’m starting to feel empty.”

“See?”

“And that’s not a good thing.”

“Bullshit. I don’t care,” he said. “I’m tired of you saying that.”

He was being defiant but for some reason I wanted to reward him for it more than I wanted to punish him.

His body was up against the side of mine, and I could feel the heat of his bare skin on my arm.

The moment he was near me it was like a magnet had snapped into place inside my body.

“I’m starting to hate every fucking moment I’m not with you,” I told him, the truth slipping out of my mouth like a dark impulse I couldn’t control. “And you’re not supposed toknowthat.”

“Well, I do know it,” he said.

I could feel his breath against the side of my face as he spoke.

I wanted to pull him closer already. Wanted to be near him, with him, inside him,anything. My hands felt for him under the blanket and I moved to make space for him on the mattress, grabbing at him like he was my possession. Like he wasoxygen.

I groaned as his lips came down on my cheek.

He covered me in little kisses along my jawline, then back up to my forehead.

So many kisses that I didn’t deserve.

But I wanted them like a deep ache inside every nerve in my body.

“It’s not your fault,” Max said softly against my skin.

Being too sweet to me. Like he always was.

“Everything is my fault.”

“No. It’s not your fault. Any of it. What happened with Lily, or the decisions people made at your parties, or the people who got hurt because they wanted to fight. All of the things that haunt you, Draven. You’ve made mistakes, but you aren’t the monster you think you are.”

You’re so wrong.

So gorgeous, and so wrong.

And there are things that are very, very much my fault.

Max was insistent, because of course he was. It was one of my favorite things about him. He kept me held close, wrapping his arms around me and draping a leg across my lower half, like he was trying to cover me in a weighted blanket made solely of his body.

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