Page 127 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

He was still deep inside.

My heart was still pounding like I’d just run a marathon.

And as he slid out of me, the most surprising thing was that I looked at his face and saw him smile.

A pure, genuine smile, looking at me like he was still one hundred percentherewith me.

He wasn’t saying it was a mistake, or that it was the end of something.

Finally, he’d let a wall drop. I felt like I’d broken some code. Like I was behind the castle walls now—in his home, in hisheart—and there was no longer any going back.

Draven wasn’t broken. He never had been.

He’d just been hiding.

Chapter 20

Draven

Veil wasn’t like she used to be.

She was fuckingbetter.

The light was clear and pure as I walked with Max out onto the land the next morning. Neither of us got enough sleep, because…

Because I was fucking certifiablyscrewedthe moment I kissed him last night.

I couldn’t stop kissing him, after that.

My beautiful, sexy, goddamn frustrating andperfectTennessee boy kept me up all night, both of us drifting in and out of sleep in between touching and kissing each other in ways we both hadn’t been able to control.

The thing about me was that I never did anything lightly.

Never half-assed things.

And once I’d fucked up and gone in to kiss Max, everything had changed, forever. It was strange how love worked. I still didn’t think I was capable of it, didn’t think that I was anywhere near worthy of love or giving it to anyone around me.

But it had crept up on me. Taken hold.

And I’d heard myself telling Max that I loved him like it was coming from a dormant part of me, some part I’d kept neglected in the dark for a long, long time.

I hated keeping secrets, although I’d been forced to become good at it.

And that’s why it’s time to tell him.

Tell.

Him.

But lying?

I was almostincapableof lying.

The moment the realization had crested inside me, that Ilovedhim, a new, fresh love that didn’t have any business coming from a person like me…

I couldn’t lie about it.

I knew Max could still get hurt. I knew I was bound to be hurt, too.

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