Page 142 of Let You Love Me

Still, I can’t bring myself to regret tonight if I tried.

Being with Lane was everything I thought it would be and then some. Like cracking a code or solving an impossible puzzle, Lane and I just . . .fit.

And she loves me.

I shake my head at the thought, my grin spreading.

We spent the better part of the past four hours memorizing each other’s bodies, and when we weren’t doing that, we talked.

We talked and we laughed and we kissed, until the kissing turned into more and we stopped talking entirely.

With a contented sigh, I grab my sweats from the living room by the couch, slip them on, then return to Lane’s bedroom whereI settle onto the makeshift bed on the floor, resigning myself to having a sore back in the morning since Lane has yet to buy bedroom furniture.

Fuck. Maybe I’ll buy her a bedroom suite and surprise her with it.

If I have any say in it, I’ll be spending a lot of time helping her break it in, so I might as well be the one to buy it.

Inspired, I reach for my phone on the stack of boxes beside me to search nearby furniture places when I knock one of them to the floor.

Shit.

I sit up, stretching to pick up the contents of the box, which I quickly realize contains photographs and mementos, snippets of Lane’s life, such as a baby’s knit cap and a tiny sock I assume belonged to Sophie. Movie stubs. A school photo of a younger Lane with a toothy grin.

Smiling, I scoop a pile of pictures into my hands and place them back in the box, pausing when I start to close it as one of them catches my eye.

I hold my breath as I pluck it out from where it’s wedged partially beneath a few others, and a chill skitters down my spine.

My smile fades, hands instantly shaking as I stare at the photograph, half expecting it to change like it’s merely a figment of my fucked-up imagination. But when I inhale through my nose, count to ten, and blink twice, it’s the same two faces staring back at me—a younger version of Chance and Lane.

Both of them are smiling, with Chance’s hand wrapped around her waist, and though there’s nothing incriminating about the pose?it could be any two friends or a family member?it’s not their proximity to each other or even the hand gripping her waist that makes my stomach churn. It’s the look in her eyes that eats me alive. Because neither of them are looking atthe camera. Instead, they’re staring into each other’s eyes. And the expression on Lane’s face is so intimate and so filled with longing, it makes my heart ache.

I lie in the dark, head pressed into a pillow as I hear the sound of Lane’s bedroom door creek.

I close my eyes, pretending to sleep as she settles onto the blankets beside me.

Pressing her body next to mine, she snakes her arms around my waist, propping her chin on my shoulder. “You awake?”

I focus on the steady rhythm of my breath in the silence, feeling like the world’s biggest asshole for pretending to be asleep when I’m not, but I can’t open my eyes. I can’t turn to face her. Not when my head hurts and my chest feels like it might explode.

After a moment, she lays her head down on the pillows beside me, and relief washes over me before it’s replaced with the icy fingers of fear.

Chance and Lane.

Lane and Chance.

I can’t seem to erase the picture from my head. No matter how hard I try, it’s right there, dancing behind my eyelids.

I clench my hands beneath the blankets until my fists ache as bad as my heart, as if I can erase the image of them with the pain.

Surely if there had ever been anything between them, she would have told me.

I love her, and she loves me. I’d know it even if she hadn’t said it.

We’ve been intimate.

She trusts me now.

Or at least, I thought she did.

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