Page 94 of Hypnotized By Love

“Swimming?” I said and then immediately realized that he’d been hitting on me. “Oh.”

“Yes, oh.” He smiled and went back to running his lips along my exposed skin. I leaned my head back to give him better access and because it was becoming increasingly harder to keep my head upright, given what he was doing to my throat with his mouth.

“Sinclair, there’s something I need to confess.” He said the words against my skin, and they brought me right back to reality as I broke out in an absolute chilly panic.

I thought we had cleared the air. What else could he possibly have to tell me?

Then he made everything worse when he said, “I lied to you before.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“What did you lie about?” I asked in a whisper, terrified that he was about to shatter this newfound peace we’d discovered.

“When I told you that I wouldn’t let you hypnotize me again, that was a lie. I’m mesmerized by you. You’ve been hypnotizing me since the day I came back. You have this hold over me that I can’t shake, and I don’t want to. And it’s no surprise that you were able to hypnotize me in that session, because just looking at you makes me forget my own name.”

My instinct was to punch him for scaring me, but as relief flooded my nervous system, I decided to do some sublimation. I leaned in to kiss him, and he immediately responded, his mouth warm and firm.

“I love you,” he said in a possessive but sweet way that made me melt.

“Why do you love me?” I asked him, not quite able to believe that this was real.

“Sinclair,” he murmured, smiling at me, “you’ve always been my best friend. And then one day I looked over at you and all I wanted to do was kiss you and I couldn’t. I didn’t want to risk our friendship. Until that night at the dock, when it got to the point that being near you wasdriving me insane, and I had to touch you and be with you. That’s why I asked you to the dance.”

“And then ghosted me,” I reminded him.

“Yes, I was stupid.”

“You were stupid,” I agreed.

“I’m just sorry for the time we lost.”

“Sierra has a theory about that. She thinks this is happening at the time that was right for us, when we could be together and weren’t living in different states.”

And it occurred to me how much I wanted him to stay here in Florida. I didn’t want him to go back to New York, but I didn’t want to interfere with what he wanted for himself and his career. It wasn’t something we’d discussed yet. “Although I don’t know how long you’re staying.”

He took his phone out of his back pocket, opened up an app, and handed the phone to me. “Here.”

It was a picture of a bunch of boxes. “What’s this?” I asked.

“That’s my mom’s garage, full of my stuff. I broke my lease in New York and had everything shipped here. I’m not going anywhere. I want to be wherever you are.”

I was both overwhelmed and moved by his statement, so much so that I couldn’t speak at first. He misinterpreted what I was feeling.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” he said. “But I hired movers after that hypnosis session. Being with you again reminded me of what I was missing out on and how much I wanted you back in my life. I’ve dated other people, had other relationships. I kept thinking that my memories of you were exaggerated, that you couldn’t have possibly been that incredible, but, Sinclair? You’re even better than I remember. So I want to put it all out there, cards on the table. I want to be here. I want to be with you.”

How could I have ever thought that he hated me? And how could his voice sound so steady and calm when I felt like he’d caused hurricanegales of glee inside me? Happy tears formed in my eyes, blurring my vision. “Living in New York as a writer is your dream.”

“You’re my dream, Sinclair.”

“You’d give up New York for me?”

“I’d give up the world for you,” he said.

The love that I felt for him in that moment made me feel like I was floating and drowning at the same time. Little effervescent bubbles of joy fizzed inside me. I didn’t know this kind of happiness was possible. “Okay, just promise you’re not going to ghost me again.”

He smirked at me. “You’re going to keep bringing that up, aren’t you?”

“I might.”

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