Page 75 of Love.V2
I reached for him. I felt like I’d been in this relationship by myself for too long. I wanted to hold on to him, feel his skin, know he was right here with me.
His fingers tangled in mine.
“We both pulled away. It’s not just your fault. I know…” Darn. I thought I’d gotten all my tears out back at Molido. Dylan stroked one away as it rolled down my cheek. I continued, choked. “I know how painful it is to want to connect to someone and feel like there’s nothing onthe other side. We weren’t connected for a long time there, and I think both of us share the blame.”
A deep sigh left his body; he wilted in his chair, as if I’d taken all the air out of his lungs. “I think so, too. When I came to Chicago, I was so set on just focusing on you, on what I did wrong. But you’re right. I had a lot more resentment than I let myself feel.”
“Me too. Maybe it was easier to see the ways you slipped away instead of owning the ways I did, too.”
“Thank you.” His forehead bowed to rest on our entwined hands, shoulders easing down even more. “Thank you.”
I bit my lip, for the first time really comprehending what Dylan must have felt all this time. How much he buried inside himself to come to Chicago and win me back, even though we were both to blame for the way everything fell apart.
His skin was warm under my hands. I ran my fingers up and down his forearm, feeling the twists of veins, the beat of his pulse. It felt like mine.
“Now what?” Dylan raised his head, a question in his eyes. I wasn’t used to seeing that. Some time ago, that uncertainty would have caught me off guard, made me falter. Dylan always had a plan. He always knew what to do.
But now, I smiled. I didn’t just have a plan. I had a Plan B, too.
“I don’t want to be Sad Tess anymore,” I confessed, pulling my hands away. He held on, chasing me until he realized I was heading into his lap. I straddled his hips, breath catching when his arms closed tight around my waist. “I want to want things and be curious and try stuff, even if it means it might hurt or be embarrassing.”
“You are never embarrassing.” His voice sounded stern as his forehead tipped to meet mine. I was close enough to hear his throat working in a swallow. Close enough to hear his next words, even though they were hardly a whisper. “I don’t want to be terrified you’re going to leave again. You left me in pieces over the course of years, and I had no clue how to stop it. I lost myself because I lost you. I don’t want to lose either of us again.”
“Then we won’t.” Again, that simple, and that complicated. Of course it would be hard, and all of this was easier said than done, but I wasn’t satisfied just retreating and watching the world happen around me. I would fight for him over and over if I needed to. I brushed my lips across his. “You are enough, Dylan. You don’t have to work at it. You just are.”
“You’re enough, too. Even if we just watch TV and eat pasta every weeknight.”
“Only Tuesdays,” I choked, because those damn tears were back, but this time, they felt like hope. He laughed, but it was lost when my mouth closed over his, sealing in these words, this new energy that was us.
It wasn’t starting over, and it wasn’t what we were before. It was completely new. Not just sweeping something under the rug, but an actual next step forward. Together.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Dylan’s hand tightened in my hair, gripping like he wanted to hold on for dear life. “I love you so much, Angel.”
“I want to fight for you.”
“Well, that’s good.” His nose brushed against mine. “Because I will never stop fighting for you.”
I smiled as I kissed him again, my tongue dipping between his lips to taste more. He pulled me closer, using the locks twined through his fingers to turn me this way and that, taking my mouth deeper, then teasing, nipping, only to dive back in again.
We kissed for a long time, seconds turning to minutes, and the sheer joy of being together again flooded me. These last few weeks, we’d been together physically, but it had felt like we were making up for lost time. Like nothing had changed in our relationship except we missed each other and were trying to make that be enough.
It wasn’t.
It was nothing likethis. His hands, running over me not to grasp, but to cherish. The teasing smile that brushed the edges of his lips like he, too, couldn’t believe we were here. The feeling like we were on the other side of something, and we’d made it out alive.
When he sighed my name, arms clasping me tighter, I felt the growing bulge beneath me, and the contented, comfortable feelings started sparking at the edges. His palms ran down my back, then up underneath my shirt. The rasp of his hands on my skin struck a match.
“I need you.”
The raw confession, paired with the desperate flex of his hips beneath me, roared into an inferno. I caught fire as a mix of love and adrenaline and relief and Dylan washed over me.
“Yes,” I gasped. The word was hardly out of my mouth before he surged upwards again, this time bringing me with him. My feet landed on the gray-striped, utilitarian carpet so quickly my head spun.
“Take this off. All of it.” He sounded feverish, pulling and grappling with my workout tank. “Not like New York, Tess. I need all of you. All of this off.”
My shirt was barely over my head before his mouth slammed down on mine. I moaned as his tongue delved inside, spearing between my teeth to taste me again and again as I worked his buttons open.
