Page 72 of The Worst Kind of Promise
“I don’t want to be known as the ‘Big Cat’ anymore. I want to be known as yours.”
Mine.
I never knew Kit felt that way. Violent bursts of love roar up in my gut, and I can feel the waterworks starting up again, though I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stop them this time.
Relieving me of the pressure to respond, Kit’s palm falls away from my cheek as he walks over to the hardtop. He rustles around in the bag he brought with him, pulling something out before heading back to me.
I’m not sure what I expected him to grab—maybe more sunscreen for my sunburnt skin—but a book is clutched in his hands, tiny, colorful tabs sticking out of the pages.
“Kit, what is that?” I ask.
The corners of his lips tick up into a proud grin. “After you schooled me on romance books, I did some digging myself. And I, um, I annotated this for you. I don’t really know what I was doing, but I wanted to try. I wanted to do something for you besides the usual bouquet of flowers.”
When he hands me the book, the first thing I notice are the giant hockey sticks on the front cover, backdropped by a cracked, white-blue ice design.
“A hockey romance?” I will my heart to stop flapping.
He scratches the back of his neck. “I know it’s not your monster romance, but I thought you might like it. Life imitates art and all that.”
He annotated a book for me. Kit Langley annotated a book for me. Kit Langley—the man who’s never been with the same woman twice—carved time out of his day to read a book and tab it. This has to be some kind of fever dream.
I slowly open the book to a random page and am greeted by a medley of pastel-colored, miniature sticky notes scattered through various paragraphs. And not only that, but there are passages underlined with little notes scribbled in the margins.
“Oh my God,” I breathe, emotion steamrolling over me.
“I underlined things that reminded me of you.”
He even doodled small hearts.Hearts. Like a teenage boy who has a school-grade crush on a girl.
My eyes rake over the first paragraph that catches my attention.
I’ll always crawl back to her. I’ll crawl to her on my knees across the broken shards of my heart. I’ll crawl to her when she’s thousands of miles away from me. I’ll crawl to her even if she never wants to see me again, because that’s the power she has over me. That’s the kind of love that possesses me. Unconditional, undying, unequivocal. I’m forever hers.
I don’t have time to formulate a coherent sentence…which is probably for the best, because I’d be blithering like a lovesick fool.
“I don’t want this to be a summer fling,” Kit says, recapturing my focus. “I know you have school. I know you’re going to be in Pennsylvania. But I want to be with you, Faye. I don’t care about the distance or your brother.”
This is everything I’ve ever wanted. And it’s all right in front of me, ready for me to take. The veracity of his confession floors any thoughts pinballing around in my brain. His vulnerability is like a naked flame in a perpetual bout of ruthless wind, always facing the possibility of being stamped out but refusing to seek shelter or be extinguished.
I drop the book to the deck of the boat. My body moves of its own accord, and my mouth slants over Kit’s, enveloping him in a time-stopping kiss of tongues and unfettered passion. And if I didn’t know any better, a healthy helping oflove.
He falters at the beginning, a bit shocked by the intensity, but he returns the pressure on my lips, his hands clutching the naked flesh of my back. His nails dig into me, his kiss consuming me whole, the frantic, harsh nature of his touch at odds with the soft lull of his tongue. The charged air around us seems to crackle, my skin humming with pleasure.
“Okay,” I whisper into his mouth.
“Okay?”
I pull away from him, tipping my forehead up to his lowered one. “What about long distance?”
“We’ll make it work. I’ll find weekends where I’m free to come to you, and I’ll make sure to carve time out of my day so we can call or FaceTime,” he answers.
“But you need to focus on hockey. You’ll be so busy, and you’ll have games all the time.”
“I will be busy, and I will have eighty-two games to play. But I don’t care. I don’t care how exhausted I am. I willalwaysmake time for you.”
Speaking of permanent, the L-word isreaaallyclose to coming out. And I think I’m done trying to find the right moment to say it.
But before I can, Kit picks me up in his arms and swings me around effortlessly. My legs lift off the ground as I braid my arms around his neck to keep from flying away. My face is snuggled into his neck, and the richness of his laughter rumbles through me.
