Page 27 of Bookworm
He was getting irritated. Running his hands through his hair and pacing in the small living room of the temporary apartment.
I stopped him by gently resting my hand on his elbow. “Thank you,” I said. “And I’m sorry, too. For not giving you an explanation of why we were breaking up. For being a dumb teenager, too.”
He exhaled in what seemed to be an intense release of tension. “I’ve waited so many years to hear you say that. Thank you.”
I nodded slowly, blinking as the light in the apartment dimmed with the setting sun outside of the one lonely window.
“I wish we didn’t have to break up for you to find yourself,” Adam said.
“Me, too,” I admitted.
“I feel terrible that, even accidentally, I was holding you back.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t like that. I held myself back.”
He looked up at me then with shiny eyes. “But… you still loved me?”
Every muscle in my body went rigid… frozen. Except my heart which jackhammered inside of my chest. “I… did.” My voice was barely audible and I wasn’t sure he even heard me until he took a step forward, closing the space between us from twelve inches to six.
“Did?” he asked with another couple of steps, six inches diminishing to three. “Ordo?”
Another step. Two inches…
I swallowed hard. How was I supposed to answer that? “Can you love someone you don’t know anymore?”
“You always were good at answering a question with a question. In another life, you would have made a great lawyer.”
A thrill passed through me. I didn’t admit that number two on my career possibilities list was lawyer.
All this time I believed that Adam couldn’t have truly known me all these years if he thought I was lazy for taking that gap year. But that one quick aside made me rethink everything.
Another step. Another inch. Only mere centimeters separated us now and I had to tilt my chin up to meet his gaze.
“Why should I be the only one to answer that?” I croaked, my voice raspy and low. Some might have even defined it asseductive.
“I’ll answer if you will,” Adam said.
Well, that surprised me. Everything Adam was doing tonight surprised me. “So… we’ll both answer either Love or Loved? Is that the game?”
Another shuffle of his feet. Half an inch. His body was so close to mine I could feel the heat emanating from him. Feel the brush of his knuckles against my hip bone. The warmth of his exhale caressing my heated cheeks.
“Sure,” he said with a nod. “On the count of three, we say it. Together.”
Humor glinted in his eyes. Like he was so certain of my answer. Not in an arrogant way. That was the thing about Adam. He’d always had this quiet confidence. It didn’t make him a jerk… it made him sexy as hell.
“Okay,” I said.
“Count us down,” he commanded and I was too damn flustered to argue.
“One…” I said. “Two… Th?—”
Before I could get the word out, his lips were on mine, kissing me, soft and delicately. His hands threaded through my hair, brushing the strands back into my wavy tangles.
It was everything I remembered it to be and also entirely foreign. Like being in your childhood home after someone else had moved in and changed things around.
More heated than we’d ever kissed before. This wasn’t the kiss of two hormone-adled teenagers. It was dark and rough and primal with passion and long-forgotten promises swirling between us.
I moaned, melting into his arms as I parted my lips to him, our tongues touching. Every inch of me felt fiery and hot as I pushed onto my toes and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer to me.
