Page 95 of Try Hard
“You have always been so much more than that.” I wanted, so badly, to tell her all the things I’d noticed about her, all the ways she’d been so much more than she’d ever realised, but my brain was humming over the fact that she’d complimented me in so many ways, so clearly painted the picture of teenage infatuation without once mentioning how I looked.
I didn’t think I’d ever been complimented so well, so honestly, or so much in the exact way I needed.
Eve chuckled. “If it gets you to like me, I’ll take whatever it is you think you see in me, but I absolutely will not stand by and let you think you don’t deserve me.”
“You just… without once commenting on…” My mind was a mess. Every part of me felt like it was buzzing and dizzy, but being out of control felt okay with her.
She smiled and her own eyes glistened in the lamplight with hopeful, emotional tears. “I could spend the rest of my life complimenting you, and I don’t need to comment on your body for that.”
“I really do think it might be okay from you.” I saw my fingers trembling against her jaw. My body wasn’t quite as sure as my brain wanted to be.
The slight furrowing of her brow told me Eve knew exactly what I was thinking. She sucked in a measured breath. “You’ll have to forgive me for being presumptuous, but I’m getting the impression you might like me too—”
“Yes.” I laughed at my unrestrained eagerness. I really was all over the place. But I didn’t want to take it back. She deserved to know how wonderful she was and how much I wanted her too. At some point, I’d find all the words to tell her, but, for now, I was going to let the eagerness do it for me. “I did then and I do now.”
A massive, incandescent smile took over her face, like she’d been waiting over twenty years to hear those words. I knew the feeling.
“You know,” she said happily, “if you’d asked me out back then, I’d have died right there at school.”
“Likewise.”
She looked at me like she enjoyed my brusque tone, like she saw through it to all of the emotion underneath. “I know this is complicated and loaded for you, but I’m here, and I don’t want to fuck up this second chance I’ve been given.”
“Me neither,” I whispered. “You know everyone already thinks we’re together.”
“I’m not going to lie, Ophelia, I have been doingnothingto prevent them from thinking that. You have no idea how wonderful it feels when people think I’m yours—I always have been, after all.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’dwantedto kiss someone who wasn’t her. The true desire to do so had faded before I’d managed to make it out of my last relationship—something I’d realised in the interim, brought into sharp relief by Eve’s return to my life. There had been nobody after him. However, Eve… I’d wanted so badly to kiss her when we were teenagers, and that desire was only more insistent now.
Still, that small, scarred part of me needed patience, even if I didn’t love that right now. It needed reassurance first.
“I like being yours,” I murmured. Only Eve Archer could make that something I enjoyed. After my ex’s need to possess me, to mold me, I’d sworn never again. But, with Eve, I wanted to be hers so badly it hurt. I knew she wouldn’t use it against me.
A tear leaked from her eye, running down her temple towards the bed. She looked inconceivably happy. “Anything you want, it’s yours. I’d give you the universe if I could.”
I laughed softly, shaking my head even though I knew I’d do the same for her. “I just need… to go slow. As if twenty-odd years to get here isn’t slow enough. Sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry when asking for what you need. Not ever. We can go as slow as you want.”
“Hm. Probably better with your… fans, too.”
She winced. “Whatever you need to handle all of that, too. I’ll do everything in my power to protect you, always.”
Her promises, her vulnerability, and her honesty sparked inside my heart. She waseverything.
I wrapped my arms around her the best I could with her half under me, and tugged her with me as I lay back down. If she’d been unwilling, I didn’t think I’d have stood a chance ofmoving her. As it happened, she followed me willingly, holding her weight carefully as she hovered over me, pressing me down into the mattress.
Soft, mesmerising strands of her hair fell across her forehead in that way that only seemed to happen with romantic heroes. She’d been the romantic heroine in every dream I’d ever had.
The way her pupils were blown suggested she was feeling something similar. Knowing that she was physically attracted to me wasn’t off-putting like it was with others. It seemed like she always had been—like she always would be, no matter what happened to my body. The thought was both liberating and terrifying. I wasn’t yet sure how to handle that, even if I understood it in reverse. Eve would always be the most beautiful person in the world, no matter what happened to her physically.
I slid my hands up her back, over her shoulders, and took her face tenderly. “I was planning to say I needed to wait a little longer for anything physical, but I… really want to kiss you.”
She breathed a laugh that sent shudders through my whole body. “I would wait forever for you to be ready, to be as certain as you need to be. I wanted to kiss you when I was a kid, I want to kiss you now, and I’ll want to kiss you fifty years from now. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
Every word from her was the most perfect, most romantic thing I’d ever heard. It was exactly what I needed, and all I wanted was to live in every moment with her, to be ready to give her everything she deserved. I wanted to show her exactly how much I adored her.
And I still needed to honour the pain my body carried, even when I didn’t want to hold it against her.
