Page 17 of Pucking Unhinged
I step closer. It’s not quite enough to touch her, but it’s sufficient to breathe her in.
Her hair smells like honey, and that tells me that she used that spray I like when she went upstairs to change. Did she do that for me? The thought alone makes heat coil low in my stomach. My hands twitch at my sides.
I clench them into fists because I’m about to boil over with this yearning need I feel for her.
My girl reaches for a book on the second shelf, rising up slightly on her toes, and the sweatshirt lifts just an inch. My breath catches. There it is. The bottom edge of the scar. The one I dream about every fucking night that I actually sleep. My jaw tightens as I fight the need to reach out and pull the sweatshirt back down for her. To cover her. Protect her.
Keep her. She could have been mine if that night never happened.
She lowers herself back down, completely unaware of the turmoil brewing inside of me.
My chest aches.
It will stop aching when she’s between my legs on the couch, back resting against me, eyes closed with that little satisfied smile on her face while I read to her.
“Find anything you like?” I ask, already reaching for my phone to turn it off. She’s going to fall asleep in my arms, so I have no need to have my phone on for anyone else.
She smirks, still facing the shelf.
“Everyone hates when you do that,” she says, but there’s a smirk playing on her lips. She thinks it’s cute that I’m so grumpy, I think. Or at the very least, she finds it endearing.
I shrug, tossing my phone face down on the table. “Everyone I want to talk to is in this room right now.”
Winter glances over her shoulder, one brow lifted. “How many numbers do you even have saved in your phone?”
“Just you.”
Her eyes widen like she expected a small number, but notthatsmall.
“Hayden and Callum? Ramsey? He’s your cousin, Tristan.” She looks at me expectantly, but I just pull my lips into a tight smile. I’m not going to lie to her. She tries one more time, “Sebastian?”
I pull my shirt off and toss it aside. I don’t miss the way her eyes track from the top of my belted jeans, up over each section of my abs, chest, and finally to my face. Her cheeks flush, and I swear my heart rate spikes. It’s the same every time we do this. I never get used to the way she looks at me, and I don’t think I ever will.
I walk up behind her and take her hand. She doesn’t pull away. I lift her arm higher, dragging her fingers across the top shelf while I look down at her. She tilts her chin up, eyes locking with mine. Her attention has left the books and is all on me, just the way I like it.
“Their numbers are in my call log,” I tell her, voice low. “But yours alone is the only one that is saved. And that’s how I want it.”
I realize I’m staring at her mouth. I know I have no right to take her first kiss, but I want it. I want her. All of her.
The thought makes me flinch. Because I’ve killed men for less than touching her. For less than looking at her like I do. And I’ll keep doing it. Because when it comes to Winter LeBlanc, I am feral. I am selfish. No one will ever deserve her. She’s perfect. She’s mine.
She turns to me fully, the soft fabric of the sweatshirt brushing across my bare skin. Winter’s eyes are half-lidded like she’s holding back something she wants to give away.
“Do you think one of these nights you’ll read that journal to me? The one you’re always doodling in?” she asks, and for the first time since I first met her, Winter sounds shy.
I want to laugh, because everyone thinks it’s random scribbles, probably my grievances that I don’t say out loud. I let a small, crooked smile slip just for her. “Maybe one night I will,” I say. And I mean it, because I want her to know the things I’ve written down and kept secret all these years. “But for tonight, how aboutJane Eyre?”
She grins, the kind that softens her whole face. “Deal.”
I want to add something then, but I know it’s not the time. I’d never kept a journal before. Doctors and therapists tried to force me into it when I was a kid because of the murder Sebastian and I saw. They said writing out my feelings would supposedly untangle things. I refused. I hated the idea of dumping my thoughts into a book.
Then I met Winter.
That first night, when everyone else had gone to bed, I found an empty notebook under a stack of magazines and I wrote. Not some careful, clinical list of feelings like the therapists wanted, but instead there’s just words for her. Each entry since has been for her…every stupid, gut-wrenching, worshiping thought I’ve ever had. I draw her in the margins, too. Her braid. Her eyes…even the stupid pink bows. I write the things I’ll never say out loud. I confess how furious I get at the world for ruining us. I write about the way she tucks her chin when I read and how that look makes me want to break something and build something all at once.
Maybe one day I’ll let her in. Maybe she’ll hold those pages and see the parts of me I won’t let anyone else touch. She owns those thoughts already, just like she owns the nights I can’t sleep and the ruthless way my brain bends only toward her. My journals are the only place I can be honest without hurting her or taking more from her than I should. For now, it stays my secret. For now, it’s the only place where the ugly, desperatetruth about how much I want her can exist without ruining what we’ve rebuilt.
I pull the book we’re reading tonight down and walk over to the couch, dropping into it the way I always do so she can take her place between my long legs.
