Page 18 of Falling Into Forever
The towel wrapped around my head slips onto my face, so I unwind it and roughly dry my tangled web of hair.
I left my computer in the office somewhere. I should have been writing instead of fish-watching, but the words wouldn’t come. They never come these days. And then, I swam with the fish and almost died.
I’m an idiot. It would have killed Ainsley if I died. I can’t do that to her. I’m all she has left.
“You’re alive,” Dante says gently, but it still scares the living crap out of me, and I trip into the office. This time, he’s there to catch me, and I hate how the heat of his naked torso covers me like a weighted blanket and eases the anxiety that has me in a chokehold.
He tenses with me in his arms, and my heart crumbles a little more. It figures he would have a completely different reaction to me.That’s what happens when you hurt someone. I hurry to steady myself and pull from his grasp.
“Why do you keep doing that?”
“Why do you scare so easily?” he retorts. His lips twitch at the corner like he’s fighting a smile, and I avert my gaze to anything but his face and the new tattoos I refuse to memorize.
“Why are you in my space? Again?”
“Why do you answer every question with a question?” There’s a smirk in his tone, but he’s the one asking questions instead of answering them, and suddenly I’m fourteen years old again when he made it his mission to befriend me.
God, he can be so freaking annoying.
I release a long, aggravated breath through my nose, remove the towel draped over my shoulders, and toss it carelessly onto my comfy chair. Then I spin in place, trying to find him through the nest of hair that won’t stay out of my face.
I’m a real-life Jane of the Jungle. I certainly look the part most days.
But me as a disaster isn’t anything he hasn’t seen before. Ainsley and I may be identical, but she got all the happy-shiny genes. I got whatever was left over, and once upon a time, all the messy, cranky sides of me were what he loved most.
Fucking weirdo.
I place my hands on my hips, glaring at him, because glaring is safer than apologizing. “Well?” I ask. My toe starts tapping against the aging floorboards again, which irritates the hell out of me. Having him so close causes energy to surge through my body, searching for an exit, and I can’t control it.
“Ah, Saylor.” Instantly his expression changes. His eyes darken and grow wide while the tendon in his neck convulses when he swallows.
“What?”
He stares pointedly at my chest, so I follow his line of sight and gasp.
The robe I got at some holiday swap party is meant for a football player and is gaping at the top. I’m exposed from my neck to my belly button, so I grab the lapels and force them shut.
Embarrassment steals all my sass, but I can’t ignore the heat that lingers in his gaze.Don’t give in to the pull that ties us together. Do not do it.It’s harder to shut out my feelings with him this close.
Well, at least until he taps the top of my MacBook. “So, Sassy got in trouble, and now Saylor doesn’t know how to fix it?” he asks with a hitch of his brow and a gentle smile that makes my heart weep.
Every muscle in my face pinches together like I’ve been sucking on lemons all day. “I don’t know. DidDanteget Dante in trouble, and now you’re here to—to, gah!” I throw my hands into the air. “Why are you even in here?”
My eyes narrow as his face transforms into an expression I used to love. You know, before I had to refer to him as the arrogant asshole known as Dante Greer.
I want to hate him a little for using my last name, but I’m a lot of things, and a hypocrite isn’t one of them, so I bite my tongue until I taste blood instead.
“I’ve followed your career, Saylor,” he says. His body language says he’s relaxed, but there’s tension in his bunched-up shoulders. What does he think of me now? Did he read our story? “You’re a natural storyteller, you always have been, but you can’t keep the fucking sass in check.” His words should sound like a scolding, but instead, they bleed with something close to pride.
“Why did you choose Thompson as your pen name?” His question catches me off guard.
My chin wobbles, and I turn away from him. I hate how he drags emotions from me. I’ve spent six years bottling this shit up. It’s not fair that he can set them free in a matter of hours.
After a long silence, I set my expression to stony indifference and face him again. “Why did you choose Greer?”
I’m expecting him to laugh or avoid or deflect. I’m not expecting honesty.
“Because it kept me tethered to you.” His voice is so raw and full of love, I taste tears at the back of my throat. It doesn’t surprise me that my eyes stay bone-dry, but any hint of emotion is enough to make me double down on sucking them back into my bottle. “Why did you choose Thompson, Saylor?”
