Page 23 of Falling Into Forever
She’s biting her lip but listening to me.
“I have to fight back, and so do you. I’ll do whatever you ask of me. Please go along with this even though I’ve done nothing to earn this favor yet. But I need you, Sayls. I’ve always needed you.”
She nods, and her body shivers when I place my hands on her biceps.
“What do you want me to do?” she snaps, then claps a hand over her mouth. Her snark always goes into overdrive when she’s overwhelmed, so I take a step back and try to soothe her with words.
“We need to give them something else to talk about. Something that will overshadow their lies, even if only for a day.” My mind races to all the ways they could spin this story. But there’s no refuting that if we get ahead of it—if we create a new narrative—we can control the outcome.
The storm inside her picks up speed, and I hope that means she’ll agree to what I’m asking—what we need. She’s the only person I’ve ever met who tells entire stories with only their eyes.
For years, I’ve tried to force away the memory of her—or suffocate it with work. Standing before her now, I realize how fucking dumb I am. I’ll always miss her because a heart doesn’t regenerate, and mine stayed with her.
“L-Like what?”
“Let him kiss you.” Kate’s gloating, since this was likely always her plan. Her time spent in public relations before becoming a literary agent makes her a master at this game, but my shoulders still tense as she speaks. “A racy kiss will always get people talking, and it will confirm thatApril RainandCome Septemberare at least loosely based on your relationship—that will send the media and the public into a tailspin. The information is already circulating. You might as well make it work for you. People love a good second chance, Sass.”
Saylor and I will never be a game, no matter how she reacts to this scheme. We’re more than that. We’re inevitable. She just doesn’t know it yet.
Her entire face dims before she shrugs. “It’s not like it’ll be the first time we’ve lied to ourselves. But if we do this, promise me that you’ll leave as soon as it’s all over. And I mean it—I can never see you again after this. Got it?”
The next breath I take hurts like inhaling shards of glass. I don’t want to be someone she regrets. My left hand balls into a fist in my pocket before I cross my fingers like a ten-year-old because, at this moment, I have no choice but to lie and agree to her terms.
“Done,” I say before I whirl on her, pulling her in close. She fits like she was made to always be at my side.
“I’m going to kiss you,” I whisper.
“Yeah, I caught that part.”
“It’ll help us both.”
She rolls her eyes, so I wait for her to focus on me again.
“If you don’t want this, say so now.”
I scan her eyes, her face, her neck for any signs of distress, but all I find is her rapid pulse point on the soft skin of her neck. She licks her lips, and I mimic the move like I can already taste her. Then she tilts her head to look at me and I get lost in her eyes. The ones that beg me to be careful, not to break her, to abide by her rules.
They’re the same eyes that darken as they zero in on my lips, and when her breaths become sharp inhales of air, she can no longer pretend she’s immune to our connection no matter how hard she tries.
Like the stars that can’t shine without the moon, we aren’t complete without each other.
“Is there another option?” she asks through clenched teeth.
“Not one that will work as fast as this,” Kate says, and I hate how close she is to our conversation—to us.
“The sooner we solve our problems, the sooner you can go home.” Her voice trembles, but she squares her shoulders and looks me straight in the eye. “Let’s do this.”
I should give her a second to change her mind, but years of pent-up love rush through me and I lift her body to mine. Her laptop presses between us, but this kiss is a need, like air and water, that’s raging inside me until my mouth covers hers. The second our lips touch, I relax into her warm body. This is the kind of kiss that can bring a man back from the dead.
And it does.
This kiss is years of longing and pain. It’s heartbreak and love. It’s coming home after a lifetime away, and I sink everything I am, everything I’ve ever felt for her into it. My body jolts as the electricity of life zings through my veins.
This is happiness.
In my periphery, Kate walks toward us with a phone pointed in our direction, as I knew she would. She not only plays the game, she wrote the damn rules.
Saylor’s lips are timid and unmoving against mine like she’s frozen, but I slowly lick a line across her seam, and she opens wide with a trembling breath. She shivers in my arms, and it shakes the ground below me. But when she hops up and locks her legs around my hips, I deepen the kiss with a groan that has my dick pulsing and my skin ablaze.
