Page 33 of Falling Into Forever
My cheeks already hurt from smiling. “Does that mean if it’s not pierced, you’re willing to say hello?”
Her right hand grasps her necklace and drags the pendant along the chain, but she’s not about to snap, either. Even the vein in her temple is relaxed.
“No.” She drops her pendant and places her palms on my chest to shove me away, but we both freeze.
The hairs on my arms stand on end, and my goddamn dick twitches like it’s waving hello.
We remain frozen in this position, and she uses her index finger to trace the outline of my sailboat tattoo, my own Saylor forever branded over my heart.
Can she feel the energy between us? Alarm flashes across her features, and when she snatches her hand away, I almost fall into her. Her hands breathed life into me and sucked it all away when she lifted them.
It’s not normal. Reactions like this don’t happen to everyone. They happen to those of us tied forever to another soul.
Her touch only reinforces one thing—she is mine, and I’ll do whatever it takes to show her that.
Saylor’s mouth hangs open, and the color rises high on her perfectly sculpted cheekbones, so I assume she at least felt—something. She blinks slowly, gracefully, like a butterfly hovering over a flower. She’s perfect. She’s still got that wide-eyed innocence about her, even when she’s lashing out with her barbed tongue.
“How the hell did I survive missing you all these years?” I make no attempt to mask the longing in my tone.
Gone is the butterfly, and in its place is a hummingbird with rapid-fire blinking that breaks her trance, and she slides along the wall to get away from me.
“You’re just out of sorts,” she says with a slight tremor that gives her away. “Don’t even pretend that was—anything. I’m not someone you’d give a second thought to if we weren’t stuck together in this nightmare.”
That hurts, and I deserve every biting word. Or the image of me that I’ve portrayed deserves it, anyway.
She’s right that I’m out of sorts, but it’s not entirely from this situation. The lack of her touch left me bereft, and I need her essence to fill me again, so I move slowly toward her.
“I understand why you might think that, but don’t you dare pretend that was nothing. You and I both know better than that. If you’re scared, say you’re scared, but don’t ever diminish us tonothing.”
I take a deep breath to calm my temper, count to ten, then continue. “Who I am on TV and in magazines is not me, Saylor. It’s a role I play when I leave my safe spaces. Dante Greer protects me and my family. When I’m him, nothing and no one else matters. I learned a long time ago to put blinders on. Had I not done that?”
I take my time perusing her, from her pretty blue toenails up to guileless eyes of the same color.
“Get real,” she says scornfully before I can finish my thought. “I knew the first time I saw you in a magazine that you had the ability to be an asshole, but I’ve never known you to be intentionally cruel. I don’t exist in your hemisphere, whether you’re Dante Greer or Dante Thompson. This,” she says, running her hands up her torso like Vanna White, “is not what you want on your arm, and I refuse to be a time filler for you.”
Frustration roars in my chest. “Why do you do that?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“Do what?” She’s not quite yelling, but her voice has risen a few octaves.
“Talk about yourself like that?”
“I’m a realist. Plus. I’ve unfortunately seen the girls you date, and I’ve seen Lena.” She pauses, and her face twists like she’s contemplating something terrible. “Ugh, fine, Lena is lovely, but I’ve seen her now too. We are not the same.”
My body releases a month’s worth of tension at her words. Doling out compliments is not easy for her, and Lena deserves all the love and friendship the world can give her.
“Who said I want the same? Who said I want the plastic, vapid, money-grabbing faces from those magazines? There’s a reason I’m still single after six fucking years, Saylor, and she’s standing right in front of me.” I’m so close to her now that the navy outlining her irises like a wall protecting its fragile center becomes more pronounced until all that’s left is a guarded darkness.
Her chin quivers, but stubborn to a fault, she juts it out and holds her ground. “I’m well-versed in the scale of beauty, Dante.” Every time she says my name, it sounds like a curse. Is she doing that on purpose? “I write about beautiful people and the love everyone on the planet is searching for, but I make it a habit to never lie to myself, either.”
I set my jaw with a snap, and the muscles in my neck twitch in agitation. She is truly the only person who could ever piss me off like this.
“I’m pretty, but I’m weird,” she says as she flits about the room, away from me. Her movements are jerky and agitated. “They cancel each other out for people like you. I was a placeholder in your life, but I don’t get the fairy tale. I write about it so people like me can have the fantasy of it. You left Hope Hollow behind and never looked back. That’s real. That’s the truth. So don’t come in here and blow smoke up my ass. Just…just…” The first glimmer of real emotion passes over her face. “Please, Dante.”
She tries to flee again, but I gently wrap my fingers around her wrist before she can escape. Her fist releases almost immediately, and that’s when I notice the nail marks in her palm.
“What the hell, Saylor? Doesn’t this hurt?”
“Not as badly as feelings can.” She tries to pull free, but I hold her to me.
