Page 191 of Composed
“I really like them.”
“The terror twins?”
“Yeah.”
His breath fans my forehead as he plants a kiss to the centre. “They really like you too.”
“What if Carter was right to keep them from me?” Guilt gnaws at my gut for the missed years. Not just with the girls, but with my family. Mypeople. “What if I end up hurting them too?”
Cole doesn’t say anything for a long moment.
I peek up at him, half expecting him to be asleep again, only for the air to kick out of my lungs as honeyed eyes lock with mine.
Emotion swills in the depths, like a wave lost in the sea, reckless in its chaos.
“Maybe you will,” he says, his fingers coasting my cheeks as he brushes my hair out of my face. “But you’ll never do it intentionally or maliciously. We all hurt the people we love at one point or another in our lives. It’s what you do after the hurt that matters.”
He catches a stray tear as it rolls over my lashes. “What is it Saint always says?”
“Hold on,” I whisper.
“That’s all you have to do, Rixie.” He presses his forehead to mine. “We’re a family. We fight, we fall, we hurt. But through it all, we hold on. Because life is better with each other than without.”
“What if I don’t know how to hold on?”
“Then I’ll hold on tight enough for both of us.”
A short breath chokes me and I curl my arms around him, eyes fluttering closed. “I missed you, Rock Star.”
“I’ll never not miss you, Rixie Moore.” His mouth slants over mine and he claims a sweet, gentle kiss.
I melt into him.
Goosebumps flicker to life across my skin. His fingers brush my spine, his tongue swiping languidly over the seam of my lips.
I know I have a choice to make.
Face the past I’ve been running from and finally step into the future. Or keep hiding away and never confronting the broken twenty-one-year-old who only ever wanted love but ran from it because she didn’t know what it really meant to love and be loved.
But it can wait a few more hours.
For now, I just want to feel him.
I want to feel us and live in the memory of what we were and the dream of what we can become.
I run my hand down his back, heat searing my icy skin. He rolls me onto my back. I gasp as he presses down, and he slides his tongue in my mouth.
It’s different from in the studio.
His movements are slower, less frantic as he rocks his pelvis against mine.
He’s doing exactly what he promised when he pressed me into that piano.
Savouring.
His lips trail over my jaw and down my neck, soft kisses claiming every inch of me as his.
As if I could ever be anybody else’s.
