Page 17 of If You Fight

She kissed me sweetly, sliding her tongue along the seam of my mouth. “I don’t think I would have cared if you were exactly like everyone here with the way you look.”

Stuffing my hand into her hair, I pulled her to me and whispered against her lips, “So that’s why you always seemed to be staring at me.”

“I wanted you from the moment I saw you in that tub,” she said with a sexy grin.

“All beaten up?” I asked, remembering how I looked all black and blue and swollen from the fight days earlier.

Serena nodded. “Yes.”

We sat there together in silence as memories of that time so long ago made me smile. Finally, she said, “I needed this tonight, Ryder. To see you and see you smile. Thank you.”

“You’re all that makes me smile anymore.”

She snuggled up to me, nestling her head in the space between my shoulder and my jaw, and I couldn’t imagine feeling happier than I felt at that moment. For as much as I loved when my cock was inside her, the mere act of holding her as she sat curled up on my lap satisfied my need for her tonight.

After a few minutes more in silence of my apartment, I said, “Tell me what it’s going to be like when we escape this place, Serena.”

Sighing, she kissed my neck and sat up, and in the dim light I saw her eyes open wide with excitement. “It’ll just be the two of us and no one else. And we’ll spend every night in each other’s arms and Sunday mornings we’ll sleep in late. There will be nobody telling us who we have to be ever again.”

“I want to believe that all can happen. I can’t tell you how much I want to believe.”

“It’s all I think of when I lie in bed at night, Ryder,” she said, gently running her hands through my hair. “If I didn’t have that future to dream about, if I didn’t have moments like this, I’d have nothing to live for.”

Even though I didn’t want to hear her say things like that, I knew just what she meant. If all I had was my life there but I didn’t have her or the promise that someday we’d be away from there together, I’d want to stick a fucking gun in my mouth and blow my brains out.

“I won’t do anything to hurt myself, though. I promise. I wouldn’t put you through that again, Ryder.”

I stroked her cheek and cupped her chin as I realized how beautiful she looked at that moment. I didn’t tell her that if she did leave me here alone, I wasn’t sure I’d live another month without her.

“I love you, Serena. Don’t leave me here without you. I couldn’t take it if you did.”

“I won’t. We’re all we have. You and me. And one day, we’ll leave this place behind and all the horrible things we saw here. We’ll go somewhere, just you and me, and make a life we want.”

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