Page 120 of Somewhere You Belong

“Yes,” I mumble against his lips. “Take me upstairs. Please.”

“God, I’ll never grow tired of hearing that word fall from your lips—for me.”

Dallas lifts me so I can wrap my legs around his waist and heads for the stairs, keeping our mouths fused as he climbs higher and higher toward my bedroom.

Perhaps one day, it will beourbedroom.

When we reach the bed, he tosses me down and then hovers over me, just as the sound of paper crinkling beneath us causes us both to pause.

Oh God.

No.

Dallas pulls the paper out from under me, eyes quickly scanning it and I see the change in his expression when he recognizes a name I’d hoped I had a few more hours to figure out how to explain.

“Willow? What is this?”

I push myself up, crawling across the bed to him, but he steps back as his eyes move across the paper alarmingly fast.

“Willow!” His voice echoes in the room now. “What the fuck is this?”

My heart is hammering so hard that my entire body is shaking from the impact. “It’s a letter.”

“I can see that.” He begins to squeeze the paper tighter. “The question is, why do you have a letter frommydad?”

He finally meets my eyes, and all I can see is confusion and hurt in his.

“Dallas…I can explain.”

“I sure as fuck hope so.” He keeps reading and then whispers, “What the fuck?” Then suddenly, as though the paper burned him, he tosses it back onto the bed. He clenches his hands into fists as his chest heaves with short, labored breaths. His eyes are black with fury now. “Start talking, Willow. Now.”

I swallow down the lump in my throat and finally tell him the truth. “Your dad is the one who left me this house, Dallas.”

His head rears back as though I’ve slapped him. “What?” His response comes out in a whisper, laced with disbelief.

“I wanted to tell you, but your mom…”

And then his eyes light up with rage as he takes a step closer. “Mymom? She fucking knew about this too?” He gestures sharply back down to the paper.

“Yes, but she asked me not to tell you!” I hate to put the blame on Katherine, but the reality is, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now if she had told just Dallas in the beginning.

But it’s not entirely her fault either. I should have figured out a way to explain this to Dallas, especially after we started to fall for one another.

“So let me get this straight. You both knew about this but didn’t think I deserved to know?” The veins in his neck are popping, and he transforms from the teddy bear I was just about to snuggle all night to a slightly smaller version of the Hulk.

“I was going to tell you! But she asked me to let her talk to you first. She was going to tell you tomorrow. She didn’t want to ruin our first night with your family.”

He runs a hand through his hair, his brows drawn together, his breaths growing more shallow. “I can’t fucking believe this.”

I hop off the bed and reach for him, but he backs away. “Please, Dallas. We can work through this…”

“No. This changes everything, Willow.”

The threat of tears builds again. “It doesn’t have to.”

“How can you say that? The woman I want to start a life with inherited the house I’ve always wanted frommy deceased father, who, it turns out, was keeping this secret from me. And then I find out that you and my mother knew about it but decided to keep me in the dark too. And the irony of it is, I didn’t even care about the house anymore…because you were more important.” He shakes his head, his eyes full of anguish, as he turns and walks out of the room, leaving me frozen until I snap out of my shock.

“Dallas, wait!” I chase after him, trembling so much I nearly trip down the stairs.

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