Page 99 of Smith

How much more were you supposed to love her before she started loving you back?

She was also the first person to challenge the on-going ‘what-if’ game that played out whenever someone brought up Rie. The fuck of it was, Aria was right. Way back when, if I’d walked away from Rie or I’d left her behind when she first started to waver, I wouldn’t have been able to live with the guilt. The truth I hatedto admit was, I’d tried. I might’ve failed, but I’d busted my ass to keep her with me.

“I have a confession,” Aria said softly as we lay in bed.

I couldn’t tell if her muted tone was just sleepiness or if it was her nerves. After the shit I’d put her through, my guess would be apprehension.

A pang of new regret scored through me. Aria was not ever timid. I’d done that to her.

“What’s that, baby?”

I felt her rub her cheek against my bare chest, then she lifted her head, twisted, and pressed a kiss to my pec before she whispered there, “I’m falling for you.”

With that, she resumed her position with her cheek on my chest like she hadn’t just rocked my fucking world.

I waited, lying there in the dark with Aria’s body molded to mine for the fear to come, for the deep-seated knowledge I would never be good enough to come, but it never came. All I felt was gratitude and relief. So fucking grateful and relieved I hadn’t fucked up so royally it would take an act of God to get her to forgive me.

“You gotta know, I feel the same.” She snuggled closer. Then I gave her the rest because she needed to have it. “That’s why I pulled the shit I pulled. I knew the moment you opened your door I was in trouble. I knew when I told you making you safe wasn’t a waste of my day and you gave me a lopsided smile, I was gonna fall in love with you and there’d be no stopping it. And when you made a quip about no lube, no foreplay, I knew I was gonna take my shot knowing it was the most foolish thing I could do. By the time I left your house that first day, I was in so deep it scared the hell out of me. Every day since then, it’s been a losing war fighting against the knowledge I’ve fallen in love with you and scared as shit I’m gonna fuck this up and hurt you.”

“Smith—”

I tightened my arm and spoke over her interruption.

“Only part of that fear is wrapped up with Rie. The rest of it is knowing you deserve a man who is a thousand times better than me.”

Apparently Aria had something to say and wouldn’t be put off. She demonstrated this by rolling over me, planting her knees on either side of my hips, and pushing up so we were face to face, her looking down at me with a scowl.

“Only I get to decide what I deserve,” she asserted. “And for the record, I knew I was in trouble when I opened the door and found the hottest guy I’d ever seen standing on my porch. But when you looked at me through the storm door, and Ifeltyour stare like it had reached inside me and grabbed hold of my heart, that’s when I really knew. I also knew I was lying when I promised to keep my eyes open and my heart closed. For a shot at you I was willing to try, but I knew it wasn’t going to work.”

“That was fucked-up to?—”

“No part of how we got here is fucked-up. We had to travel whatever path we needed to travel.” She fell silent for a moment, then worry etched into her eyes when she said, “I can’t go back.”

She didn’t have to say more, I knew what she meant. And I was pleased as hell she felt that way.

“Neither can I.”

“So we’re doing this?”

“By doing this you mean I’m gonna stop being a dumbass and start working to make this worth it for you so you don’t kick my ass to the curb.”

“It’s already worth it.”

Fucking shit, that felt good.

“I knew that no lube one-liner was a winner,” she noted and smiled.

Aria could be sexy, she could be funny, she was always beautiful, but there were times when she was so fucking cuteshe made me want to kiss the hell out of her. And since I could, my hand shot up, tagged her around the back of the neck, and I pulled her down to do just that.

It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since I’d kissed her, but it had felt like a lifetime. With every glide of her tongue, she erased a little more of the sting of my past until all I could taste was her.

Beautiful, sweet, funny, cute Aria.

Nothing tasted better.

The alarmI’d set on my phone woke me up. Since Aria had fallen asleep straddling me, with her face tucked into my neck, chest to chest, this meant the alarm woke her up, too.

“No,” she grumbled and shoved closer.

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