Page 66 of Pretty Little Lies

“Help me!” Reeve’s brows clash together at Vivian’s plea, and I shrug nonchalantly. She asked for it, and I seriously gave her more than one opportunity to let me go.

I was threatened.

Plus, she needed to learn a lesson. Us folks around here don’t take too kindly to getting touched.

“Holy shit…” Reeve gapes at me like I’m a ghost and that he can’t believe I’m here when he brought me in the first place. “You’re so fuckin’ hot.”

My lips heedlessly lift, and he jerks his head for me to follow him at the same moment a guy in a pale yellow polo runs to the back of the boat and leans over the steel railing, yelling out, “Oh my God,”before I hear a splash travel behind it.

Reeve enters a small room that looks like a mini bedroom with a sink and a small sectional bench with even a smaller table. The moment I’m in the room, Reeve shoves me against the wooden door, already ridding himself of the drinks in his hand.

I flick my gaze up to meet his hooped nose ring, the glinting of his hazel eyes, and that careless style of sandy blond hair that he’s always sporting.

“I want to erase that night,” he mutters, his hard body compressed into mine and I like the weight. The smell of the ocean coming off his skin and the warmth of him radiating into my pores. “I want to make it not exist. I want to make you mine.”

He doesn’t waste another moment, bending closer and pressing his soft lips against mine. Cupping my face and some of my neck, he runs his thumbs down my already heated skin. Torturously, he keeps the rhythm there, nice and slow, easy even.

Just like him.

My breathing hitches in need, the same moment he drops my face and laces our fingers together. Drawing both my arms over my head, he locks my wrists in one palm and drops his now free hand down my ribs.

“Every single night,” he mutters. “I wonder how bad it’ll get.”

“How bad what will get?”

“This.” The pads of his fingers flirt with the waistband of my shorts. “How crazed will I become? What sort of madness will take over me once I’ve experienced it all.”

“So…” I peer up at him, his eyes closed, his forehead pressed against mine as he slightly pants in despairing need. “Why haven’t you?”

“Because I want you practically begging for it.” Those piercing greens and browns flick open, sucking my next exhale. The intensity radiates off them, searing into my skin. “For it to be real.”

My lips part from the slight disbelief at his statement.

I hear him, I do.

Every meaningful word and the vulnerability that’s always fucking present as of late when he’s in front of me. I can’t say I’ve ever had someone look at me as he does. I feel as though I’m the most beautiful girl in the world and that he’d be lucky enough to have me.

That I’m worthy of such love.

After Matteo, I dabbled, but I didn’t date. I barely left my room for the first month, the house for two, I hung out with Levi, Hot Rod, and Juice and have been ever since. Tally on Travis as being a huge portion of being able to function as a human being and boys don’t and didn’t play a major occurrence in my life.

So—this—is a lot for me to take in. For me to believe. For me to form into an attachment that I can honestly not be afraid of.

Matteo fucked you up good, girl. He’s back for round two.

“What’s wrong?”

I blink, drawing Reeve back into view and staring at me, observing, learning every tic of mine and how I can psych myself out quicker than a burnout.

I’m a fucking mess emotionally, Reevie. I don’t want you to hurt me.

I also don’t desire for you to become collateral damage either.

“Your words are pretty,” I voice, my tone strained but light. “I like them.”

“I like you.”

I discharge a held puff of air because what’s life, what’sme,if I don’t start living? I’m better off with Matteo as his bitch if I keep this up.

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