Page 96 of Unsteady

Shame.

That’s one I’m all too familiar with.

“Sadie,” I whisper, my hand raising just slightly. Her pretty gray eyes flicker up to me, a softness in her eyes appearing as she takes me in. It makes my chest tight. “Why did you come here, Gray?”

Her throat works, the slim column of it distracting enough that I cup her jaw, letting my fingertips dip to the skin along her neck.

“I don’t know how to say it,” she grumbles, a little half-whine, half-sob. It brings a strange smile to my face and she mimics it just slightly.

“Just try.”

It takes a long moment, but she does.

“Besides Rora,” she starts. “No one has ever done anything like that for them. For me. No one cares—and I… I’m sorry. That text—”

My brow furrows, but I can’t bring myself to care much about it when I’m touching her now. Who cares what she thought weeks before? She isn’t pushing me away now.

“I think I was trying to keep you away from all that.”

“All what?”

“My life.” She shrugs, and then her hands grasp my wrists. “And you still just…” Again she finds no words, but she shakes her head and looks up at me now in a way I’m not sure I’ve seen from her before.

She looks… wonderstruck. Like she’s seeing something for the first time. There is still that softness that’s new to her features and I desperately want to put this moment in a snow globe so I can see this, us in this semi-embrace, forever.

Too soon though, she pulls back.

“So I just…” A little dazed, she shakes her head. “Sorry. I didn’t come for this—I-I came to apologize, and to saythank you. So, thank you.”

I can feel her slipping away, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to do this dance with her anymore, because it doesn’t matter if I never see her again. I won’t be able to stop wanting her.

“Sadie?”

She spins back to me, the divot forming against her brow. “Yes?”

“I don’t want you to keep me away, okay? I want to be part of your life.”

“No,” she chokes out. “You don’t, Rhys. It’s messy and way too complicated.”

“I don’t care.”

“Rhys.”

“Sadie, if you told me you were joining the Witness Protection Program, I’d ask where are we going and can I pull off a beard.”

It makes her laugh, and the sound turns my skin to gooseflesh.

“Gray?”

“Yes?”

“I want to kiss you.”

If she rejects me again, I think I can take it. In fact, I worry more that if she lets me, that dark thing that lives in me will just want to take and take and take from her. I worry I will be too much, and yet still not enough.

Sadie doesn’t speak anymore, just deep breaths, mouth parted as we stare at each other.

And then, she jumps for me.

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