Page 33 of Fall Into Me

“I hate you,” I told him.

“So you’ve said,” he grumbled, running a hand through his hair and tugging on the strands.

“Would hate for you to forget it,” I said back.

“How considerate of you.”

God, he was infuriating. Just like a jack-in-the-box, my right hand flung up between us with my middle finger already extended. I hadn’t consciously intended to do it, but it happened all the same, and I can’t say I was mad about it.

Yep. Still very,verytherapeutic.

We both looked at my hand. His face registered a very small amount of amused shock, and then his own hand was raised between us, mirroring the same gesture.

Fane was flipping me off.

He added one of those smirks that teenage girls deliver that could raise anyone’s blood pressure so high they would fear for the health of their heart.

“Gah! Why are you evenhere?It could have been anyone else! Whyyou?”I yelled, all pretense of trying to manage my own sound levels out the window.

That was the precise moment that I heard Mags call out from the back door of the café, which Fane had left wide freaking open.

“Everything okay out here?” She sounded…not worried but hesitant.

Everything flashed before my eyes.

The look on my dad’s face when small-town gossip got back to him about how I’d fabricated an entire relationship. I could see the confusion on my mom’s face. They’d both look at me like they had no idea who I was. Like someone who could lie to them for two whole years during the hardest part of their lives without a second thought. Causing them to worry even more when my exact mission had been to remove it entirely.

I’d even gone on a fake holiday to the next town over for a whole week and ordered anI Heart Australiashirt and one of those hats with corks hanging around the brim from Amazon to bring back for them.

My dad wore that hat for amonth.A month!

So, I did the only thing that made sense at that moment. I launched myself at Fane. My arms wound around his neck, my feet no longer touched the ground, and my eyes were already closed by the time I pressed my lips to his.

* * *

Fane didn’t even stumble at the way I threw myself at him.

It didn’t even take him a second to react before his arms were wrapped around my back, pressing me closer into him.

The way he kissed me was zero to a hundred. Like nothing had changed. Every single thing about him like this was achingly familiar.

He pulled back just for a second, eyes darting to the open door where Mags stood, then back to me. The smallest hint of a smile pulled up one side of his mouth.

“Is she still there?” I was breathless and wholly focused on the shape of his lips, determined to avoid his eyes. At seeing them this close. The flecks of green and warm, honey brownthat would greet me like old friends I had cut off with an Irish goodbye.

Fane’s only response was pulling one of his arms from around my back and sinking his fingers into my hair. Fisting the loose black strands, tilting my head back, and kissing me again.

There was no rush in the way his lips moved against mine. In the way his tongue pushed into my mouth and seized every last bit of control that I had. I got lost in it. In him.

In the bite of pain on my scalp from his grip. In the way I could feel the rapid beating of his heart pressed against my chest, joined in perfect synchronization with the beat of my own.

Every swipe of his tongue unleashed a memory I had carved out and locked away.

The memory of his stubble against my cheek, the sound of his husky groan as his fingers dug into the side of my ribs. The feeling of his erection, rock-hard and straining against his jeans between us. I couldn’t have even pretended not to feel the length of him through my flimsy sundress, even if I wanted to.

Which I did. I wanted to ignore it, ignorehim.

I rememberedeverythingabout him, and it reminded me with a jolt that though he may want me likethis, that had never been the problem.

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