Page 87 of The Escape Plan

When my voice cracks over the last word of the song, it’s like I’m coming out of a trance, coming up for air.

I blink my eyes open in something akin to shock.

I’m peaceful for a moment. Calm.

But when I look through the glass, my stomach drops.

Ezra’s standing there, looking at me with a slightly shellshocked expression. But I pay that no attention because my focus homes in on Keeley’s departing figure.

She’s leaving.

Was it too much? Did I say too much, somehow violate the unspoken terms of whatever this is that’s undeniably blooming—growing—between us?

I swallow thickly. Set my guitar on the guitar stand next to me. Have I chased Keeley away? Let my feelings pour out of me so freely that I scared her into escaping?

The door to the live room flies open, and a streak of black moves across the room so fast, it’s a blur.

And then, Keeley Roberts—quite literally—launches herself into my lap, wrapping herself around me like a little spider monkey.

I barely have time to register the abject relief that washes over me—nor Ezra’s eyeroll before he steps out of the control room—as I pull her into my arms, holding her as tightly as she’s holding me. I breathe in the sweet scent of her skin, her hair, and relish her presence. Her closeness.

She didn’t leave when I showed my cards, exposed myself.

In fact, she came closer.

“Beckett,” Keeley says, her voice wobbly and choked as her hands fist in the back of my t-shirt. She looks up at me, her big blue eyes rimmed with tears. “That was?—”

She doesn’t get a chance to finish whatever she was going to say because I’m already kissing her, tangling one hand in her hair as I pull her as close as I can.

The kiss is not eloquent or careful or measured or controlled. It’s an unraveling of all these things, an explosion of sensation that sears through my body. My lips meet hers in a fervent, frenzied rush of sweetness and heat, the salty taste of her tears mingling with the mint on her breath, her fingertips digging into my skin like she’s clinging to me for dear life as I take the kiss deeper.

If my song told Keeley how I feel about her, then this is how Ishowher.

I hold nothing back, kissing her lips, her face, her neck, losing myself in every single sensation that isher, committing to memory how she tastes, feels, smells. I nip at her bottom lip and then swallow the whimper that escapes her mouth as my lips close over hers again.

It’s like I’ve unlocked some inner caveman-like instinct inside myself. A primal, almost feral, possessiveness of her that meshes with an unparalleled cherishing of her.

You’re beautiful,I tell her with my hands as they tighten around her hips.

You’re more special to me than I could ever tell you,I say with the hot kiss I press against her pulse point, my own pulse picking up as I feel hers jump beneath the touch of my lips.

You’re everything I want, everything I never knew I needed,she moans as she threads her hands into my hair and almost desperately brings her lips back to mine.

When we finally pull apart, we’re both panting. I feel her heartbeat coursing through her like a drum, pounding in tandem with mine.

I press my forehead against hers, hands cupping her face as I struggle to catch my breath. “Sorry I cut you off mid-sentence.”

“That was incredibly rude, McCarthy,” she says on a breathy gasp, lips curling into a sassy smile I want to kiss right off her.

“It was,” I say solemnly, before I smirk. “But I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

“I’m surprisingly okay with that,” she murmurs.

“Out of interest, what were you going to say?”

She laughs, rocking her forehead against mine. “If you couldn’t already tell, I was a fan of your song.”

“I’m a fan of you,” I reply. I’ve turned into a walking romantic cliché, but I don’t care in the least as I kiss her again, more slowly this time. More deliberately.

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