Page 65 of Sometimes You Stay

“Is it okay if I kiss you now?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“Ha. I’m not sure if I am. I just know that I can’t not.”

Nibbling on the corner of her lip, she said, “I know exactly what you mean.”

Apparently that was all the invitation he needed to close the distance between them, pressing his mouth to hers. His lips were tentative at first, as though those nerves he’d mentioned were taking the lead.

But after a moment, he sighed into her, all hesitancy abandoned.

She sank against him, every inch, from her toes to the top of her head, tingling like she’d been dunked in a seltzer bath. Only sweeter and stronger.

Letting go of his shirt, she grabbed his shoulders, then the back of his neck and his chin, running her fingers acrossthe stubble on his face. She couldn’t get enough of the stiff texture against her hands, fascinated by the way it changed as she shifted directions. A muscle in his jaw jumped, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t smile. He only groaned. Kind of the way Joe Jr. did when she scratched him behind the ears.

Which made her wonder if Finn liked to have his head scratched too.

Releasing his chin, she sank her fingers into his butter-soft hair and ran her nails along his scalp. Finn nearly melted into her as he released a low sigh. It was a sound of pleasure, of stress leaving the body. So she did it again.

This time, his muscles went taut, his arms cinching around her and picking her up off her feet. He shifted his head for a better angle and kissed her harder, hungrier. Like a man who had been starving. Like he had no intention of ever being hungry again.

And in the moment, she refused to think about what that meant.

She could only give what he was taking and take what he offered. Which was all of himself. He poured out his whole heart and held nothing back.

When he finally set her down into the shifting sand and pulled away, he let out a stuttering breath. She was somehow both empty and utterly full.

Finn bent his finger, running a knuckle across her highly sensitive cheek. “Cretia.” He whispered her name, almost like a prayer. Like he was prayingforher.

No one had ever prayed for her. At least not to her knowledge. Her mom had watched her prayers as she knelt by her bed in those early years. Before. Before the illness had takenover. Before her mom’s mind had become as cluttered as their home. Before the piles had threatened more than their sanity.

“I’ve wanted to do that since the day at the harbor. Since the moment I picked you up and carried you to the inn.”

She didn’t know how she could be full and somehow accept more, but she did. Her cup overflowing. Too many emotions to name, and all of them centered on the man before her. The one she should never have met. The one who was rapidly becoming far too important.

Then he uttered three little words that flushed out everything he had poured into her. “You could stay.”

She shook her head, unable to meet his gaze, unable to stop the trembling in her hands. “I can’t. I won’t be like her.”

“Like who?” He reached for her arm but she stumbled back, her eyes locked on a blue shell poking out of the sand.

Lips twitching and chin jerking, she let out a soft sigh. “I can’t be her.”

Matching her retreating steps, he tangled their fingers together and pulled her back into his embrace. “You don’t have to be anyone but you.”

Her eyes drifted shut. She was warm. She was protected. She was safe.

And suddenly there was nothing to hold back the truth.

“I had to leave my home.”

“What?”

“That’s how I became a content creator. I had to leave. I didn’t know we were different when I was a little kid. I didn’t realize that other people lived differently.”

He nodded slowly into the crown of her head, his arms squeezing slightly.

“I guess I remember there being a time when things werenormal. My abuelita lived with us when I was young, and as long as she was there, she kept after my mom, kept up with her. But she died when I was seven, and after that, my mom gave up. I think she’d lost too many things. Her dad was killed in a car accident when she was young. My dad was her high school boyfriend, and he took off when he found out she was pregnant. And then after her mom...”

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