Page 31 of No Save Point

His throat bobs, his fingers twitch, but he doesn’t answer. He’s waiting, because he needs me to say it. I move closer, let my voice drop lower, let the words come out slower, steadier, no hesitation, no hiding, no pretending I don’t know what this is anymore. “You think I don’t know how crazy you are about me?”

Carter inhales sharply. His body goes completely still, like he wasn’t expecting me to say it. I hold his gaze, like I just completely ruined whatever fragile control he had left.

Maybe it’s not the ideal timing but fuck, I like it. I like knowing this isn’t just in my head, that I wasn’t imagining the way he looks at me, the way he’s looked at me since the moment I got here, the way he’s looking at me now, like I’m the most important thing in the goddamn world to him. I wet my lips, my voice barely above a whisper now. “You think I don’t feel the same?”

Carter blinks, exhales hard, his entire body tensing like he’s two seconds away from closing the space between us, from saying something that neither of us can take back.

I don’t stop him. I don’t move away. For the first time since I got here, for the first time since I met him in person, since I looked him in the eyes, since I realized how fucking deep I’ve already fallen, I don’t want to.

14

Carter

Oh, fuck.Her words are still hanging in the air, wrapping around me, sinking into my skin, curling into my bones like a match dropped into gasoline. My body frozen in place like I can’t quite believe what just came out of her mouth.

She wasn’t teasing, wasn’t trying to get a reaction just to laugh at the way I’d stumble through it, she was dead serious.

Now I’m sitting here trying to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to handle that. I drag in a sharp breath, push up from the couch, and start pacing before I even realize I’m moving.

If I stay sitting right next to her, staring at her, trying to figure out if I actually heard what I think I did, trying to understand how the fuck I got this lucky? I might actually lose my goddamn mind.

The living room feels too small, too hot, too suffocating with all the things I want to say but don’t know how to. I scrub a hand down my face, dragging my fingers through my hair, exhaling sharp, fast, my nerves completely fucking fried.

“You can’t just—” I stop mid-sentence, shake my head, start again. “You’re really saying this now?”

Haven is still sitting there, still watching me, entirely too calm when I feel like my entire fucking world just flipped upside down. One of her brows lifts, and that little amused tilt to her mouth should not be making my brain short-circuit right now. “Is there a better time?” she asks, voice all teasing, but I can still hear the weight of it underneath.

I let out a rough laugh, more breath than sound, more disbelief than amusement. “No, just—” I pace a few more steps, then turn back toward her, my hands braced against my hips like that’s going to somehow ground me in this moment. “You’re telling me you don’t hate me? After everything? After Tate, after me not telling you, after this entire night?”

She tilts her head slightly, considering, and my chest squeezes so fucking hard it’s physically painful. “Do I think you should’ve told me?” she muses, tapping her fingers against the couch cushion. “Yeah, obviously.”

I brace for it, waiting for the inevitable ‘but.’

“But,” she continues, smirking now. “You’re clearly already punishing yourself for it, so…”

I exhale hard, dragging my hands through my hair again, my body still too wired, my heart still hammering like it hasn’t caught up to the fact that I’m not about to get ripped to shreds.

She doesn’t hate me, she fucking likes me. I force myself to breathe, try to settle the fact that I am barely holding it together. My body, it’s reacting accordingly. The second I drop back onto the couch, it hits me, this rush of heat, this tension in every muscle, this sharp, too-tight feeling that makes my brain stall out completely. She just admitted she feels the same. My body is way ahead of my brain in deciding what to do about it.

That’s the exact moment Tate decides to make his entrance again. The second I hear the lazy, unbothered sound of his footsteps coming down the stairs, I already know I’m about to start regretting every decision I’ve ever made.

“Man,” Tate says as he steps into the living room, completely at ease, like we didn’t just have an entire conversation about him upstairs, like I haven’t spent the last hour trying to keep his existence from ruining everything. “I was really hoping for some yelling by now.”

Haven snorts, but I am still trying to breathe like a normal fucking person, like I don’t have a major fucking problem pressing against my jeans right now. I glance at her, half-praying she hasn’t noticed, half-panicking that she has, but she’s too busy looking at Tate.

He crosses his arms, leaning against the doorframe, watching us with too much interest. “You two look cozy. What’d I miss?”

I glare at him, fully prepared to commit a crime if he doesn’t leave.

Haven, meanwhile, leans back against the couch, “Oh, you know,” she says, throwing a glance at me, smirk widening when she catches how tense I still am. “Just processing the fact that I was tricked into spending nearly a year playing games with the world’s most insufferable asshole.”

Tate grins. “Ah, so you’re talking about me then.”

I groan, because this is my life now. My entire fucking life and it’s a goddamn nightmare.

Tate doesn’t just stand there and let the moment pass, of course he doesn’t. No, he leans in, settles against the doorframe like he has all the time in the world, like he’s waiting for an invitation to ruin my night.

I can already see it in the way his smirk deepens, in the way his eyes bounce between us like he’s clocking every single little thing he can use to get under my skin.

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