Page 117 of Lies Like Love

“You like me tough.” I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her close, grinding her over my lap. “And big.”

“Jude.” She moans, but she rolls her hips again, like the dirty girl she is just for me. “You’re trying to distract me.”

“Me trying to fuck you is never to distract you.” I circle her hips again and her eyes roll back. “It’s because your pussy is the paradise I belong in. I’ll fuck it when and where I want without needing any other reason.”

“Come on,” she pleads, forcing a pout from her perfect strawberry lips. “You promised no more secrets. Why were we at the bar?”

“Now who’s playing dirty?” I smack her on the ass, and she lets out a sweet little yelp.

“I learned from the best.”

Narrowing my eyes, I squeeze her ass in my hands and secretly love her comment. Me rubbing off on her might be my new favorite thing.

“So tell me.” Her voice is so quiet this time, the wind tries to carry it away.

And as we sit with her lips brushing mine, the only girl in the world who matters in my arms, I’m not sure why I’m still keeping secrets.

After yesterday, one thing became frighteningly clear, there are still forces bigger than us out there trying to tear us apart. But the difference between the seventeen-year-old idiot I was back then, and the man holding her now, is two things: I’m no longer afraid of what waits on the other side of this, and I won’t lose her to them again.

Reaching in my pocket, I fish out what I’m looking for. “Blaze hasconnections, as you so eloquently pointed out.”

She smiles at my comment.

“And I needed something specific, so he agreed to help me find it.”

Fel pulls back as I lift up the ring between us.

“You’d think green diamonds would be easier to find in LA. But on short notice, not so much.”

“Jude…” Her fingers skate over the emerald stone, seated on a simple platinum infinity band.

“You used to say your color for me was green. But I like to think it’s actually my color for you because no one sees you like I do Fel—through my eyes. And even on days where you think you’re a mess, or a product of what they made us, you need to know that’s not who you are to me. In my eyes, you’re the rarest, most beautiful green diamond. Shaped by their pressure. And instead of it destroying you, you grew more beautiful through the pain.”

Her fingers shake as they hover over the ring. Chest heaving. Her lashes blink and a tear drops between us.

I grab her hand and slip the ring onto her finger. “I don’t care if being with you is wrong, nothing feels more right. I meant what I said. We’re inevitable. I’m in love with you, and I’m done fighting this.”

Fel blinks up at me with tears pooling in her eyes so bright, and she’s never looked more beautiful. Freckles sprinkling her cheeks like every wish I’ve made she held in her heart, so they’d have a home.

“I love you too.”

“You better.”

She laughs at that. Free. Wild. Untethered.

“Fuck the rest of the world. You’re mine, Felicity Alcott. Please say I can be yours.” I hold her cheeks in my hands as tears start to pour. “Marry me.”

“Of course.” She stumbles on the words in a half laugh, and a half cry. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, I’m not joking.Youbetter not be.” She playfully shoves at my chest.

“Fuck no, I’m not.”

I pull her face to mine and kiss her lips. Taste her tears, her love, our sin. I let us bleed out together.

She wraps her body around me and kisses me with every bit of her soul.

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