Page 100 of Choosing Forever
I’m so high-strung that Delaney’s tight voice slips down my spine like a warm, electric touch. My cock stiffens before I shudder, my throat squeezing around a trapped groan.
The woman’s gaze grows hot on my face as she feels me move, taking it as a response to her when it isn’t. It really isn’t.
Her fingers run down my arm to clutch my elbow as she leans fully against the booth. The puffs of perfume hitting me are strong and cloudy, almost enough to turn my stomach.
“There’s no touching,” Delaney snaps, sounding closer now. “You can drop the hand now.”
“What? Are you the security here? Is that a real thing?”
My favourite laugh slashes through the air. “You’re lucky I’m not.”
The fingers holding me tighten to the point of discomfort. I give my arm a shake.
“I don’t see how this has anything to do with you, Delaney.”
It’s the wrong thing for this woman whose name I can’t find in my memory to say. But somehow, she manages to make it worse.
Suddenly, the hand on my arm disappears and finds my neck instead. I flinch back when the woman leans in over the booth and pulls me toward her with strength I wasn’t expecting.
Alarms fill my head as I reach out to push her away, needing her to back up before?—
Delaney appears in front of me. She shoves the woman away from me and, before I can speak to try and defend myself, brings her hands to my face and pulls me in for our first kiss in a decade.
32
DELANEY
I’ve imagined this moment.
Of finally feeling the familiar press of Darren’s lips against mine again, the same ones that stole my very first kiss all those years ago. I thought the only way I’d be here was in my bed, asleep and caught in the memories of our past. It was never supposed to happen like this. In a fit of anger and hurt and searing jealousy.
Yet here I am, unable to pull myself away like I know I should.
Darren doesn’t stay surprised for long. Before I can let what I’ve just done sink in, he’s caging me in his arms and kissing me back with a strength that threatens to sweep my feet out from under me. He’d hold me up if I did, and that certainty—that trust—keeps me in place, unable to fight my way free of him.
The noises from the field die to nothing as my brain latches onto our kiss and nothing else. It’s cliché, but the world could be burning, and I fear I wouldn’t be able to move. Something tells me that the only reason he would is to try and shield me from the flames.
I squeeze my eyes shut when my emotions bubble too high andtears build behind my eyelids. I release a choked breath against his mouth and push my hands behind his head, his hair soft against my palms. Fingers curling angrily, I inhale sharply and pull with a strength stemming from years of hurt and abandonment.
Darren hisses into my mouth but doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t tell me to stop or shove my hands free of his hair. He’s silent, deadly so, as I only manage to grow angrier. At him, at myself, at Sasha and the entire world for what it’s put me through. All of the loss and loneliness and bitterness that’s grown like an infestation in my heart.
I dig my teeth into his lip and then let it go at the same time I shove myself away from the booth. The loss of him is instant, burning so hot it’s cold in my chest. It’s so familiar that for a moment, I feel like I’ve gone back in time. Only instead of being a naïve twenty-one-year-old with a future stamped with his name, I’m ten years older and jaded.
“Delaney.”
His voice makes everything worse. I twirl around and bump into Sarah. She backs up, freeing us from contact before glaring at me, her thoughts obvious in her expression. It’s almost laughable that she’s still here, watching what I know will be a story told all over town by tonight.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
Darren comes toward me, following as the dry grass crunches beneath his boots. “Delaney, don’t go. Not yet.”
I know better than to look at him. One glance is all it would take for my resolve to disintegrate right now, and the last thing I need is to stay with him after what I’ve done. I need space. Distance. A chance to get myself together after losing exactly that.
Sarah stays far away from me as I abandon everything I brought and walk away from the booth. The heavy bronze buttons on my overalls clack as I increase my pace and avoid the eyes of everyone I pass. Mortification would be the best word forhow I feel when I hit Brody Steele’s shoulder and stagger over a step.
“Delaney?” he asks, a cautious hand reaching out to hold my shoulder, steadying me before falling away. The cowboy hat on his head shields his eyes from the sun, casting a shadow over both of us. “Are you okay?”
I’d rather have run into any other member of Darren’s friend group. Brody isn’t just one of Darren’s closest friends, but he’s a celebrity inside of Cherry Peak and to the rest of the world. I’ve never been able to mould the man he is now into the one he was when we were kids, and that’s kept me more . . . wary, I guess. He’s a stranger to me now.
