Page 85 of Choosing Forever
I chuckle and tip her chin up with the edge of my knuckle, making a show of examining her nose. “They’ll tell you the same thing I am. You might have a bruise in the morning and be a bit sore, but that’s it.”
“What were your credentials again?”
Lowering the shirt once I know the bleeding’s stopped, I stroke my finger from her chin to the edge of her jaw, enamoured with the pink that rises to her cheeks. The silence in this room is harrowing, not awkward. I find the thrill in it and listen for the sound of her breathing, finding it uneven.
“I’m sorry about this,” I say, inching into the space she’sunknowingly made for me between her parted legs. “She’ll want to apologize to you properly.”
Her pupils expand as they fall to my chest. “Who?”
“Abbie.”
The jerk of her head is clunky, as if she didn’t mean to do it.
“It was their idea for me to come.”
“I know.”
There’s a pause before she asks, “Should I have insisted that I didn’t?”
“Absolutely not.”
Her gaze flashes up to snare mine, holding it as if she’s scared I’ll dare look away now. The disbelief that I find so obviously gleaming in her eyes is a jerk to my system. A blatant reminder that I’m the cause of her caution. It’s all me. All the things I did and the words I never spoke. Every single unmade call and deleted email I’d written and rewritten for hours hunched over my desk.
My stupid, arrogant decisions that have led us here, unable to get back to what we were and who we should have always been together.
Those reminders are why I’m here, though. They’re why I’m pushing past the roadblocks Delaney has put up between us, as if they would ever stop me from getting to her. This woman is my person. She’s the one I was always meant to be with, even with the decade of distance that’s grown between us. It doesn’t matter and never has.
I’ll earn back her trust and, eventually, her love because I won’t give up until she’s mine again. My family, best friend, soulmate. I want it all, no matter what it takes.
“I want to take you out, Elle. On a real date,” I declare.
She doesn’t pull away from me like I’m half expecting her to. Instead, she lowers her eyes to where our legs have begun to touch. Knee to knee with me, she says, “It’s Delaney.”
“Fine, Delaney. Let me take you on a date.”
“I thought we were supposed to be healing a friendship,” sheargues, but it’s weak, almost like she doesn’t have the energy to keep fighting but feels like she needs to.
“We can do both, can’t we?”
“I haven’t forgiven you.”
“And you don’t need to have. I’m not done earning that yet.”
I suck in a ragged breath when she brings her fingers to my side, the pressure almost too light to feel but still searing. Electricity pounds through me, frying my nervous system as I hold completely still.
The round edges of her nails run across my flesh before the pads of her fingers press down. A shiver rocks me hard enough that I lose my balance and fall forward against her. She leans into my body, whether by accident or intentionally, and I shut my eyes while my fingers curl into a fist on the table.
Her forehead meets my chest, holding there as soft puffs of air blow across my goosebumped skin.
“What are you doing, Delaney?” I ask roughly, my body more alive than it’s been since the day she left me.
“I don’t know.”
“Look at me.”
She rolls her head side to side, not removing her forehead from my sternum.
“Please,” I croak.
