Page 16 of The Corner of Heartbreak and Forever
“You’re darn right I do.” Irritation surged within him. “You can’t seriously believe I ever wanted anything but to be with you. Itoldyou I’d wait for you. It wasyouwho said I’d be wasting my time.”
“Because I never wanted to make my lifehere!” She accentuated her statement by pointing at the ground.
“Right. So why are you angry with me?” He stepped closer, searching her eyes for a hint of what he was missing.
“Because youleft, Reed! You hightailed it out of here as fast as you could! You couldn’t leave for me, but someone or something made youfeelenough, orloveenough, or—” Her eyes glistened with tears, and she turned away.
“Grace…”
“Don’t.Is this what you wanted?” She faced him again, tears streaming down her cheeks, and his heart cracked open. “To see that you hurt me?”
“Of course not.” He reached for her, but she pulled away. “Gracie, stop. You’ve got it all wrong.”
She swiped at her tears. “It’s not hard to see the truth. You should take me home.”
He pulled her into his arms, resisting her struggles. “No. You can be as mad as you want, but I’m not leaving until you hear the truth.”
“I didn’t come with you tonight to relive everything.”
“Then why did you come with me?” he challenged, and when she stared him down without responding, he said, “I’ll tell you why, Grace. Because whatever we felt in that creek tonight is too big to ignore. We were kids back then, but we weren’t too stupid to know that this”—he tugged her tighter against him, and the air rushed from her lungs. Her fingers dug into his sides—“wasreal. First love or not, I’ve never felt anything like I did when I was with you. And when we kissed tonight?C’mon, Grace…”
He released her, but she didn’t let go, her eyes imploring him. His arms circled her again. “I didn’t leave for anyone else. It was the last thing I wanted to do. But Ihadto get out of here. Staying here was too hard. I saw youeverywhere. Every time I got in my car, it was your perfume I smelled, your laugh I heard. When I went to the creek, it was you I remembered splashing in the water with. I get why you left, why youneededto leave. You did the right thing, Grace. I know that now, but you took a piece of me with you, and I have tried to find that feeling again, but…”
“You haven’t found it,” she said in a voice full of wonder, as if she’d been chasing the same ghosts.
He shook his head. “Not once.”
“My heart broke when you left town. I know that’s not fair. I was going away to school anyway, but I thought—”
“Whatever it was, you thought wrong, Gracie.” He moved his hands up her back, bringing her even closer, leaving her no room at all. “You broke me when you left, even though you’d always said you were destined to be a city girl, and I knew you meant it. I wanted it for you, for all your dreams to come true. I expected it. But it still tore me apart.”
“It broke me, too. I just couldn’t admit it, or I’d never have left.”
“After you were gone, I couldn’t see two feet in front of myself without seeing you, and once I left for Michigan, all of that made it hard to come back and visit, which is a whole other story. We both loved and lost, and I know I promised I wouldn’t kiss you again, but I want t—”
She went up on her toes and pressed her lips to his in a surprisingly gentle, tentative kiss. Her tethered desire was a fierce aphrodisiac, and he slid his tongue along the seam of her lips. When she opened her mouth, he pushed both hands into her hair, intensifying his efforts. Their kisses turned messy and urgent, both of them giving and taking in equal measure. Everything else slipped away, until there was only him and Grace and their mind-blowing connection.
They came away as slowly as they’d come together. Grace’s hands slipped from his sides. One covered her mouth, and the other touched her stomach. Her gaze drifted around them as if she was as dazed by their powerful connection as he was.
“It’s still real, Gracie.”
She looked as conflicted as he’d felt when he’d first seen her. “I shouldn’t have…We can’t do this.”
He took her hand in his and said, “We can.”
“It can’t go anywhere,” she said half-heartedly.
He couldn’t stop the grin he felt tugging at his lips. “I can think of several places it can go.”
A nervous laugh slipped from her lips, and he was glad to see her smile.
“Reed…” She took a step back and looked at their joined hands. “I think you should take me back to my parents’ house.”
As her hand slipped away, he said, “Grace—” But his voice was lost as she headed for the truck.
The drive to her parents’ house was tense and quiet, each lost in their own thoughts. He parked in the driveway, and for a minute they sat in silence, reminiscent of those last days before they’d broken up. Old ghosts coming back to haunt. Back then Reed had been a boy on the cusp on manhood, about to have the rug pulled out from under him. He wasn’t that boy anymore, and there was no rug to pull.
He came around to the passenger side and opened Grace’s door. When she turned to step out, he took her in a slow, sensual kiss, the way she used to love. He felt her go soft against him, and maybe it made him a jerk, but he used the ability to read her body language to his advantage and took the kiss deeper. He kissed her until she was barely breathing, and then he continued making love to her mouth until she trembled in his arms. Only then did he draw away, leaving a trail of light kisses in his wake.
