Page 174 of Falling Backwards
Thoughts of conversation are blasted from my mind.He stops right front of me, making my breath catch—he gets my face in his hands and tilts it up, slanting in.
I push into the kiss without pause, as hard as he does.
Once again, the perfection of him with meshocks me.
I know it shocks him, too, by the way he shares in my staggered, kiss-ending gasp.
But he loses one cradling hand in the thick of my hair and sways into me, pressing his eager mouth to mine again.I’m with him on it.Our back-and-forth is warm and firm and grasping, just like our hands as we try to gather each other in, in, in by backs and waists; he crowds into me and I welcome it even as my shoulder blades and head knock against the wall I guess we’ve moved to.
I’m his.
It hits me at last and all at once.
It makes me clutch him even tighter as our mouths part on heavy breaths.His tongue grazes my bottom lip, asking for the deep kiss I want myself, so I slip us into it and we make almost the same sound of heated liking—his huskiness tattoos itself on me, something I instantly go weak in the knees for, something I want an infinite supply of.
I’ve never thought something like that before.
I’ve never felt like this with anyone else—not even younger Luke, because all of this is so muchbetter, so muchmore.
The earnest way he holds me in these kisses and in these moments with him makes me think he hasn’t felt like this with anyone else either.Makes me think I’m tattooing little bits of myself on him too.Makes me think it’s allmorefor him too.
I hope those things are true.God, I hope it.
I swear the air is sparking, crackling around us, as if to assure me they are.
My hands are under his hoodie, fisting his shirt.He somehow comes closer, urging me into the wall that much more, fingertips digging into my hair, my waist.
I’m yours, Luke,echoes in my head, throbs in my pressing lips, beats through my chest, flushes down my spine.I’m yours.Please don’t let me—
“Maggie,” he murmurs out of our kiss.“Maggie, fuck the fake relationship.Let’s be in a real one.”
The sudden words stun me.
And at the same time, they don’t.They fall right into place in my chest.
“A real one,” I repeat in a puff.
He nods.“I wanted to say it sooner, earlier, and now….I don’t want us to have to stop ourselves from doing what we’re doing—” his hand drags out of my hair so he can thumb at my lips, “—or from saying whatever we wanna say or from anything else we want with each other.I don’t wanna keep finding myself happy with you and then thinking I’m not supposed to feel that way.I just wannabehappy with you—I want us to just be happy witheach other.We make each other happy even if we didn’t think we could.So whether Kyle is finally backing off or not, I don’t want there to be an end to what we’ve been doing together.I want all of this to be thestartof….”
I’m not sure which of us started trying to kiss the other even with his thumb still on my mouth, but we’re giving in to it.It’s clumsy and stamping and sweet andsonot enough.
We don’t remedy that last thing, though.We both know there’s more to say.
Indeed, after another second, he goes on.“I don’t look at you and only see the girl I’m pretending to date, or the girl I dated in high school, or even the girl I’ve been at odds with.It’s gotten to where I look at you and see who youare, who you’vebecome,and damn it, Maggie, this is the version of you I want.I don’t wanna put on a show or even try to reclaim our good days from a long time ago.I wanna be who we are now and move ahead and build upnewgood days.”
As deeply as I feel all of that, the last bit stands out just a little bit more than the rest.
It sounds like he does very much feel the way I feel, but I still take a bolstering breath.
After I find the courage, I check, “And…what about the bad days from a long time ago?”
Seems like the question pauses our world.
I let each of us sit in the stillness, let us think about that for a second, before I press weakly, “Do we just…do we forget about them?Do we move on and leave them behind?”
In this silence, some part of me hums,That’s a stupid idea.You’ve considered it before and you know how fragile it is.Neither of you can just erase that pain.
I don’t want those thoughts, yet old bitterness tries to creep into me too.It whispers about betrayal Luke hasn’t asked forgiveness for.It prods at me for not apologizing for what I did wrong myself.
