Page 189 of Falling Backwards
I put my mouth near her ear, let my voice drop to a hush.“That doesn’t matter one goddamn bit.”
Her fist goes tighter around my shirt.
Her free hand fumbles to grasp my arm.
Her bare waist is now fully inmygrasp because I feel like I need to hold on to her too.
I say, “You also overwhelm me because you inspire me to be betterandyou make me feel like I’m already enough, at the same time.”My lips shift kisses onto her jaw, her cheek.“And I didn’t think you could do that to me anymore either.”
She goes quiet.
The more seconds tick by, the stronger I feel that there are all kinds of things she wants to say back.
In the end, she just asks, “Am I better at it than the old me too?”
Her face has still been tilted into my hand, so I nudge it upright again.As her eyes drift open, our gazes meet, and I see more teardrops have gotten loose.
“Better than the old you,” I confirm, “and better than everyone else.”
As I’m drying her cheeks anew, something worrying occurs to me.
I ask her, “Have I said too much?Or done too much?Have I upset you?”
Sniffling, she gives a small shake of her head.“No.”
Only when my muscles loosen do I realize they were going tense.I blow out a breath.“Okay.Good.I hate it when you get so upset you cry.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.I’ve never met a guy who didn’t think a weepy girl was awkward.”
I frown and wipe at where a teardrop has slipped down her neck.“No, it’s never been awkward for me.The fact that something has shaken you up so badly is what I’ve always hated.And what I hate the most is when it’s my fault somehow.”
She blinks wetly at me, looking surprised for some reason.Then her expression shifts into one I can’t read.
“What?”I ask.
All she does is study my face.She seems to be thinking hard about—
The push of her lips against mine is sudden and firm.Heartfelt, like the wrap of her arms around me.
I push into the kiss, too, and get my arms wound around her in return, and the one that’s still under her shirt causes the fabric to bunch up.It gets a tiny gasp out of her despite our kiss, but she doesn’t recoil like she did that time in her bed.She only gathers me in the best she can.
Her name is on repeat all throughout me, in time with my heartbeat.
“Okay,” she breathes out unsteadily, her lips slipping away from mine, “you’re sweaty, but you’re not disgusting at all, so maybe that really can be true for me too.”
I promise her, “There is no‘can be.’ It justistrue.Trust me.”
She hugs me tighter.
Meets me in another kiss.
Whispers, “I trust you,” in a way that speaks of more than mere talk of sweatiness.
I love it.
And damn it, do I love the breathy sound she makes when I angle my lips down beneath her jaw.But I only kiss her here once before my mouth helplessly lowers to her neck, and after another single kiss, I find I can’t keep my tongue to myself, and my slow taste of the scar in her skin makes hermoanandputs heat in my spine—
I think I catch my name on her breath now.Her embrace of me sharpens with the dig of her fingertips into me, and then that fierce press is gone…and….
