Page 123 of Right Side of Paradise
The way he steeled his voice fractured my battered heart, and the way his heart rate quickened under my cheek made a lump take shape in my throat.
“No, I would never leave you.”
He settled his hands at the small of my back, kneading away some tightness there, his slumberous gaze on me the whole time.
“You scared me.”
I only knew he said those three words because I was watching his lips. His voice was so soft—so guarded—I would have missed it if I blinked too long.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“I know, sweetheart.” He tried to smile, but it never really formed. There was too much caution in his expression to fully relax. “I’m not tryna downplay what you’re feeling, but you gotta check in with us.”
His hands glided over my back. I was wearing one of his t-shirts that hit me mid-thigh, but from this position the cotton was bunched around my hips.
Christian fingered the hem. “You know I spend too much time in my head to deal with silence from you,” he added, a thread of teasing slipping through his patient tone.
I laid my palms flat against his chest and rested my chin there to peer at him.
“I know, I’ll do better.”
Warmth swept across his features, and his smile made me smile. For the first time in days.
Sighing, I spread my legs so I was straddling his waist instead of awkwardly laying on top of him. “I don’t know why it feels like somebody just broke my heart.”
“Because she did. Everybody knows you and Soul have cotton candy hearts.”
“What?”
“Soft as fuck,” he clarified, smirking when I muffled my laugh against his skin. “Certain shit really isthat deepto y’all. But cut yourself some slack. I know you wouldn’t be this hurt if what she said wasn’t heartbreaking.”
Thiswas why Christian was my safe haven. He was just as selective with his words and as soft spoken as me. But he could talk me off a cliff with a single word. He was always in my corner. My quiet protector, and the man I trusted with my first time because I knew he’d be gentle in all the ways that counted.
And I was right.
That night revealed how gentleallof them were, but I still had no regrets choosing Christian.
Which made my mother’s words sting even more.
These men laid the world at my feet when I woke up every morning. There was nothing I couldn’t ask them for.
Iwas the one who tried to make it a solely physical relationship, and the man underneath me right now was the reason that failed before it could ever start.
They wanted me as much as I wanted them. Forever. I never questioned that, and my mother not letting me explain cut me deep.
A vibration disrupted the quiet, shaking the nightstand. The phone I’d fallen asleep clutching was there with the earbuds I fell asleep with too.
Reaching over, I picked it up so it wouldn’t wake Soul.
It was wild how much I wanted the name on the screen to be my mom’s.
Disappointment didn’t get to settle long before I rushed to stand up.
“Shit, it’s Lyric.” I paced reading her message.
Lyric:
hey girl, I just got to the shop. Let me know when you’re on the way, I’ll grab us iced matchas from up the road
