Page 48 of Best In Class
“Baby, I hurt you. I know you didn’t mean it.”
“But?”
“Let me rephrase. I knownowthat you didn’t mean it.Then…it played on my insecurities.”
I had been cruel to him, told him that I was a Steele and there was nothing he and I could have because he wasn’t a social peer. He’s right, I had been hurt, but my behavior had been reprehensible.
“I am sorry, Dom. I should never have?—”
“You don’t apologize for feeling what you feel,” he cuts me off.
“Do you…ah…forgive me?”
He flashes me a smile that makes my heart flip. “Moonbeam, you’re perfect, do you know that? In my heart, there’s nothing to forgive. Just space—space that belongs to you, always has.”
My breath catches. He means it. Every word of it. And that, more than anything, undoes me.
I look out of the window, feeling, oh so much. The hurt of the past. The joy of the now.
“Remember when Mama caught us?” he says, breaking through my thoughts.
I can still feel the embarrassment of Dom’s mama finding us in his room, in his bed, making out. We were nineteen. He was home from Cornell, and we’d been desperate for each other.
“I still cringe when I think about it,” I admit.
“She asked me after you left if I loved you,” Dom tells me.
I wait.
“I told her more than anyone, even her.”
My heart clenches, stops, then starts to beat harder and faster.
“Dom—”
“I do, Luna, love you.”
I shake my head. I don’t know what to say.
He glances at me, long enough to hold my gaze, before getting back to the road. “Give us a chance, Moonbeam.”
I swallow. “A chance?” I whisper.
I’ve got a reputation for being a tough bitch, a bad ass, strong, confident—and yet, with Dom, I’m a girlie girl, waiting for the boy I like to pay attention to me. And he’s been doing that. As Stella always teases him, he follows me around. It’s sweet, even though I pretend it’s irritating.
“Yes, baby.” He grips my hand in his as he looks straightahead at the road. “Please. Let me show you how much I love you.”
I want to be brave and take what the man I love is offering. There has been no other man who’s made me feel safe and seen, who inspires me, who makes me think I can be more than I am. There’s been no other man who makes love to me with a hunger that matches my own. There’s been no other man I can imagine having a family with. It’s Dom. It’s always been Dom.
“What if you cheat on me again?”
“Not going to happen.”
“You’re driving…this is not the place for this.” I lean back in the plush leather seat and close my eyes. “Let’s just get through this trip.”
“And then?” he urges.
I can feel his eyes on me. There’s demand in them, a pull asking me to open my eyes…and my heart.
