Page 98 of Merry Me
He stepped even closer.
“But I won’t let you run this time. I’m not letting you go. I let you fly once because you needed to grow. But now you’re back. And this time, you’remine.”
I was shaking. With anger. With heartbreak. With the terrifying truth of how much I wanted to believe him.
“How do I know it won’t happen?” I whispered, my voice thin and cracked. “How do I know that one kiss on set, one late night in a trailer won’t spark something you didn’t see coming?”
His answer was a vow.
“Because I’ve seen what life is like without you,” he said, pressing his lips gently to my forehead, like I was fragile porcelain he didn’t dare drop. “And I’ll never live it again.”
The wind blew against the double doors that led out to the balcony, rattling the glass. But we didn’t move.
We were fire and storm and everything in between.
“I don’t want anyone else,” he whispered, the words slipping past my skin, carving straight into bone. “And no one else could ever touch what we had. What we still have. And if I have to tell you that every single day until you believe it, I will. I’ll break down every wall, every doubt, every scar you’ve tried to hide behind.”
I looked up at him, heart hammering, vision blurred with thetears I refused to let fall. I searched for the lie. For the thing he wasn’t saying.
There wasn’t one.
There was just Easton. Just his truth.
Just the two of us, suspended in the kind of moment you don’t walk back from.
The last breath before the fall.
And this time…I wasn’t sure I wanted to catch myself.
CHAPTER 19
EASTON
“Look at me,” I said, my voice thick and low, scraping like gravel and heat against the space between us. My hips pressed hers harder into the wall, pinning her there like I was afraid she’d slip through my fingers if I let up for even a second. My erection strained against my denim, throbbing where it pressed into the heat of her.
“No one will ever measure up to you,” I said, the words a rough promise between clenched teeth. “Not Vanessa. Not anyone. You hear me?”
Her breath hitched.
“You’re mine,” I said, slower now, my voice deepening like the words were dragged from the deepest part of me. “You’ve always been mine. And you always will be.”
Her lips parted, her eyes darkening with that beautiful mix of want and disbelief. Her fingers curled into my shoulders, nails digging through the thick knit of my sweater like she didn’t know whether to hold on or push me away.
“Easton,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “You don’t have to say that. I—I’m fine.”
“Stop.” The word came out like a growl.
I slid my hand up, fingers wrapping gently but firmly around the column of her throat, just enough pressure to make her gaspand tilt her head back. Her eyes fluttered closed for a beat, her body arching instinctively toward mine like she couldn’t help it. Like she didn’t want to.
“Don’t you dare pretend with me, Nat.” My voice was low and rough, thick with everything I hadn’t been able to say until now. “I saw your face out there. I know you’re not fine. But I’m telling you right now—no one else matters. You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted. You believe me?”
She swallowed hard, her eyes flickering with every emotion she tried to bury…fear, hope, want. Her lips trembled as she nodded, just barely. “I—I want to,” she whispered, her hands sliding up to frame my face, thumbs brushing over the stubble along my jaw with a reverence that gutted me. “It just…it reminds me of all the reasons I walked away to begin with. She’s…she’s gorgeous, and I’m?—”
“You’re everything,” I cut in, my voice fierce, shaking, alive. “You’re every late night I couldn’t sleep. Every word I wrote but never sent. Every breath that felt too heavy without you next to me.”
I kissed her before she could say another word, before doubt could steal the air between us. My lips crashed against hers, possessive and desperate and unrelenting, like I could pour all the years apart back into her in one breathless, soul-deep press of mouths. She moaned into me, her fingers curling at the back of my neck, holding me there like she needed the anchor.
I deepened the kiss, my tongue sweeping in, claiming her, my hand in her hair pulling her head back as I broke away to trail hot kisses down her jaw, her neck, my teeth grazing her pulse point.
