Page 137 of Attached At Heart
“I know that now, baby.” I released her wrist and cupped her face with both hands. My gaze dropped to her lips because hell, I wanted to kiss her.Fuck, I wanted that so bad, but I also wanted other things. Wanted to know other things, wanted to hear other things. “But why didn’t you askme? You said you’d always known I would marry you. You should have come to me from the beginning.”
She bit down on her lip, chewing on it for a moment before admitting, “Because I think I always knew.”
Tears had welled along her lash line, slowly leaking down her cheeks. I brushed them away with my thumbs. “Knew what, sweetheart?”
“That it was inevitable what it would do to me to be married to you. And I didn’t know…I didn’t know how you felt. I was scared, okay? Scared to feel something real when I’d run away from it for so long.”
Now I knew how she felt earlier, when she’d learned a new reality about us. And I understood why that had knocked the wind out of her to the point where she hadn’t known what to say right away. Because I was speechless. A part of Delaney had always known we were inevitable? Fucking speechless.
But I did have one question. One question that everything depended on.
“Are you still scared?”
“A little.” She exhaled a shaky breath. “It’s not you. It’s them. It’s reframing what family and love means and seeing it through your eyes. It’s just new for me, Blake. But today, I saw what it might look like.”
“I don’t blame you for being scared, Lane. We can take this one step at a time, okay?” I could do slow. As long as we were on the same page about the direction we were moving, I could do slow. “Let me keep showing you what love means, what love is. Let me prove to you that I can give you all of it, baby.”
“I want that,” she whispered, and hearing her agree so simply made me feel like I was soaring. “As long as you know this—me and you and this marriage—is real. It might be unconventional, but this is real for me.”
Holy hell.
Real. This was real. We were real.
Delaney London. Delaney London. Delaney London.
“Say that again,” I begged as my hands began to move, needing to feel every bit of her, assure myself that she wasn’t just a figment of my imagination and she was here in the flesh, saying all the things I’d always wanted her to say. “I want to hear it. I’m sorry you felt like I didn’t earlier. I’m so sorry. I want to hear everything you have to say. Everything. Say it, Lane. Please.”
My thumbs brushed over her mouth, her soft lips, wanting to feel the words as she spoke them.
“This is real, Blake.” More tears lined her lashes, making them glisten. “I love you, and this is real.”
Nothing in this world had ever felt as good as the shape of Delaney’s lips saying I love you.
“Oh my God,” I groaned, dropping my forehead to hers and bracing myself for an explosion. Because my heart was on the brink of one. Bending down, I scooped my hands beneath her legs, lifting her into my arms. She wrapped her legs around mywaist, clinging to me, and I felt her tears roll down my cheeks. “I love you, too. Baby, I have loved you since the very moment you came into my life. It’s unbelievable how ingrained you are in me. You areeverythingto me, Lane. Absolutely fucking everything.”
Delaney nodded, accepting my words as the truth, her forehead pressing against mine as we stayed locked together.
“You moved here because you couldn’t watch me marry someone else,” she whispered, her voice wavering through gasping breaths, “but you didn’t realize I’ve only ever been attached to you, Blake. I’ve only ever been drawn to you, only want to be with you, only ever want to call you on a hard day, only look foryouin a crowd. It’s no wonder I spotted you so easily that day in the SCMC lobby. I just didn’t realize…for so long, I didn’t fully realize what that meant.”
Her confession stunned me into silence. She exhaled, and I inhaled her breaths, if only to collect that much more of her.
“Why do you think I moved to Boston?” Delaney tipped her head, and her lips grazed mine as she spoke things that made my head spin faster, my heart beat louder, even louder than the storm crescendoing outside. “There were reasons. So many reasons I told myself. Reasons I told you. But there was only ever one real one.You.It’s because of you, Blake. It’s because I didn’t know how to be in a place where you weren’t. It’s because the only heart I’ve ever been attached to is yours.”
“Fuck, Delaney.” I tightened my grip on her, reeling from her words. “I don’t want to interrupt you if there’s more you want to say, but I really fucking need to kiss you. Tell me I can kiss you now, baby.”
She nodded, and my mouth captured hers in seconds. Goddamn, this mouth. This mouth and all the things it had just said. It tasted so fucking good. Those words tasted so good. She tasted so good—unbelievably real and perfect andgood. Fuck, I’d never get over it—never get over her. This kiss was the kissI’d always wanted, and it was better than I ever could have imagined.
Delaney moaned, and my whole body, my whole being, was at her command.
“The answer is always going to be yes,” she whispered against my lips. “For you, it’s always yes.”
Every time she opened her mouth, she opened my world just a little bit more. I didn’t know existing could feel like this until right in this moment.
“Only for me, right?” I gasped, not needing the reassurance but wanting to hear it anyway.
“Only for you,” she murmured before I slanted my lips over hers again and got lost in the feel of them. My tongue dove into her mouth, tasting and exploring and never wanting to come up for air. Especially not when she was kissing me back in the exact same, greedy way—like she would never get enough.
But then her body started writhing against mine as I held her, and I knew she needed more. Fuck,Ineeded more.
