Page 84 of You Were Always Mine
Kai
The wheel is slippery in my hands. I don’t know if it’s sweat or if I just can’t hold anything steady anymore, not after that. Not after her.
It was supposed to be a distraction. Break into the fairground, make her laugh, chase her through the dark until she forgot the way her eyes had been shining with tears in her room. I just wanted her to feel alive again, even if it was with me hunting her.
But then she said it.
I love you.
My chest hasn’t stopped caving in since. The words keep detonating inside me like I’m the one who’s about to shatter.
She’s quiet in the seat beside me, hair a mess from where my hands had been, lips swollen, thighs pressed together like she’s still trying to hold me inside her. And fuck—I want to reach over and drag her onto my lap allover again.
“Scar.” My voice comes out raw, broken, not the predator who dragged her over that fence, not the brother I’ve pretended to be. Just me.
She turns her head, and I swear my entire world tilts with it.
Her eyes catch the neon bleeding through the windshield. She looks tired, ruined, beautiful. “Kai…”
I grip the wheel tighter. Don’t say it again. Don’t break me worse than you already have.
And then she does. Soft, shaking.
“Do you… do you regret it?”
My stomach drops.
Her head is against the window, her breathing still uneven, my jacket wrapped around her shoulders like I can shield her from the very thing I’ve done to her. Streetlights cut across her face in flashes, and I should look at the road, but I can’t stop stealing pieces of her when I think she won’t notice.
She shifts as if the silence is eating her alive. “Do you regret it?” she whispers, so quiet I almost think I imagined it.
My grip on the wheel tightens until my knuckles ache. I should lie. I should tell her yes. That it was a mistake. She’s safe from me if I say the right words.
But I can’t.
“No,” I rasp, the word burning out of me like I’ve been swallowing it for years. “I don’t regret a fucking thing.”
Her head turns, eyes wide, wet, shining in the dark. I keep my stare on the road because if I look at her too long, I’ll pull over and ruin us all over again.
“I’d do it again,” I add, softer now, almost tender. “Every second of it. Every mistake. I don’t regret you, Scar. Not once. Not ever.”
The silence after that isn’t empty. It’s alive. Her breath hitches. My chest feels like it’s caving in, but for the first time I don’t feel like I’m drowning. I feel like I’ve finally told the truth.
Her hand is small but hot on my thigh, sliding higher, making it impossible to focus on the road. The sound of the zipper splitting open is louder than the hum of the engine, louder than the blood pounding in my ears.
“Scar…” My knuckles go white around the wheel, my jaw locked so tight I could snap my own teeth. “Don’t?—”
But then she’s there, her breath spilling over me, her voice soft but deliberate, the kind of whisper that kills.
“I don’t regret it either.”
My world detonates. The car swerves half a foot before I wrestle it straight again, headlights slashing through the dark. My cock is already heavy in her hand, and when her mouth seals around me, I almost slam my foot on the brake just to feel something other than the way I’m unravelling.
“Fuck—Scarlett—” Her name cracks in my throat, half-prayer, half-curse. I shouldn’t let her. I should pull over, shove her back, stop this madness before it burns us alive. But her tongue slides along the underside, her lips taking me deeper, and my resolve shatters in a single wet sound.
Every inch she swallows makes it harder to see straight, harder to breathe, harder to remember who the hell I was before this moment. I grip the steering wheel with one hand, her hair with the other, threading my fingers through until I’m tugging her rhythm, guiding her like she belongs there.
The road is a blur. The world is a blur. The only real thing is her mouth stretched around me, the filthy, obscenesounds filling the car, and the way my chest is tearing open because she said she doesn’t regret me.
