Page 92 of Broken Pieces
I picture it all.
My lips part, and I don’t realize it until I drag my teeth across the bottom one.
I press my thighs together; the ache blooms fast.
The water stops.
I should pretend I’m asleep when he comes out here.
But the bed smells too much of him. It’s in the pillow, in the blanket. That grease and grit smell that clings to his skin after a full day under the hood of some busted engine. It crawls under my skin and settles there. And because of that, I can’t fucking focus.
All I want is to bury my face in his pillow and breathe him in until my head stops spinning. Until something inside me quiets and I remember who the fuck I was before he cracked something open in me.
But I can’t.
If I do that, I might not come up for air.
This is totally a fucked-up situation, and I’ve got no clue what the hell I’m doing here. My body’s a mess of want and warning signs. I can’t tell if I should bolt for the door or curl deeper into these sheets and lose myself in the way they still smell of him.
Zane gave me a place to land tonight, and yeah, I’m grateful. I am. But it doesn’t fix shit. Tomorrow, I’m back in freefall.
And Cassie… fuck, Cassie should’ve stayed out of it. She should’ve kept her damn mouth shut.
She had no fucking right to go behind my back. To call Zane. Acting like I’m too broken to handle my own mess as if I need saving.
How the hell did she even get his number?
Jesus.
My eyes drop back to the numbers on the page.
I stare until they blur, until my mind stops spinning. I tell myself to focus.
Zane walks out, dragging a hand through his damp hair, water still tracking down his chest. Grey sweatpants hang low on his hips, clinging to him in all the worst ways. His shoulders roll loose, that slow, dangerous swagger stamped into every inch of him. Bad boy without trying. Trouble without effort.
And then I see it.
The ink on his body.
The way it twists down from one shoulder, sliding over the curve of his chest, black against golden skin.
My eyes follow it before I can stop them.
I wonder if it’s new or if it’s always been there. All I know is I can’t stop looking.
He moves into the kitchen, and I track every step, pulse climbing with every shift of muscle under his skin. He grabs a glass from the sink and fills it with water from the tap. His movements are slow and unhurried. He has no idea of the effect he has on me seeing him like this.
Or maybe the asshole fucking does. Maybe he always has.
He’s beautiful in the worst way. The kind of beautiful that carves you open from the inside out. That leaves bruises in places no one else can see. He smells of danger and something darker. Something that pulls even when you know better. The beautiful you fall into with no warning and no way out.
A girl could lose herself in him without even meaning to. And I’m already halfway there.
Zane drinks, water dripping from his fingers. He tips the glass upside down on the sink, then turns. His eyes catch mine from across the room, and I feel it everywhere.
That stare drags.
It doesn’t skim. It lands. Lingers. Tracks over my face, down my neck, until it hits my chest.
