Page 74 of Fall for Me

“Chelsea, wait,” he said. Gravel crunched under his feet as he followed me to it. I pulled on the door handle, but Seamus clapped his hand on the top of the door. “Please.”

“Move your hand.”

His arms were bracketed around me, but he dropped them, wordlessly.

I turned around, my face eye level with his chest. I looked up, but before I even met his eye, Seamus dropped to his knee. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his face against my stomach. “Don’t go,” he said, his voice muffled. “Please don’t fucking go.”

For a moment, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Then I brought my hands slowly to his head, feeling the cool softness of his hair against my fingers.

“He’s right,” I whispered. “I don’t know how to do this, and I’m only going to hurt you.”

When Seamus looked up, his face was so pained it was like a vice squeezing around my heart. “Then hurt me,” he said. “Destroy me, Chelsea. I don’t care.”

“You should care. You said you couldn’t lose Eli—”

“I don’t care right now. I only care about you.”

“I don’t know how to do anything but hurt. I don’t let anybody in. I close myself off so they can’t see—”

“Fine. So tell me something.” He stood up, shifting now so it was my hair in his hands, me looking up at him. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.”

I swallowed, my head reeling, my heart dangerously loose and close to free. “Sometimes I cry when it rains.”

He didn’t say anything.

“It sounds so stupid, so clichéd.”

“It doesn’t.” He didn’t say how strange that was, didn’t even look confused. Just waited.

“I like lakes, but I’m scared of the ocean—it’s so big and endless. I want to have kids, but I don’t know if I know how to love people properly. I still talk to my mom when I’m nervous or afraid and I still miss her so much. It’s like a gaping hole in my heart I don’t think will ever heal over.”

Seamus gripped my jaw gently with his hand, but once again, didn’t say anything. Didn’t reassure me that none of that was true, that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I felt my heart crack open, a rawness spilling out so shocking I didn’t know how to stop it.

“She was the only person who knew all of me and… and still loved me. That night I was in that crash with you,” I whispered, “I think… I think before I got in your truck, I didn’t care whether I lived or died.”

My voice broke on that last word. I was sure that would stop him. That I’d scared him, and he would tell me it was too much. That I was too much.

But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. He just pressed his lips to mine so softly, with such care and tenderness that I felt like he’d caught the contents of my heart in his hands. That he was cradling those secrets with the ferocity of a beast, and that him kissing me was telling me that without words.

My heart surged, sending warmth rushing through me. I rose up on my toes, wrapping my arms around his neck, giving myself to him freely, with no holding back.

“You don’t scare me, Chelsea,” he whispered in my ear. Something inside me cracked—a wall maybe, around my heart.

For a moment, panic hit me—this wasn’t what I was doing anymore. But something came through it, and it was the knowledge that this was Seamus. Maybe he didn’t have to be a mistake. I let him lift me off my feet. Maybe, just this once, I’d let myself fall.

A wind picked up as our lips met once more, whipping my hair around and burning my skin with its icy touch. But I didn’t feel the cold. All I felt were his lips on mine, his tongue; the warmth of his skin through his shirt sparking my desire into a flame. I pulled back from him, and when our eyes met, I shuddered with the heat of his gaze.

“Did you mean what you said?” I whispered once he lowered me back to my feet but didn’t let me go. “In that text. That it was impossible not to see me. That you still wanted me.”

“I said I needed you, Chelsea. Like the fucking air I breathe.” His pupils dilated as he spoke, his hands in my hair, tipping my head up. “That picture… Christ, that picture, I wanted to jump through the fucking phone.” He kissed me again, his hand going to my breast, like he’d been dying to feel them.

Yes, I thought. Yes, this. I moaned, arching my back, knowing my nipple had formed into a hard, tight pebble under his palm.

“Stay, Chelsea. Let me show you.” He was hard against me now, his arms thick and tight against my back.

He pulled back to seek the answer on my face. With my stomach flipping, I nodded, and he took my hand, leading me back inside.

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