Page 2 of Finding Fate

“Come to Miami with me. We can start over.”

My heart is beating so fast. Run away with the love of my life . . . I’ve thought about it more times than I’ll ever admit to him. I’ve waited for this day forever. I want to say yes so bad, but there is one thing I have to know. “Why didn’t you come find me if you came back? I thought you wanted to be together forever.”

Pain flickers in his green eyes, and it’s almost enough to make me want to take back my question, but if I’m going to uproot everything at the drop of a hat I have to know this isn’t something he thinks he wants now and then will change his mind two weeks from now.

He pulls back and pushes inside me harder, surprising me. I moan over the shock it sent to my core. Every thrust is just hard enough to send me over the edge, but he won’t let go of my hands. I can feel his ass muscles contracting against my calves with every thrust. Maddox wears his feelings in his facial expressions more often than he groans, grunts, or moans. If you get sounds out of him you know you’ve done something that can’t be silenced.

We aren’t two bodies in this position, we’re one. “Because every damn day that I thought of you I was still that eighteen-year-old kid in my head that could have gotten jail time. I remember the look of disappointment on my parents’ faces when they found out their son was fucking someone’s fourteen-year-old daughter, let alone how old we were when it started. When I came back home, they made me promise to leave you alone. I had to go through counseling at church for something that didn’t feel wrong to me. I’ve been working with Dad ever since up until I moved to Miami in May. If there was sunlight with no rain we worked. Most nights I ate, showered, and went to bed. If I went anywhere it was to Landon’s to drink beer on his porch. We rarely went out. Up until you were standing in front of me earlier, I’ve kept my word. You didn’t come looking for me either.”

I break, unable to hold it in anymore. How is this going to work in the long run? No one wants us together. His parents hate me. My dad hates him. Both for different reasons. I thought love was supposed to be the easy part. “Then what’s the point if no one is going to accept us together?”

He grinds his pelvis against me, as if to punish my comment, making my eyes roll backward despite the fact that they’re producing tears. “Because of this. And how we feel about each other. I’m tired of being fucking miserable. I learned with Riggan and Abby that life is too damn short to not go for what you want. No other girls hold a candle to you. I’ve tried to move on. I can’t. You’re the girl I want. The one I fell in love with. People may have driven us apart, but they will onlykeepus apart if we let them. Fuck ‘em all if they don’t understand. We’re grown. We can do whatever the hell we want. I love you enough that I’m ready to stand up to my parents for this. The question is, are you? Do you want me?”

“I’ve never wanted anyone else. I’ll go with you.” I lock my ankles at the small of his back, keeping him close. He rolls his hips, scrubbing himself against me, and the slight roughness of his stubble down low from him trimming to the skin or shaving is stimulating me even more. I’ve missed this kind of intimacy. I just don’t want it with anyone but him. He comes closer, our eyes locked and only far enough apart we can see clearly. “Kiss me, make love to me, come in me.”

“Fuck,” he whispers and pushes deep, before he stills, making it obvious he’s coming already. He looks at me, guilt written all over his face. He releases my hands but doesn’t pull out. “I’m sorry. That phrase is a lightning bolt to my nuts. It’s what you said to me the last time we ever had sex before I lost you. Give me a few and I can get back up.”

The fact that he remembered steals my air—the first and only time he ever came in me before today. We were having to say goodbye. Emotions were high. We were strung out over each other. I went through hell just to sneak away. I wanted something with him no one else could touch. We had stopped using condoms when he told me he loved me. And the things that happened after he left he’s oblivious to. That last time we had sex was special for many reasons. I hate that there are secrets between us, but it hasn’t really been intentional. He wasn’t here. I still have the scars regardless. Living without him made me grow up a lot. “It’s okay. You don’t have to.”

His mouth tips a little as he pulls out of me. He hasn’t distanced himself from me in the least, and it makes me happy. It makes me feel like he’s glad I’m here, even if we found each other again accidentally. “The old Gabby would have been a lot bitchier than that, even at fourteen.”

“Yeah, well, the old Gabby had not gone six years without you.”

Without a second’s lapse, he kisses me, reminding me we’re here, together, and that’s all that matters. “Gab, you don’t have to go another day if you don’t want to. Honestly, I’d marry you tomorrow if I knew that’s what you wanted. I’m getting older. My friends are moving on. You missing from my life is not as easy to ignore anymore like back when I had distractions to keep me busy. I’m done making everyone else happy. Not a day has passed that I haven’t thought about you. A four-year age gap isn’t that big of a deal. I can’t help it that I met you when you were thirteen.”

My heart flutters.Yes, I would marry you in a heartbeat, but not before you know everything.

My dad is a lot more controlling than anyone could ever imagine. “I don’t want to go a single day without you if I don’t have to. I love you, Maddox. If that hasn’t changed by now, it’s not going to.”

His chest pushes against my breasts with every breath. Suddenly, he lifts off me at the same time his hands grip onto the back of my thighs and he shoves me up the bed until his face is between my legs. Before I can even grasp on to what is going on, his mouth is latched onto my lips and his tongue is already sweeping back and forth between them over my clit.

My back instantly arches, pushing my body against his hands holding my legs back, but he’s stronger, keeping me spread and open. I clench the comforter behind my head. “Oh . . . My . . . God.” I pant between words. “Shit. You’re so much better at that now versus when you first tried it.”

He nips at my lip, and then burrows between them like he’s starving for my taste, not stopping until he’s demanding an orgasm from me. As it subsides, he kisses me one last time, and then comes back up over me, our eyes meeting with a cocky grin on his face and a satiated smile on mine. “I did have a very verbal coach.”

I laugh for the first time since I’ve been back around him, more memories washing through my mind. Unfortunately, I didn’t get Maddox’s virginity like he got mine. He’d already been around the block with a girl or two by the time I met him. I wasn’t surprised. He’s hot. He also has the personality that makes him even more attractive. I was more surprised when he started talking to me that night. I thought he was talking to someone else at first.

I did get a few firsts in return that made up for it somewhat. I was the first girl he went down on, for one, and it was obvious. I may have been young and inexperienced, and didn’t know what the hell I was doing in the beginning, but girls in my grade were touching themselves—in the bathtub, or late at night when parents went to sleep—out of curiosity, which was enough to know what feels good and what feels awkward, like when a guy gets too carried away with his tongue because he’s only heard of the act at that age and not practiced at it. That’s okay, though, because it was a lot more meaningful experimenting with each other. I playfully shove at him. “Shut up. I’m sure I’ll pay for it. After all this time apart I sort of wish you sucked at it.”

He grips my chin, now completely serious. “Don’t go there. I haven’t done that with hardly anyone aside from you. I have morals. I don’t just put my tongue anywhere. Actually, we may as well get the bullshit out of the way, because I know it’s eating at you just like it’s eating at me. Your jealousy runs as deep as mine. Still, to this day, nothing has turned me on more than watching you beat a girl’s ass for trying to rub up on me.”

I swallow, my heart pounding in my ears. I did do that. Got us kicked out of the water park. Stupid-ass lifeguard bitch. Tried to act like she was just showing him what to do. He wasn’t five. He could sit down on the fucking tube by himself. I’d do it again. Maddox is mine. I’ll defend my shit when the need arises. It got me sex in his truck before we went home, so . . . all wasn’t lost.

I hate thinking of him with another girl. I’ve prepped myself for it for years. It still pisses me off, and maybe that’s because I never wanted to break up to begin with. “I haven’t been with a single girl the way I am with you. No girl gets my bare cock or my cum but you. No girl would have gotten it at all had we not broken up. I don’t know the number, but it’s not as many as you’d think in comparison to the year count. I went as long as I could between, Gab, even thinking this would never happen again. In the end, I’m still a guy that thought I couldn’t have you. And as much as my jealous ass is thriving on the fact that no other dick but mine has been in my girl, I have some guilt going on over it.”

His body expands over me like a predator about to slay his prey. Each hand is positioned around my head, caging me in. “It’s going to make me a prick and I don’t care. I don’t like being a hypocrite, but I’ll deal with it. If you haven’t had sex, then whathaveyou done? How many dicks has your mouth been on aside from mine? How many tongues have tasted my pussy? How many fingers have figured out how fucking tight you are? Have you let anyone in your ass?”

He has an edge to his tone I recognize.Yes.The fear and anticipation of this very demeanor is what made it harder to fuck someone else when it was already next to impossible. The few times I got close enough to actually try I put the brakes on pretty quick, because in the back of my mind there was always a chance that we would be together again, regardless of how small.

Life became a game to me. I perfected fake. I wanted to appear to be white trash without actually becoming white trash, which is why I dye my hair black with a box color from the nearest WalMart or Target. I didn’t want to spend a dime ofDaddy’s moneyto have it done professionally. I wanted it to look like it was done by an amateur. Black was the most drastic change when my natural color is blonde. I coat my skin every two to three days in sunless tanner of a lower grade, not caring about the ending shade, or if it’s splotchy. I could look like an Oompa Loompa for all I fucking care.

I used to take a little more pride in my outward appearance by doing things all girls do, like laying in the tanning bed or getting professionally sprayed, or even laid out to get a natural summer tan. I enjoyed my salon days with my kick-ass cosmetologist for a session of girl-talk, andalwayshad my nails done by a properly licensed nail tech—which are now self-painted or do-it-yourself press on and the like.

I would even go as far as to admit mentally that I miss all of those things, and shopping without checking the price tag before trying it on, but that was when my life wasn’t complicated, and I loved my dad to no end, and we had a good relationship. When he folds his hand and stops telling me who I can and can’t love, and apologizes to Maddox and his family for what he’s done, then I’ll lay down my hand as well. Right now, his heart is fucking ugly, and I want no part of it.

I’m not sure that’ll ever happen, though. My dad only cares about show, and a daughter he can keep in line. He was all about me swiping his precious credit cards in my name to have the best, and with him being busy making all of his prized money and no mother in the picture, I could do whatever the hell I wanted once I reached the age of eleven. I had a driver to take me anywhere I wanted to go, which is why it was so easy to have a relationship with Maddox at a young age.

When he messed things up for me and embarrassedmeover something I consented to over and over, just because the law ran in his favor, I wanted to embarrass him to no end. I’ve made plenty of people think I was easy over the years, like the bathroom escapade with Konnor at the New Year’s Eve ball my dad’s subdivision put on at the clubhouse when he wanted to trick Presley, or during all those times following once we formed a friendship that I joked about us having sex when he was screwing my roommate Autumn—before he ended up with Presley. Oddly, now, I think he saw through me.

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