Page 63 of Only in Your Dreams

You must be fucking kidding me.

I’m an idiot. So blinded by a long-time fantasy to catch on from the get-go. She’s trying to turn me into a rebound, isn’t she?

“No kissing?” I ask, just to make sure. She shakes her head. I sweep the hair back over her shoulder. “Then we’re not doing this.”

I lift and drop her next to me, sitting up and adjusting the front of my sweats. I’m fucking aching. Struggling. About to burst into flames. My cock is painfully hard and demanding the very thing I was on the verge of getting.

But me and her? It’s as personal as it gets. When you’ve been desperately in love with someone for fourteen years, a fling isn’t good enough. I want to be her last, and I need her to be mine.

Having her only to see her move on with someone else? It would crush me.

She’s still panting but looking disoriented. “You don’t want to sleep together? You said all those things the last time we…”

“Trust me when I say it has nothing to do with want. But I need a few things to fall into place first.”

And because I can’t just leave it like that—with there being any doubt that I’m dying to have her—I bury my face into the crook of her neck and lay kisses along her soft skin. From this close, I can feel the accelerated pace of her heart. I hope she can feel mine.

“You’re so fucking sexy, Clover. This is the second hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.”

She inches away and I can practically see her defenses reassemble, brick by brick, when she crawls off the bed and starts sorting through her backpack.

“You don’t believe me,” I tell her. “You don’t believe I want you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me, and that’s why we can’t do this. I want you to trust me. I want to earn you.”

“It’s fine, Zac. It was a bad idea, anyway.” She frowns at her bag. “You have to be kidding me.”

“What is it?”

“I specifically remember putting my night stand lip balm in here.” She screws up her face. “Or maybe it was my desk lip balm? I can’t keep track of them all.”

She seems to be in a constant game of hide and go seek with these lip balms. I don’t understand it. Giving up, Mel tosses her bag to the ground and crawls back into bed. I’m relieved that she doesn’t make an effort to create an abnormal amount of space between us.

I gather up that gorgeous hair again, move it safely out of the way, and hold her to me. “Are you angry?”

“Of course not.” Her cheek smooths over my chest. “I’m confused as hell, but you’re allowed to say no to sex. Let’s just sleep, okay?”

The moment she settles, the edges of sleep come for me. If this theory works, if I can really have a reason to keep her here every night, I might be able to pull this off.

Win her over. Make her fall for me again.

“Zac? What was the hardest?” I blink to find her looking up at me, eyes already heavy with sleep. “If that was the second hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, what was the hardest?”

I pull her closer, kissing the top of her head. My cynical Melody, all sharp on the outside but soft as velvet on the inside. A hopeful at heart, and I’m so damn grateful for it. I won’t let her down this time.

“Leaving you that night, Mel. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I still don’t know how I managed it.”

Her moonlit eyes linger on me for one long second. And then she tucks her chin and succumbs to sleep.

Chapter 15

Melody

The morning sun blinds me the moment I open my eyes, and I immediately snap them shut.

Despite how strange this bed feels with its flat pillows and flannel sheets—flannel sheets in the summer, God help this man—I feel the kind of well-rested I haven’t been in over a week. In over a month, actually. Since the night Connor sat me down to inform me we were breaking up.

---