Crave (The Gibson Boys 3)

It’s a tedious ledge, and I feel myself falling over the side. This is what I want. But if I reach out and take it, attempt to walk the ledge that’s so slippery it shines, I’m risking everything. What if I can’t recoup? What if I’m not the adult I think I am? What if sleeping with Machlan and having a fun few days isn’t something from which I can recover?

When I fail to respond, he moseys toward the couch and lifts a shirt off the floor. “You have a lot of laundry here. And—”

“You know, this probably isn’t a good idea.” My eyes squeeze shut. “I’m good here.”

“I know you are. But … I’d like you to come home with me.”

My eyes open. He’s watching me with a wariness I know intimately. He wants this now. But what happens tomorrow? Letting it be was easier when it didn’t involve sleepovers. I’m already in deeper than I can afford to be.

“This can just be sex,” I say.

He tosses my shirt on my bag and walks toward me. “You and I both know it’s never just sex between us.”

“But it can be,” I offer, my hand trembling at my side.

He stops a couple of inches in front of me. I can feel his breath on my face, smell the hints of mint from the tobacco he must’ve chewed tonight.

The room is perfectly still. There’s not a sound to be heard. The only break in the silence is my ragged breaths and the energy pulsing off Machlan, something I’m sure I hear.

“I’m a little fucked up about this,” he says. “I don’t know the right answer.”

I lean away as he tries to touch me. “I don’t know the right answer either, but I do know I have to be careful with you.”

“Didn’t you come here to figure things out?” He drops his hand. “Because I feel like we’re doing that somehow.”

“Yeah, that’s why I came here. But honestly, I thought it was going to go a different way.”

“You wanted me to be a dick so you could feel good about leaving?”

“I didn’t want that,” I say, “but I expected to be able to justify moving on when I left. You’re making that super hard right now.”

He moves too quickly to stop him from touching my arm. Like a jolt of electricity, my body sings at the contact.

“I don’t want to make your life hard,” he says, his fingertips pressing into my arm. “But I don’t want you leaving and not wanting to talk to me again either.”

I focus on the softness of his words and not the way I begin to sway. “Mach …”

“Look, it’s late. You’re up. I’m up. Just come home with me.”

I want to. I might never have wanted something so bad in my entire life. And he’s asking—not assuming or manipulating and I’m not winding up there by chance.

“Machlan, I—”

He touches his finger to my lips. “Before you say no, hear me out.” He waits for me to nod before dropping his hand. “I don’t know what in the hell I’m doing, okay? I’m walking this line of trying to leave you alone so you can go on about your life, but it’s so fucking hard when all I want to do is be around you.”

I force a swallow, tears flirting with the corners of my eyes.

Seeing this side of him isn’t something I’ve seen before many times. I can count them on one hand. I know how hard it is for him to let himself be vulnerable, to put himself out there like this, and all I want to do is hug him.

This is the man I fell in love with. Not the guy I slept with first or the one who saved the day when I drank too much. This is the guy who clasped a necklace around my neck after a night at the Water Festival and told me I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen.

To think this man, the one who can be so considerate sometimes, can think he should let me go on about my life is ridiculous. But I don’t have the energy to point that out.

“It’s not as if you have anything else to do,” he points out. A hint of a grin is back.

“Are you sure?”

“You’re the one who said we need to just see where things settle between us. I’m just trying to do what you asked, and right now, this feels like where it should settle.”

He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t flinch. Just stands in front of me waiting on me to break. And even though it might not be the best answer if I think it out completely, I don’t. I give in.

“But you’re sure?” I ask with a grin of my own.

He laughs, grabbing my bag. “No, I’ve stood here for the past ten minutes not sure. Yes, Hadley, I’m sure.”