Then one night, I’m curled up on Dare’s couch, my head on his lap as he reads.
“I love you,” I say simply, out of the blue, my words cutting through silence.
Dare looks up from his book, his dark eyes smoldering.
“Are you sure?”
I smile. “Of course. What’s not to love?”
He pulls me up, his book dropping to the floor as I’m crushed to his chest, his hands pressing, pulling, feeling.
Warmth from his hands soaks into me, thawing me, and for the first time in days and days, it ignites in me, making me want more.
“Thank you for staying with me,” I murmur. “You didn’t have to.”
I pause, then kiss him.
His lips are warm and firm and they light a fire in my belly, a fire that I forgot existed. It extinguishes my sadness for the moment, and I arch into him, pulling him closer.
There’s so much familiarity here… so much want.
His hands trace my collarbone, running down my arms, setting my nerve endings on fire. They burst into flame, burning away anything else but the desire to be with him, right here and right now.
“You think you don’t deserve me,” I whisper against his neck. “But that’s not true. I’m the one… I don’t deserve you.”
I kiss him again, and he groans in my mouth, the sound of it driving me to the brink because I know he wants me too.
“You want me,” I tell him urgently, pulling at him. “I know you do.”
“I’ve always wanted you,” he tells me roughly.
“It’s just you and me now,” I tell him. “You and me. That’s all that matters.”
Make me feel something besides pain.
I kiss him again and his hands splay around my hips, positioning me so that I’m lodged against his hardness. I suck in a breath and look up into his eyes, eyes that hold a thousand secrets, but eyes that I love.
I love him.
“No matter what,” I whisper. He pauses from kissing my neck and looks at me questioningly as he lifts his hand to brush my hair back. The light glints from his ring, and I’m frozen.
Because fragments come flying into my mind. Memory fragments. Images of that same exact expression, of his ring glinting in the moonlight as he tells me something. It’s a confession and he’s alarmed, upset, anxious.
It’s the night of the accident. Before the accident. I see his lips moving, but I can’t hear the words. It’s like he’s in a wind tunnel, the words are static, and I’ve seen this exact scene before in a dream.
I strain to hear the words from my memory.
“What’s wrong?” Dare asks me now, lowering his head once more, sliding his warm lips across my neck as he leans me back.
At this exact inopportune moment, as Dare’s touch lights my skin ablaze, the fragments finally fit into place. The puzzle pieces fit together. At last.
The memory forms and I suck in an appalled breath as I yank away from him.
“I remember,” I whisper. Dare pauses in apprehension, his onyx eyes glittering, his hands frozen on my arms. “You… you were here for me all along. You came here for me.”
His eyes close like a curtain and I know that I’m right.
His breath is shaky and his hands tremble as he touches me, as he refuses to pull away even now.