He tilted my chin up and pressed his lips to mine.
It was soft. Gentle. Familiar. Warm and comforting and at the same time, teasing. It was everything I’d missed in a kiss, because nothing had ever been his kiss.
I wanted to cry. The tears that prickled at my eyes were sharp and stinging, but even as one escaped down my cheek, he didn’t move.
He simply used his thumb to brush it away.
At that one tiny move, I collapsed against him. My fingers wound in his t-shirt, and I opened myself to the kiss, letting the familiar sensation of having Chase Aarons kiss me work its way across my skin and through my bloodstream.
There was nothing like it.
It was home. It was the place I felt the most comfortable. Kissing him was the center of my compass, the single place I felt untouchable, even if I was crying when he did it.
And I was.
I was crying.
I collapsed fully into his arms, pressing my face against his chest. His strong arms wrapped right around me, and one of his large hands cupped the back of my head, his fingers winding into my loose curls.
He held me as tightly as I held him.
I didn’t know what I cried for. I just knew there was a tight ball of emotion in me that linked the present with the past that I needed to cry out and let go of in order to be able to move forward.
So I let it go. And I cried until my eyes were all dried out of tears.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN – CHASE
There was nothing worse than listening to the woman you loved sobbing into your chest.
Take it from me.
It was, after all, happening right now.
Tonight’s conversation had gone from explosive to emotional to explosive and back to emotional again. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take, not if Rae kept crying the way she was.
I cupped the back of her head with my hand, holding her against me. My own eyes fucking stung. I guessed that was what happened when you listened to the person you loved being heartbroken and knew you were the reason why.
I had to tell her, though. She already hated me—even if she never spoke to me again, even if she looked me in the eye in the next few minutes and told me she could never be friends with me, she knew.
She knew the truth.
And that was all that mattered to me. Rae had to know the truth behind everything, and she deserved to know that I knew I’d fucked up and that I was taking responsibility for the things I did and the ways I hurt her.
That didn’t mean this was easy. Hell, I didn’t want this to be easy. I deserved to hear this—I deserved to feel like a piece of shit for making her hurt.
Even as she reached up between us to wipe her face with her hands as she finally stopped crying. I wasn’t going to lie and say that I wasn’t happy she’d stopped. I hated hearing her, but I also knew she hated crying.
I could count on one hand the number of times I’d ever seen her cry, and this was by far the hardest.
She pulled back slightly, and I loosened my grip on her, letting my hand fall down to the top of her arm.
Rae looked up at me, and I simply stared at her. She wasn’t wearing a damn bit of makeup, and even though her eyes were a little puffy and her face was red, she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Tiny freckles dotted the bridge of her nose and swept lightly down onto her now-patchy cheeks. Her dark brown eyes shone with the remnants of her tears, and her dark lashes were clumped together until she reached up and brushed at her eyes, separating them.
Gently, I reached up and pushed a strand of hair from her cheek that was stuck where she’d cried. “I don’t want to fight with you anymore, Rae. Not like we have this week. I can’t do that anymore.”
She opened her mouth, but I lightly set my finger on her lips.
“Give me two more minutes, okay?”
She nodded, meeting my eyes.
“I can’t fight with you anymore. I’d rather never speak to you again than fight with you like this, okay?” I trailed my thumb off her lip to cup her chin. “I’m so fucking sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I did it all over again tonight, but I wanted you to know the truth. I owed you that much. If you tell me right now that we’re done, that you don’t care, that you can never forgive me, and you never want to see me again, then I’ll accept that. It’s nothing less than I deserve, but I respect you enough that I’ll do whatever you want me to.”