Maybe because long before all that, he was my best friend.
“There’s another girl.”
I glance up, and his face is dark, lines etched across it.
“Blaine sounds like a piece of shit for leaving you.”
“You really want to go there?”
There’s a hint of a smile as he shakes his head. “No further questions, your honor.”
He takes a sip of beer.
“When?”
I look at my feet. “The other night.”
He swears under his breath. “Jesus.”
“What?”
He growls as he turns his body towards mine, his eyes flashing in the low light. “Is that what the other night was on my boat? You trying to ‘get back’ at your fucking boyfriend?”
My eyes narrow at him. “You don’t have any claim on me you know,” I hiss. “Not after eight fucking years.”
“You’re my wife.”
I laugh mirthlessly. “This is insane. I don’t even know why I came here.”
I stand, and I’m turning to stomp away back down the stairs and away from this place, but there’s a hand on my arm as he pulls me back.
“You know exactly why you came here.”
I look up into those eyes, and I can feel my heart, my pulse, my heat.
I swallow quickly. “If that’s what you think, then you’re delusional.”
I start to pull away, but his grip tightens as he shakes his head.
“Tell me you still hate me,” he says roughly, his eyes burning right into mine.
“Tell me you still fucking hate me, and that there’s nothing left of what we used to have still in there somewhere, and I’m gone, Ivy. I’ll walk away, I’ll sign fucking papers, I’ll do whatever you want.”
I say nothing, the sound of my pulse hammering in my ears as I let myself drown in those sea-blue eyes.
He moves even closer, so close that I can practically feel the heat from his body against mine.
“But if there’s one fucking shred of what we were still in there,” his words tease across my lips, and I tremble.
His hands move to my hips, like they know them.
And they do.
He doesn’t wait, he just slides them around me, until he’s holding the small of my back, pulling me against him.
And I want him to.
I want those hands there, comforting, holding.
Familiar.
“If there’s one shred of what was in there, Ivy,” he whispers gruffly. “If there’s one shred, then nothing on this earth is going to drag me away from you right now.”
It’s like a flash of light, and a thousand memories pouring through my mind. A thousand little memories of what we were, and every single one ends with a kiss.
And I already know this one will too.
I know it even before I let myself go.
Chapter Nineteen
Silas
Her lips are soft and familiar, and I groan as she melts into me.
I kiss her harder, taking that mouth like I once did so many years ago. But this isn’t any sort of quick kiss behind a garage - no stolen peck on the back porch of the Hammond house before dinner while she blushes and slaps at me playfully.
This is raw, and primal. This is aggressive, and the desperate need to remember slamming through us both.
She moans into my mouth, her sweet body pressing into me, molding against mine and making me remember.
…Like I’ve ever fucking forgotten.
And yet she’s even better than I remember. My hands slide up and down the small of her back, pushing under the hem of her shirt and sliding across the heat of her skin.
I want to remap her body, inch by inch with my hands.
She’s moaning into me as she pulls at my shirt, and then we’re just tearing at clothes. She’s warmer, softer, somehow sexier than she was when we were younger. She’s more of a woman now, less the girl I left behind.
Totally new, and yet so damn familiar.
Her scent, the feel of her skin under my fingertips. The way my hands know her body - how they know the way from the small of her back, to her shoulders, down to her sides.
Her breasts.
I break the kiss, hungrily letting my mouth re-familiarize itself with her skin all over again. And I know that we need to turn back before another crash, but I know there’s no fucking way that’s happening.
Not after this long.
She gasps as we drop back down into one of the chairs. I pull her into me, her legs fall on either side of mine, her lips hungry as she kisses my mouth again.
My hands cup my cheeks, our kisses desperate and needing.
And I still feel like I’m falling.
My fingers find the catch of her bra, and I’m sliding it off of her as my fingers slide over the skin that I know so damn well.
The skin I’ve missed.
I taste the sweat from that skin, feeling her gasp as I find the hollow of her neck. Her hands pull at my t-shirt, yanking it up and breaking away so she can tear it off of me. But then we’re crashing back together.