I looked into her eyes and saw moments of clarity there. Like she was working through some kinds of feelings. I was afraid she was thinking too hard about what we were doing and would decide to pull away. And I wasn’t prepared for that yet.
“We better get out of here before I eat you up—right here in public,” I said, allowing my gaze to slide down her body. “I’d let the world see how good you taste.”
Her breath caught. “Damn, Kai, the way you talk to me.”
I kissed her ear. “I thought you liked how I talk to you.”
“I do, but”—she spoke into my shoulder—“it . . . it makes me want to get lost in you . . . all the time now.”
I was too afraid to look at her. Terrified she’d see the potent, visceral emotion in my eyes.
I wanted her to get lost in me . . . forever.
“Isn’t that what this is about—getting lost in each other?” My words came out strangled. My heart was in my throat. “Forgetting about the outside world?”
She pulled back suddenly and stared at me. Really looked at me. Her eyes were filled with confusion and even some regret.
Had I said the wrong thing? Didn’t she want reassurance that what we’d been doing was okay? That it was only temporary?
Fuck, even I didn’t know anymore what this had become between us.
I opened my mouth to speak, but her features had transformed into something unreadable. She seemed to be struggling to smile.
“Yeah.” She nodded and the moment felt lost on the wind. “That’s exactly what this is.”
“Rach . . .” I said, trying to find the words.
“Let’s get going,” she said, straightening herself and reaching for the handle of the door.
My shoulders slumped as I slid into the driver’s seat. Rachel stared out the side window, rubbing her temples. My stomach was in knots. I felt as if I was already losing her.
“Hey,” I said, reaching for her hand. She didn’t resist. “You okay?”
“Totally.” She took a deep breath and then turned toward me. “Just horny as hell, Kai. Because you make me . . .”
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, my brain spinning, trying to make sense of the change in her. “Make you what?”
“Make me . . . forget that what we’re doing is off-limits,” she huffed out. “If Dakota was here, we could never stand so close or . . . or touch like that.”
“Do you not want to do this anymore?” My heart was crashing out of my chest. Maybe this was it. This is where we’d end, after an amazing day together. “Are you done . . . pretending?”
I was asking her two things at once. I was ragged with the effort of holding it all in. Everything I was feeling for her. I knew what we were doing was confusing as hell—for both of us—because of who we had been to each other.
Sometimes she seemed to be on the verge of having stronger emotions for me, something more than just lust, but then her eyes would clear, and I’d wonder if all of this blurring of lines was just fucking with my head.
“Pretending,” she whispered, as if testing out the word. She stared straight ahead at the streetlamp, which was illuminating her face. Her eyes looked sad, weary—and I didn’t want to be the one who’d put such a drain on her.
I wanted to be her light, her release, her salvation.
I probably needed to end it all right here. Right now. But I was too weak. I wanted her too much.
Then she turned and offered the slightest shake of her head. “The end of the summer is coming soon enough.”
And there it was. She was laying it out. Setting the parameters for what this was between us.
I nodded, feeling completely numb. My brain was having trouble keeping up. One the one hand, I was already grieving. On the other, I was on a high from being given the additional time to touch her.
I swallowed the boulder lodged in my throat. My heart was dying, practically on its last leg, and I didn’t know if it would make it until the end of summer and beyond.
But I had created this situation, the one that now resembled a shallow grave. And I was going to lie in it, whether I liked it or not.
“These last few weeks have been great,” she said. She was still grasping my hand. My palm felt clammy and cold. The finality that hung in the air between us was so thick I was almost choking on it. It was filled with unspoken things. And it had never been this way between us. We had always been more open and real.
But a deeper part of me was certain that we had wrecked all of that this summer and I had no earthly idea if there was any way back to the people we once were. Or if I would even welcome it.
“Mostly because of you. Talking to you,” she said, finally releasing my fingers and folding her hands in her lap. “You’ve made me braver. Better, Kai.”