Fall

“I won’t be satisfied, dammit!” He grabbed me by the waist and picked me up into his arms. “I won’t be satisfied until you’re mine! Not Smith’s! Not Jamie Hudson’s. But mine!”

His mouth slammed against my lips.

I arched back, planning to slap him, but he dropped me to my feet and pushed me up against the kitchen wall.

With a growl I pushed against his chest, then bit his lip. He retaliated by gripping my wrists and pinning them behind my back so we were chest to chest.

“Let me go,” I whimpered against his mouth.

“That’s been the problem all along.” His breathing was ragged. “I can’t.”

“Please.” Tears streamed down my face. “I can’t either. I can’t do this. I need lines, Jaymeson. You said I could have them. I can’t kiss you today and be your friend tomorrow.”

“I could never be your friend.” Jaymeson’s eyes drilled into mine. “Friendship doesn’t feel like this. Friendship doesn’t feel like I want to kill any guy who looks at you longer than two seconds. Friendship doesn’t feel like my body’s burning from the inside out. I want you.”

“For a night?” His grip released on my hands, freeing me to push against his chest.

“No.” He pushed me back, pinning my arms above my head against the wall. “For as many nights as you’re willing to give me — for as many sunrises and sunsets as I can count, not just for breakfast, but lunch and dinner. I want your future. I want the dates you haven’t yet planned, the moments you’ve yet to experience. I want them all.”

My chin trembled as he gripped it firmly between his fingers. “Don’t you get it?” His voice wavered. “It’s you. It’s always been you. The whole time. For the past three months. You and only you.”

“But—”

He kissed forcefully, cutting off my words with his mouth, making me forget to use sentences and nouns and verbs. “What can I do to convince you that I’m serious? That you’re my downfall—my everything?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

He released my hands and let them fall to my side then dipped his fingers into my hair, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against mine.

Jaymeson stepped back, releasing my body. I felt his absence — like my body had lost all its heat at once. Like I’d been stabbed with an icicle. With a shiver, I crossed my arms.

I’d never seen a man look at a woman the way he was looking at me — From the pitiful look on his face, to his completely deflated posture — vulnerability was written all over him.

With a sigh he lifted his long sleeve shirt over his head and threw it on the ground. “One. When I was little my dad rarely visited me. He was too busy to care. So I had my Nanna, my grandmother. She told me she loved me every second of every day.”

He unlaced a boot and threw it. “Two. I was three when I realized my mom didn’t love me. A year later she told me to my face.”

My breath hitched.

He unlaced another boot and dropped it with a thud. “Three. When Nanna put my mom to bed, after another one of her drunken threats, she let me cry on her shoulder and told me that just because someone says they don’t love you doesn’t mean you aren’t lovable. It just means they aren’t capable of such a pure emotion.”

His muscled arms reached for his t-shirt as he lifted it off his head and threw it where he’d tossed his boots, leaving him in a tank top. “Four. When my Nanna disappeared, my mom told me it was because Nanna didn’t want to take care of me anymore. You see, my mom was jealous of her then four-year-old son. Nanna had given me a bear to sleep with — in a drunken rage my mom threw it in the fire. When I called my father, he said I was too old to be playing with stuffed animals. I never saw Nanna again.”

Slowly, he peeled his tank top from his body. “Five. Nanna died in her sleep — I later found out that her heart simply gave out — and as a kid I didn’t understand what that meant, so I naturally assumed it meant because I’d been a bad boy… I’d made her tired, and I’d made her love me. I’d been selfish. And in the end, I blamed myself for her death. Because maybe if I hadn’t needed her so much — she would have been able to have enough strength to live just a little bit longer.”

His jeans fell to his ankles, he stepped out. “Six. The last person I was vulnerable with is cold, dead, in the ground. She was also the last person I gave my heart to. When she died, I think a part of me died too. It was the first experience I had with reality. With knowing that life was naturally ugly, not beautiful. The last time I had something to live for…was when I was a child.” He took a tentative step toward me. “Until I met you.”

Tears streamed down my face.

Jaymeson took another step, his dark hair covering part of his face as the afternoon light cast shadows into the room. “Until you turned my world upside down.”

Another step.

I was paralyzed as I watched him move smoothly toward me, every plane of muscle tightening, keeping perfect cadence with my chest.

His hand reached out to touch my cheek. “You’re not the first female — Nanna gets that honor — but you will be the last.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Jaymeson

I couldn’t read her. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I’d just stripped naked in front of her — but to me, it was the only way I could actually be fully vulnerable — stripped down to nothing, both emotionally and physically, and pray she understood that what I was doing was for her—