Why does it feel like he’s not just talking about right now? Why does it feels like he sees me? Sees the parts I try to hide?
The ugly, painfully accurate, truth.
Nodding, I press my palm to his own heart. “And you came in here, eyes shadowed and haunted becausethiswas too heavy. Because the way they love you is too much, and you…” My eyes search his, and, God, it feels like looking in a mirror. “And you don’t think you deserve it.”
Kade groans low in his throat, rough and pained and so fucking tortured; I feel it down to my marrow. His hand slides from my chest, up my throat, into my hair, and threads through the strands, thumb brushing my temple. “And this? What causedthishurt?”
My lip twitches, cheeks burning red hot.
I should have clarified earlier—when he was vibrating with anger and looked seconds from razing the world in my honor. But fuck, I just couldn’t. It was too damn hot.
He’stoo damn hot.
“A baby,” I murmur, full on smiling at the confused look on his face. “I was doing a home inspection today, and a baby chucked his full bottle directly at my head.”
His hand stills on my face, eyes widening before settling on the bruise. It hurts, just not nearly as badly as it looks like it does.
“But it’s so dark,” he says. “Looks like someone clocked you.”
“Oh, he sure did.” I chuckle, biting the inside of my cheek. “And I bruise easily. It’s part of my auto-immune disorder. My iron and vitamin K levels drop when I’m flaring. Comes with the territory.”
Kade stares at the bruise for a long time before leaning forward and brushing his lips against it. His beard tickles my skin, but I love the feeling too much to move, or barely breathe.
The gesture is so soft, so sweet, I tear up all over again.
When he pulls back, we lock eyes and suddenly, everything around me disappears.
His gaze flicks to my lips, mine to his, and as one, we lean in—a magnet I can’t seem to escape pulling us closer and closer—until his breath ghosts my skin.
Our confessions still sit heavy in my heart—the feel of his pain lingering like a physical touch, just like the memory of how it felt to kiss him.
Kissing Kade Archer was like coming up for air after drowning on my own for too damn long. There hasn’t been a day—or even an hour—when I haven’t thought about how it felt: the way he tastes, the delicious burn of his beard against my skin.
I want him—desperately.
Crave him with every cell in my body.
My brain riots and screams, telling me this is dangerous, that I’m getting too close, that I’m falling for someone I can’t have, someone who’s rooted in a place I won’t stay.
A man whose life is changing, whose heart is…
Whose heart istaken.
A man who changed everything he is for the woman he loved enough to build a house for her.Thishouse. And maybe the plans didn’t turn out the way he thought—maybe the baby isn’t his by blood, but Auroraishis now.
And Marlee, she’s the ghost lining every wall, every shadow I’ll never escape.
When he walks in this room, is it her he sees? When he falls asleep in bed, is it her he wishes were next to him?
And those dreams… those dirty, filthy, too-hot for my system to handle, dreams…
Those were abouther.
It’s too much, too scary, and I…
I’m not cut out for that. I’ve had enough of it. I can’t do it again. I can’t be someone’s replacement while they wait for their forever. And I can’t fill the impossible shoes of a dream he never got to finish.
“You,” I choke out, pulling back, brain grasping for straws, foranythingto save me from the storm of emotions battering inside me. “Your side of the deal. You never… you didn’t…”
