“Don’t you?”
This conversation is ridiculous and I find myself smiling. “Go on, then. Steal your kiss.”
“You’re not supposed to notice when I do it.”
“Oh, for f?—”
He kisses my smile, swallows my gasp, cups my face and takes my breath away.
Then, before I tense up and the panic returns, he pulls back, smooths his rough palms over my cheeks and gives me a softer smile. “There. Stolen. Gone.”
I touch my mouth. Sweet and bitter. His taste is an echo of his scent. “Gone?”
“Gone.”
For some reason, it’s as if a weight has lifted off my shoulders. Is this kissing therapy? Did he really take something from me, some part of the fear?
“How did you…? How did you know how…?”
“Broken souls recognize each other,” he says softly.
I shake my head. “I’m not broken. You don’t understand. Nothing really bad happened.”
“I’m not talking about the car,” he says.
Me neither, but he doesn’t know what happened that night at the bar after Atticus chased him away.
“I knew,” he says, “from the moment I saw you. I knew our broken pieces would fit together.”
“But I’m not?—”
“You have a crack in you,’ he says, his voice dropping lower until I can barely hear it. “A wound that hasn’t healed. Let it show, baby. Scratch it until it bleeds, until you see it. Only then will it heal enough to let your heart beat again.”
“So philosophical,” I whisper, my chest aching.
“Not all traumas seem big or deep. Not all of them are terrible accidents or sickness, near-death experiences or rape. Some are more subtle, overlooked, but they are important. Essential. They take lives, Coco. Don’t bury your wound. Let it show.”
14
RYDER
This girl… this candy girl. She’s breaking me. There’s a darkness in her I don’t think she even knows about. She’s wounded but she thinks she’s fine, like someone walking with a cut artery, bleeding out.
As for me, I can’t patch her up. I wouldn’t know how.
Hell, I don’t even know how to save myself. How can I save anyone else?
So I let her walk out and hit my head against the counter for a while. Then I smoke my cigarette because who doesn’t need some sweet poison in their day and pretend I’m okay.
That I’m not afraid for her.
That I wouldn’t walk out of here to go after her if I thought she’d want me to.
That I don’t want to save her when she’s been inside my head for such a long time.
She thinks I noticed her for the first time a few nights ago. Not true. This girl has been living inside my thoughts and dreams for years. She’s my private fantasy, my muse, my angel, and my demon.
I’ve never met an omega like her. Filthy-mouthed, with the confidence to dress like a doll and party like a rockstar, yet keeping a sweetness about her, made all the sharper by the contrast.
