Page 36 of Where We Burn


Font Size:

She starts to slide off the bar again like she’s trying to escape me and run from something she doesn’t know how to face, and something snaps inside me. I’m on my feet before she can blink, blocking her path and cutting off her exit like a predator trapping its prey.

“What are?—”

I cage her against the bar, arms blocking her in, and my body pressing close. My lips brush her ear, just shy of touching her.

“I terrify you?” I ask while dragging my nose slowly up the soft curve of her neck, burying myself in the scent of her skin. She nods, small and shaky, and I breathe her in deeper. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t. Don’t you understand that? I can’t tell you. I can’t show you… I can’t want you.” I breathe her in once more before tilting her chin with my thumb and forcing her to meet my eyes. “It doesn’t matter what your situation is. This can’t happen.”

“I know,” she whispers.

“God, you drive me so fucking crazy I can barely breathe sometimes.”My thumb drags down, tugging on her bottom lip. “What I’d give to be the only man you ever looked at like this,” I rasp, my fingers threading through her hair as I tilt her head back, exposing her necklike a goddamn offering. “I had so many chances, so many nights I should’ve said fuck it and taken what I wanted, and I blew every single one.” My grip tightens in her hair as my forehead drops to hers, and I breathe her in like a dying man getting his last taste of heaven. “And now…”

“Now I’m about to be out of a relationship that’s done nothing but make me unhappy,” she whispers, her voice shaking. “And the whole time, I’ve been dying for another man to touch me… But then I think you’ve always known that.”

I press my body against hers hard enough that she can feel every thick inch of what she does to me, but she doesn’t touch me—she just stands there offering herself up, letting me take this moment of tortured closeness that’s going to haunt my dreams until the day I die.

“Come on. We should head back,” I say, and she sags against me, just barely—but I feel it.

I don’t want to let her go. Every part of me is fighting it, but I step back anyway, holding her eyes long enough that she can read every unspoken feeling—every ache, every desire, every piece of my heart—written clear across my face.

I watch her gather the last of her things. When she’s ready, I follow her out into the night, the cold air settling on us both, her shivering where the chill bites at her skin. I want to reach for her and pull her into my chest. I want to wrap her up in my arms, and shield her from the cold with my body. Just for a minute, just long enough to pretend she’s mine to hold.

She slides into the passenger seat, her legs shifting just enough for me to catch a fleeting glimpse of smooth, bare thigh where her skirt has crept up slightly.

Get your shit together.

I shut the door, maybe a little too hard, and force myself to walk around to my side of the truck.

“You can take me back to my sister’s,” she says as I pull out of the bar’s parking lot. “If it’s weird for you to bring me back to the farm while Travis isn’t there, then I’m fine with going back to Violet’s.”

“You uncomfortable being alone with me?”

“Of course not.”

“Then home is where we’re going.” She doesn’t argue. She just nods and keeps her eyes fixed on the road ahead.

I reach over and turn the heat up, stealing a glance at her from the corner of my eye, needing something, anything, to fill the silence before it swallows me whole.

“The kids up at the farm love you, so I need you up there. I see how they light up when you’re around.”

She turns to look at me then, her cheeks still flushed from the cold, and grins. It’s a little mischievous, a little sweet, and fuck me, that smile alone has me ready to throw the truck in reverse, park us in a damn ditch, and drag her into my lap.

“Snowball fights are just an excuse to smack snotty kids with some cold ice.”

“So, everyone’s happy?”

“Exactly. And it gives the parents a chance to get what they need without the constant whining from kids who don’t really care what tree they get, so long as they can make it look pretty for when Santa comes.”

“And is Santa coming for you this year?”

“Depends on whether I’m on the nice list.”

I chuckle, shaking my head. “Only good girls get on the nice list, Piper.”

“Guess I’m screwed then.”