“Stop that.” I caught both hands and held them down. “Why are you so upset? I don’t understand. I like being with you—”
“Maybe you don’t need someone. I was hoping you did, is all.”
I shook my head, as if that would make his meaning clear. “Come again?”
He gave an eye roll worthy of Andi Chandler herself. That girl could throw shade like a total eclipse of the sun. Seconds ticked by. Our discomfort grew into irritation.
“I wish to fuck somebodyneededme,” he said bitterly. “I—”
“Wait.” My mouth fell open. I closed it. Took my time parsing his words, because that wasn’t the first time I’d noticed Sky trying to make himself indispensable. Being necessary to his protector got him through a stretch in prison. He’d worked real hard to make himself useful to the Rocking C, to Elena, to me...
Being necessary meant safety to him. Being necessary meant staying alive in a hostile world. He was looking to me for reassurances. And I— Oh God.
“You get that even if I didn’t need you, I’d still want to be with you? Do you understand that? Ilikeyou.”
“Yeah?” His cheeks bloomed with color and heat. I was so close, I felt his sigh.
“You’re fucking hot. I like being around you. I think about you all the time when we’re not together.”
“Okay.” Sky gnawed on his lower lip some more. “All right. So that’s good, right?”
“Of course it is.” I gave his nose a little tap. “But I need to tell you something. I got a phone call last night and—”
“Shh,”He stopped my words with an urgent kiss, hands cupping my face, thumbs brushing over my cheeks. He broke away with such reluctance I thought he was going to cry.
“Right now, I’m yours. You said that. Did you mean it?”
“Yes.”
His expression softened. Warmed. His pupils grew, large and black, almost eclipsing the dark amber of his irises. By then, a sexy half-smile kicked his lips up on one side.
“You can tell me later,” he whispered. “Okay?”
Throat tight. Mouth dry, I nodded.
Was I repaying his offer of loyalty with the worst kind of betrayal? Maybe I was. It felt like I had two choices. Tell him everything. Make the rest of our time together be about me leaving. Or seize the time we had left and live the hell out of it.
I pulled him to me, intent on fitting everything I could do to his body into the ninety minutes we had left.
It couldn’t hurt to leave the world outside for a bit.
It couldn’t hurt to take what we had then and enjoy it.
He looked so fucking sexy, spread out like a bad angel on the rough, worn bedrolls I’d laid out. He was tough, and simpatico, and mine, goddamnit.
Mine for now. No one can take this from us.
As long as I told him the truth before he left with the rest of the hands, I wasn’t hurting anybody.
We couldn’t waste one single second...
All we had was now.
“C’mere.” I crooked my finger.
“You say the nicest things.”
He grinned that dopey grin of his and melted against my body like wax. Raindrops on the roof shrouded us in a deeper world where only the two of us existed. I fell asleep, content to stay like that forever, if only I could.
“Wake me up in a bit, yeah?”
“Sure,” Skyler whispered. “Whatever you need.”
