Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
JESSE
Roman is still asleep when my eyes crack open in the early morning light.
His breathing is deep and relaxed, his face unlined and unburdened from everything weighing him down, completely different from the way it was last night.
God, last night.
I burrow deeper into his arms, having somehow ended up with my nose tucked against his throat during the night, and let his words from last night wash over me.
I thought my heart was going to beat its way out of my chest.
I can still feel the tension in his touch when he cupped my face. I can still hear the way his voice broke with his apology and confession. I can still see the haunted look in his eyes.
A wonderful, tortured man, teetering on the edge.
And that kiss…
It felt like coming home and I never wanted it to end.
I curl further into his embrace, brushing a small kiss on his throat without thinking.
His hands tighten around me as he stirs, feeling him nuzzle my hair, the move spreading so much warmth through my body that I sigh.
Fuck, I missed this so much.
“Blue?” he mumbles in his raspy voice, and that name on his lips again makes me so stupidly happy it’s a good thing he can’t see my face.
“I’m sorry for waking you,” I whisper on his skin.
“You did?”
“Mmm, I kissed your throat and I think that woke you up.”
He lets out a pleased hum that makes me smile.
“You can wake me up like that any time you want.”
I huff out a tiny laugh and leave another kiss on the same spot.
“Noted.”
He groans, but for some reason I can sense his smile in my hair, and I can’t not look at him.
I pull back just enough to meet his dark eyes, still heavy with sleep and last night’s emotions, but a bit clearer, lighter.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he says back. His eyes run all over my face, as if he’s cataloguing every single feature, disbelief and wonder and relief flashing in them, making my heart flutter like crazy.
“I want you to kiss me again,” I tell him, and for a moment, I don’t even realize I’ve said the words out loud.
The need that floods his eyes takes my breath away.
“Yes,” he manages hoarsely, the word not fully out before his mouth is capturing mine and then it’s nothing but long, drugging pulls of his lips on mine, of teasing and deeper strokes that melt my brain, and Roman, Roman, Roman.
Waking up with him, kissing him, feeling him like this—there’s never been anything that could make me feel this full.
My lips are tingling when he releases them, and I almost make a sound of protest.
But I forget all about it when he rests his forehead on mine.
“I missed you so much, Blue,” he mutters quietly, and his words curl around my heart. “Sometimes I think I got through everything just by thinking about you.”
Jesus.
I swallow hard and straighten back so that I can look straight into his eyes, my hands always touching him, grounding him, telling him I’m here.
“How was it?” I ask him, and even though I don’t say more, he knows what I’m asking.
His gaze grows distant for a while, his mind visibly going elsewhere. But then, he shakes his head and laughs to himself, a laugh so devoid of humor and brimming with hurt it raises the hair on my nape.
“You know what I felt when they called me to tell me that my dad had died in an accident? Anger and relief.” He swallows, an ugly smile twisting his lips as his eyes bore into mine.
“What kind of person feels relief when their father dies?” His voice is thick, heavy with all the ache he’s been carrying, but I don’t interrupt him.
I know he’s not looking for an answer. He just needs to say it, to speak the words aloud so they’re not trapped inside him, poisoning him anymore.
“But I felt both. I was so angry at him for dying because it meant that nothing would ever change now, because the only thing I will remember from him is him looking at me the way he did that day, and so many days before that. And then the relief came because I could finally stop hoping for anything different.”
My heart aches for him, the pain in his words so sharp, I can feel it as if it were my own.
His hand comes up to cover my own where it’s fisting the fabric of his T-shirt, the touch warm and gentle, nothing like the turmoil in his eyes.
“I wasn’t like other kids. Since very early, I’ve felt things either too much or too little, but it took me years to realize it.
I still don’t fully understand it. I get obsessed with the things that make me happy, until everything else feels colorless in comparison.
Drawing helps me because it centers me, it gives me an outlet, something I can pour everything into, but even with that I can lose track of time, focusing so hard on it like I’m in a trance, forgetting to eat, to sleep.
” He pauses, his throat bobbing again with his swallow, his hand squeezing mine.
“I wish I’d made it easier on them. I wish I’d been more normal and that they didn’t have to get calls from the school all the time.
I wanted it, Jesse. I wanted to be better, to do better and not find things so fucking difficult, to get good grades so that they could be proud of me, to not get into fights all the fucking time because I was too quiet, or too stupid, or too weird.
I fucking wanted it,” he rasps, his chest rising and falling under our joined hands like he’s been running for miles and miles.
And he probably has. “I wish I hadn’t been such a burden, but I wish even more that they hadn’t treated me like one. ”
The things his father said to him that night all come rushing back, clicking into place; calling him needy, desperate for attention, responsible for driving his mom away and ruining their family.
Being too much, suffocating everything around him—that’s what he told him. That he would do the same to me. And Roman chose to leave instead.
I swallow the bile that rises up my throat just remembering those hateful, ignorant words, and it takes everything in me to keep my own anger in check, because this isn’t about me right now.
Threading our fingers together and squeezing his hand back, I tip my head up and press my lips on his, feeling him exhale shakily against me.
His dark eyes are wide and lovely when I pull back.
“Do you remember what I told you that night?”
He shakes his head, and my heart twists viciously in my chest.
Of course not. He’s used to remembering only the bad things.
Well, that just means I’ll have to tell him over and over until he never forgets it.
“You’re perfect, just the way you are, Roman, and you will never—ever—be a burden. Do you believe me?”
He peers into me for long seconds, before he leans down and kisses my temple, my forehead, my hair.
“You’re the only one who can make me believe it.”
God, this man.
He lets go of my hand so he can wrap his arms around me and my eyes burn at the tight contact, at the smell of his skin.
“Are you okay, Roman?”
A beat of silence.
“No,” he says simply. “But I think I will be.”
I’ve never wished for anything more.
I hate the very idea of leaving Roman right now to go to work. I can only imagine how vulnerable he must be feeling, and the last thing I want to do is leave him alone.
But maybe I don’t have to.
“I have an idea,” I mumble against his skin, mouthing the spot.
I swear he purrs low in his throat.
“Does it involve you doing more of what you’re doing right now?”
I chuckle. “Not exactly,” I tell him, detaching myself from him with difficulty, but I can’t focus enough to be functional like this. “Can you take the day off?”
His eyes twinkle with interest. “I guess I could have some appointments rescheduled. What do you have in mind?”
“What do you think about… coming with me?”
Surprise flashes through his expression, before a slow smile tips up his lips.
“You want me to come with you to the library?”
Fuck, I do. I want him with me, I want to show him what I do, a part of my life he doesn’t know, I want him to come and maybe have fun, get his mind off things, think of nothing else for a while.
I want him to feel happy.
“I mean, yeah, if – if you wanted to.” Jesus, why the fuck am I nervous?
“I was thinking that maybe you could give me a ride—an actual ride—on your motorcycle,” I hastily add, when his smile grows even more, “and you could stay for the day. It’s a shorter day anyway today, and it’s always open for parents, guardians, or anyone who wants to help or just hang out and read, so I guess I thought it could be nice.
You could even get your sketchpad and draw and no one would bother you. ”
His dark eyes are so intense they make my heart skip a beat, and when he dips his head lower to brush a kiss on the corner of my lips, my whole body buzzes.
“Will I get to hear you make all the voices?” he asks, and I bite my lip, loving the feel of his smile pressed on my skin.
“If you’re a good boy.”
He inhales sharply, and when he pulls back his eyes are black and burning, his smile downright dangerous.
I fucking love it.
And I love it even more when his tattoos ripple as his arm pulls me flush against him. I feel every hard inch of his body while he tips my chin up with the knuckles of his other hand, running them across the curve of my jaw.
“You want me to be a good boy for you?”
I lean into his touch, hooking one leg over his hip and pulling him even closer while I glance up at him under my lashes.
“Yes. I want you to be a good boy for me, and maybe,” I pause, looping my own arms around his neck, arching my body against his until his eyes look wild, “just maybe, I’ll give you your reward later.”
I can feel his hand bunching my T-shirt where he’s holding me, cool air hitting my heated skin as I drown in the way he’s watching me.
Like a man obsessed.
“Fuck, Blue,” he rasps out.
“Mmm,” I hum, nodding slowly. “Maybe.”
He chuckles darkly, tilting his hips so his hard dick is perfectly aligned with mine, my eyes fluttering when he rolls his lower body, rubbing us together.