Chapter 36 – Brinley #2
He pauses just long enough to lift his head, mouth slick with me, his eyes dark and unblinking.
“I missed this. Christ, you have no idea how much. Every fucking night this week without you in my mouth and I felt like I was losing my mind.” His fingers curl deeper.
“Tell me you missed it too. Tell me, Brin.”
“I missed it,” I whisper.
“Louder.”
“I missed it. I missed you. ”
His head drops back between my thighs. “Good fucking girl.”
Then his lips close around my clit and he sends me over the edge.
The orgasm rocks through me, sending waves of molten heat through my body. My vision goes bright white, like the moment after a camera flashes, where the whole world seems far away for a few seconds. My back arches, my muscles contorting as I ride out the overload of pleasure.
Pleasure I don’t deserve.
From the man who gave up everything that matters for me, who should hate me for it, but somehow doesn’t.
Somehow, I walked out of the Peppermint fire I set more unscathed than Beau. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to be the ruined one, not him, yet here I am, letting him show me love I’m not worthy of receiving.
When my climax ebbs away, the tears come. Real, miserable, overwhelming sobs rack me as all the tension I’ve been holding since that horrible night when Peppermint’s secret came out.
The orgasm didn’t erase my pain—it cracked the dam holding it back. Everything I’ve been carrying floods through at once.
Beau raises his head, smiling until he sees my tears.
“I can’t do this,” I sob.
“You can’t do what, Brin?” He's on his elbows in a heartbeat.
His mouth is still wet from me. His hair is a mess where my fingers wrecked it.
But his face has gone scared in a way I've never seen on him before—like the floor just dropped out from under his entire life. “Brin. Hey. Talk to me. What did I do?”
He thinks he did something wrong. He thinks he hurt me . He has no idea I'm crying because he's the only person in my life who has never, not once, not even when I gave him every reason to, made me feel disposable.
I don’t deserve him.
“I can’t do this to you,” I cry. “I can’t be the reason you lose everyone you love. I’m not worth it.”
“Of course you are,” he says immediately, and I hide my face against my knees because he’s too good. He’s thinking about me, not about what he needs.
“Maybe it’s better if we aren’t together,” I croak.
“Maybe you should let me go so you can try and salvage what’s left with Luke and the guys.
Maybe I was always supposed to be the thing you wanted in the dark but couldn’t have in the light.
Maybe…maybe forcing us out into the open was the mistake. ”
“Look at me, Brin.”
When I don’t obey him, he takes my face in his hands. With his beautiful hands that are so strong and gentle at the same time, he makes me raise my head and meet his eyes. The fear has vanished from his gaze, replaced with determination.
“You’re everything to me, Brinley,” he declares. “I have no interest in a life without you in it. I hope the guys come around—I think they will, eventually—but if they don’t, it doesn’t matter. I still choose you. I need you to know that.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he presses a finger against my mouth.
“I need you to hear this and believe it: I will always choose you.
Not because you dared me. Not because the secret blew up and there's no other option.
Because you are the thing I've been most sure of, ever since I was twenty-three years old in the back hallway of a club with bass thumping through the walls.
Ever since you dared me to kiss you and I realized— I dare you was the bravest thing anyone had ever said to me, and I'd been waiting my entire life for someone to say it.
And I've been a coward about it for long enough.”
He swallows. His thumb traces my jaw, slow.
“So I'm done being dared into the things I should be choosing on my own. I choose you. No dare required. Not anymore.”
Tears still drip down my cheeks, but it’s not anguish anymore. It’s hope, affection, gratitude, but also sadness for my younger self. For the Brinley who spent years believing that secrecy was all she deserved.
Beau smiles at me, my favorite half-smile. “I’m not asking you for anything, Brin. I don’t need you to say it back. I just need you to stop trying to save me from the one thing that doesn’t need saving.”
The words are on the tip of my tongue, and I’m done holding them back. If Beau wants me, if he chooses me, then he deserves my whole heart.
“I love you,” I say without a drop of doubt. “I love you, Beau.”
“I love you, too.” His voice cracks on the second word. He takes my face in both his hands like I'm the only thing keeping him on the ground, and when he kisses me, it isn't heat. It's a man stepping over a threshold he's been standing in front of for a decade.
It's not whispered in a villa in Italy. Not murmured half-asleep. We say it out loud, in Toronto, with everything broken around us and nothing to hide behind.