Chapter 18
Skylar
The words land, and for once, they don’t cut.
They settle.
Deep.
Warm.
Terrifying in the specific way only good things are when you have waited long enough for them to become something else.
You have never stopped owning me. Not one day. Not one hour. Not one fucking second since the first time I saw you.
I stand in the kitchen, staring at him, waiting for the pain to come.
Because it always fucking comes. That sharp little twist beneath my ribs.
The old wound clearing its throat. The part of me that has always known exactly where to find anger when softness gets too close, too real, and too much like something I might actually be allowed to keep.
But that doesn’t come.
Not this time.
There is only Zane. Standing in front of me, his chest rising hard, his eyes on mine, every defense stripped from his face. The swagger gone. So is the smirk. It is simply him, the truth he just handed me, and the way he is looking at me like he has never once in his life meant anything more.
My fingers curl around the edge of the counter before my knees can make a decision I will regret.
Nothing about us has ever been polished.
We have always been messy, sharp, and a little bruised from the fall. Two people who grew up in houses that taught them the world was not safe, finding each other regardless and deciding, against every available piece of evidence, that it might be worth trying.
And somehow, against every odd, every mistake, and every door that closed between us, we are still here.
I stare at him, and all the words I have kept ready for years lose their shape.
There is nothing left to throw. No accusation clenching behind my teeth. No fight left in my hands or in the need to make him hurt so he understands mine.
He understands. I can see that now.
I can see it in the way he is standing there, not pushing or filling the silence with something easier. It is simply him, what he said, and the space he is giving me to do whatever I need to it.
Zane watches me carefully. The way you watch a door you have knocked on with bloody knuckles, terrified of what comes next.
When you have finally run out of everything except the truth, you have put it down in front of someone, and now it belongs to them, and there is nothing left to do but wait and see what they do with it.
He’s giving me the choice. He isn’t storming across the room because the moment is too big for him to remain still. He has finally learnt to stay exactly where he is and let me come to him.
My eyes burn. A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it.
I wipe it away quickly, furious that this man can still do this to me after everything. Which is probably the most honest thing I have felt all night.
Zane’s hand twitches at his side, yet he doesn’t reach for me.
God. That man.
That stupid, reckless, beautiful man.
I have spent years surviving him. Missing him.
Hating him. Wanting him. Loving him in the dark, where nobody could see it and call it weakness.
Tonight, standing in this kitchen with his love confession still warm in the air and a tear I wiped away before it could embarrass me, I realize I no longer want to survive him.
I want to have him without first turning it into punishment.
“You’re standing too far away,” I say.
His eyes darken. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“I was trying not to be a dick.”
“That’s new.”
His mouth curves—that slow, devastating thing that starts at one corner and takes its time. God, it hurts in the best possible way. The way only things you have waited too long for can hurt when they finally arrive.
Zane takes one step toward me—slow and careful—as if I were something worth being careful with.
I do not move back.
He takes another.
Then another.
The kitchen is not large, yet it still seems like it takes forever. By the time he reaches me, I can feel the heat radiating off him—that specific warmth I have never been able to talk myself out of no matter how hard I tried.
He raises his hand before he pauses, giving me a choice. He has been giving me a choice since he entered the room.
I almost roll my eyes.
Almost.
Instead, I catch his wrist and press his palm flat against my cheek.
The second he touches me, he exhales. His thumb strokes beneath my eye, catching the dampness there.
“I love you,” he says.
My heart stutters, even though he has said it before. Even though that is the whole reason I am coming apart at the seams.
It still hits. Maybe it always will.
“Say it again.”
His eyes soften in a way I have never seen before. “I love you, Sky.”
My eyes close because there it is.
Not the words by themselves, but the way he says them. No cruelty wrapped around them or goodbye sitting beneath them. No sharp edges waiting to slice them away before I can hold onto them.
Simply love. Given. Mine if I choose to. And I do. God help me, I do.
“I love you too,” I whisper.
Zane goes still, every inch of him frozen. His hand freezes against my face and his breath stops. His whole body locks as if those four words have struck something so deep and so long undefended that he cannot move in the wake of their impact.
I open my eyes.
The expression on his face almost ruins me. It is the look of a man who has just been handed back something he had quietly, privately decided he had no right to ask for again.
“Sky.”
I shake my head, smiling through tears. “Don’t make it weird.”
His mouth twitches. “You told me you love me.”
“Yes. Be normal about it.”
His thumb shifts and moves across the scar above my eyebrow.
He kisses it softly—as if it is something worth kissing—and it moves through me in a way that has nothing to do with want and everything to do with the fact that he is the only person who has ever looked at that scar and not seen damage.
He has always looked at it that way, as if it is part of the whole me and not something to hide.
Nobody else has ever done that.
I watch his face as he pulls back. The way his eyes drop to the scar for one more second before they come back to meet mine and his mouth comes down to my lips.
Soft at first. So soft it hurts. A careful press of lips, as if he is still afraid that one wrong move will send the whole moment scattering across the floor next to the apple that dropped when I was angry with him and put the bag down.
I let him have that first kiss. That careful one. Before I fist my hands in his shirt and pull him harder against me.
He groans into my mouth. The sound moves through me, hot and familiar, and every part of me that has been waiting wakes all at once without apology.
He kisses me more deeply, his hand sliding from my face into my hair, the other closing around my waist and pulling me flush against him. The first hard press of his body against mine knocks the air clean from my lungs in the best possible way.
I kiss him back until there is no space left between us.
Until the counter bites into my lower back, his fingers tighten at my waist, and mine slide under his jacket, pushing it off his shoulders because there are suddenly too many layers between the truth and my skin, and I am done tolerating that.
The jacket lands on the floor behind me. His mouth leaves mine and moves to my jaw, and afterward to my throat.
I tilt my head before he asks. His mouth is still on my throat as his hands find the hem of my shirt.
He pulls it up and over my head, dropping it somewhere on the floor around our feet.
He steps back and looks at me. His eyes move over my skin slowly, taking their time, dragging over every inch of me with the focused attention of a man who knows exactly what he is looking at and intends to stare for as long as he wants.
“Fuck,” he says, his jaw tightening.
I reach for his shirt.
He lifts his arms and I pull it over his head. I drop it and put my hands flat on his chest, feeling the muscle, the ink, the scars, and the hard, steady beat of his heart under my palms. I stare at him and he looks at me.
“You have no fucking idea,” he says voice low, “of what you look like right now.”
I don’t say anything.
His hands move to the button of my jeans.
He does it slowly, holding my gaze. The zip follows and he pushes the denim down my hips but does not take it further.
He just lets it sit there, before crouching in front of me and unlacing one shoe, pulling it off, before moving to the other.
His eyes shift to my face from down there and it makes my breath catch in my throat.
He takes the jeans from my ankles and tosses them aside.
Leaning forward, he presses a slow, open-mouthed kiss to my pussy through the black lace. Wet enough that I feel its heat. I hold my breath as his hand rises and his fingers trace the lace, dragging it slowly against me.
“Fucking soaked,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me, his lips still pressed right there, breathing me in like he has all the time in the world. I close my eyes, my hips tilting forward without permission. The want for his tongue to push the lace aside and find my clit is almost unbearable.
“Not yet,” he says, with a grin.
I stand in the middle of the kitchen in my bra and underwear as his eyes move over every inch of me again. Slower this time as if he is making sure he hasn’t missed anything.
“Turn around,” he says.
“What?”
“Turn around, Sky.”
I hold his gaze for a second before obeying.
His hands find my shoulders and he moves my hair roughly to one side.
His fingers trail down the back of my neck before he unclasps my bra and strips it off me.
As it drops to the floor, his mouth finds the back of my neck, teeth grazing.
I feel his chest against my back, hard and warm, and his cock pressed against me through his jeans.
His hands come around and grab my breasts. His thumbs drag over my nipples, rolling them until they are tight and aching.
“You feel what you do to me,” he says against my neck, pushing his cock against me so there is no mistaking it.