Chapter 21 Weston
Weston
“You’re here,” Sev says, trying and failing to keep the surprise from his face as he rolls down his driver’s side window.
I stand up, nodding at him. “I am.”
He swallows. He’s still wearing his fancy suit, and he looks like an off-duty model, one hand draped over the steering wheel, exhausted but so deeply handsome it makes my chest ache.
I’ve started to love every part of his face. The faint scars. The way his lashes frame the edges of his eyes.
The way he looks at me, now.
The way he’s been looking at me ever since our first night together.
“Tell me you’re okay, Weston.”
I pull in a slow breath of the sweet air with a faint scent of gasoline from his car. “Why don’t you take me for a drive and I’ll tell you how I feel?”
He puts the car in park instantly.
He swings open the driver’s side door and loops around to the passenger side, pulling the door open for me.
“Please,” he says.
As I walk past him and slide into the car, my heart feels like it’s being tugged on a string.
A funny thing happens when you go through so much shit in such a short period of time. Sometimes, when the weight and pressure just feels like too much, other things become sharply clear.
And some things stand out.
Lying down alone in my room an hour ago, it was a joke to even think that I could fall asleep.
So I ended up here.
In front of the Daggers house, searching for the one person who can make me feel like I’m myself, these days.
I didn’t know when Sev would return. But when I saw his Mustang was gone from the Double Daggers parking lot, I just sat down and waited.
And with every passing minute, all I could think about was what he said to me.
I was falling for you, instead.
“I’ve never seen anyone more comfortable behind the wheel of a car,” I murmur to Sev as he takes us around the sleepy town, going nowhere, just like I needed.
“This car is my second home. Feels like my best home, sometimes.”
I’m silent for a while as we cruise down a hill.
There are words I need to say, too many of them, but I don’t have any clue how to make them come out.
I listen to the sound of the road.
Feel my heartbeat rising, every time I almost speak.
“Sev, I need to know the truth,” I finally manage to tell him a few minutes later.
It doesn’t end up sounding quite right. It comes out almost like a question, my voice breaking a little near the end.
He reaches over and puts a hand on my thigh. And even if all of this ends up as nothing, that touch is something I needed to feel.
He drives along the edge of a curve in the road and slowly brings the car to a stop, putting it in park. It’s not much of a view, but a few twinkling lights from the town lower come up from below the horizon.
“The truth is that Kieran did tell me to spy on you. Or gather info on you, and what Onyx in general might have been doing. But I never told him anything about you or anyone else. When he saw us kiss, he thought I was ‘going undercover,’ but… he didn’t know anything.”
I swallow. “So he was suspicious about bribery.”
Sev nods. “He was. The only information I ever found was something Noah wrote in his planner about the alumni dinner, and I didn’t even end up mentioning that to him, either.”
My throat feels tight. “So it wasn’t all an act.”
His brow furrows.
“You think I could pretend to be obsessed with you, Wes?” he says, almost looking pained. “I didn’t want it. I don’t want things like this. But every time I’m around you I feel like I have to protect you. Guard you. Make sure you know how much you’ve fucking changed my life—”
He cuts off his sentence and turns to stare out the driver’s side window for a moment.
I watch the back of his head, his soft, dark hair that I want to be lost in every time we’re close.
This version of Sev was there the whole time.
When I thought we were enemies, Sev was already this person, capable of being so thoughtful and caring and…
Good.
Sev is good, in a way that’s been blindsiding me for too long, now.
And my life has far too few good people in it.
It’s the most precious thing when you realize that you actually trust someone, not because something has changed, but because you can finally see them clearly.
“Fuck,” I whisper, leaning my head back on the seat.
A stray tear breaks off from my eye and I pull in a breath.
“You don’t have to say anything back. You don’t have to feel the same way,” he says.
“Sev, I don’t think I’ve been able to trust a single thing in my life since my dad died,” I let spill, feeling a torrent starting to rush through me.
“Maybe sooner than that. Since my brother ended up with my best friend, without even telling me. Since every year of my life has been more and more pressure. Maybe I’ve fucking felt it forever. ”
Sev cuts the engine.
He takes off his seatbelt, and I feel like I’m frozen in place again.
Like I always am.
“Why does it still feel like every fucking thing that goes wrong is my fault? If it weren’t for me, no one would have these problems. I’m… an appendage. Dead weight. Nobody’s first pick, just blending into the background—”
“You’ve never blended into the background for me,” Sev says, his voice more assured than it has been all night. “Never.”
His whole body suddenly shifts, and I realize he’s moving to get closer to me.
Not just near me, but straddling me, moving so that his leg is on the far side of my lap near the passenger door.
The weight of him sinks down on my thighs and all of a sudden he’s my whole field of view, stunning in his suit, cradling both of his hands on either side of my face as he looks me in the eye.
It’s too much.
I feel like I could cry, but I force myself to hold it in, unsure of what’s real. My throat is tight.
“How could you say you were falling for me?” I ask.
“Because for the first time in my life I’ve realized there’s nothing to fix,” he says. He leans in and presses a kiss to my forehead, then my temple. “I couldn’t fix you if I tried. You’re stubborn and solid and absolutely yourself, and I love every frustrating moment of it, Weston.”
“Sev,” I utter as he slides his hands into my hair, holding me.
“The reason I thought I hated you is because I couldn’t control how I felt around you. You terrify me.”
I’m surprised as a laugh escapes me, even while my throat is still tight, like I don’t know whether to cry or laugh even harder.
“You can’t be scared of me. You could take me out no matter how strong I am. You’re not scared of anyone.”
“No. You have the power to hurt me.”
I exhale as I finally summon the ability to unfreeze. My heart pounds in my chest as I stop trying to resist the current.
And I stop trying to resist the gravitational pull this man has on me.
I wrap my arms around his waist and tug him closer against me. “I’m never going to hurt you, Sev,” I whisper.
And that seems to break him as much as it breaks me.
He leans down to kiss me and it feels almost like it’s our first time, kissing like we’re not quite sure of it, but we need it more than either of us understand.
His lips part slightly and his tongue slides out over mine. I moan involuntarily at the rush of heat, and it’s as if something catches fire inside me.
Unfreezing, bit by bit.
Because finally something feels like it’s mine.
A quiet drizzle just begins to tap down on the roof of the car, and the rush of the rain slowly increases, surrounding us.
“Stay with me,” he says against my lips as he breaks off for a breath. “I want to stay with you, Weston.”
I don’t know if he means for right now, for tonight, or for longer.
But no matter what it is, I have the same answer.
“Of course I’m fucking staying with you.”