Chapter 14 – “Violets for Roses” - Lana Del Rey #2
I swallow, lifting off her and sitting back on my heels.
“I’ve always looked up to him. I still do.
” I wipe a hand down my face, a sudden pang of guilt hitting my chest, but one look at Elena’s has it clearing just as quickly.
“It felt like he had everything I didn’t.
But not you. You are not something I wanted because of him.
I’ve wanted you all this time because you’re… because you’re my person.”
Elena’s expression softens. Shifting from heat and bewilderment to something more like awe and torment. “Why haven’t you ever told me?”
I sigh, looking down at the grass, digging my fingers into the soil. “You saw him first.”
“August,” she begins, but I cut her off, needing her to hear the whole of it.
“The day I found you in my tree, filling your shirt with flowers and rambling about books? I knew about thirty seconds into that conversation I was going to fall in love with you. I didn’t realize you knew my brother until you walked away.”
“You never said anything,” she whispers.
“You smiled when I said his name.” I shrug.
“He’s always been a flirt, charming as hell.
I may have been eleven at the time, but even then, I knew the effect he had on people.
You weren’t the first girl to smile like that after falling for him, and I wasn’t going to root for your broken heart, Elena.
” I lift my eyes, meeting her gaze. “Even if I wasn’t the one holding it. I’ve only ever wanted your happiness.”
Her big, brown eyes gloss over, but she doesn’t let her tears fall.
“I’m sorry.” Bottom lip trembling, she closes the distance between us, scrambling onto my lap to straddle my hips.
“I’ve been so blind.” She takes my face between her hands, and the feel of her skin on mine is like a flame to frostbite, a stitch to a wound, ice to a burn.
“You’ve always seen me with the utmost clarity. ”
“Elena,” I whisper her name like a prayer, like she’s the god I’m hoping will finally answer it. My hands slide up her thighs, warmth blooming beneath my palms as I grasp her waist and tug her against me. Our bodies align in a way that feels like coming home.
Her gaze focuses on my mouth as her nose skims mine, and my lips part, tasting her breath.
Elena and I have always felt a little like the moon and the Earth.
I orbit her, while she orbits something else entirely.
But in this moment, as she cups my jaw and brings my mouth to hers, we’re colliding.
Gravity falls apart as we fall together, and for all the destruction we’re about to create, kissing her feels cosmic.
Kismet.
ELENA
“ULTRAVIOLET” - AIDEN BISSETT
I inhale the tortured whimper as it leaves his lips, his mouth soft and delicate against my own. It doesn’t feel real. It feels like more. It feels like how I imagine every moment in a story when someone kisses the right person for the first time.
It’s not fire—it’s Earth. It’s nature. The cool rush of air against your face, the feel of flower petals on your fingertips, touching clouds, and looking at candy-colored skies.
I never knew it could feel this way.
His hands press against my back, slowly skating beneath the hem of my shirt and caressing my bare skin.
It sends sensation up my spine, spreading soft warmth from my cheeks to my toes.
Tentatively, he slips his tongue into my mouth, the taste of him like a dream I couldn’t remember having but now feel I’ll never be able to forget.
Another needy noise leaves his throat as I give him everything I have, moving my hips against his body, letting our tongues dance, our lips move in sync.
The kiss deepens, his hands in my hair, cradling my face like I’m something to cherish.
I’ve never been touched like this before—like I’m delicate, too valuable to break.
It’s purposeful and fierce and consuming, but it’s not chaotic or fleeting or harsh.
It doesn’t feel like craving pain; it feels like healing souls.
August’s lips feel like they were always meant to be mine—not something I have to chase or something I have to run from. He kisses me like he’s waited his whole life for it.
It’s desperate. It’s passionate. It’s…real. So real, beyond words. My mind races my heart at the tenderness of his touch. I can’t comprehend how it feels so incredibly right; he has been here all this time, and I haven’t seen him.
That truth begs me to kiss him deeper, to wrap my arms around his neck and press into him harder, merging our bodies until I can erase all the years of distance that never should’ve been there.
Because this is what I’ve been missing all this time.
What always should’ve been.
“Elena,” he groans, saying my name like he has been blessed by it.
I pull back, my hands running rampant through his hair, twisting in the soft curls I’ve always loved so much.
My face is still between his hands as I tilt his up to mine.
His eyes are cascading shades of emerald, reflecting the glow of the night sky, matching the glimmer left by our kiss on his full lips.
His beautiful eyes fall closed, his hold on me tightening, like he’s trying to grasp it before it disappears. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for that.” His words catch on a tortured breath.
“I hope I lived up to expectations.” I laugh hoarsely, still lost in the feel of us.
He drops an arm to my waist, dragging me against him. “You are the embodiment of all my dreams, Elena.” His mouth moves against my throat as he speaks, the words stitching themselves into the fabric of my soul.
He looks up as I look down, our lips a hairsbreadth apart.
I close my eyes in anticipation, but August surprises me as he says, “I can’t do that again until you’re sure.
” He tucks a stray curl behind my ear. “I can’t have your bits and pieces.
Not these ones. I don’t want your body if I can’t have your heart too.
I don’t want your heart if I’m not the only one holding it.
” He swallows hard, like the words are thick, stuck inside his throat. “I can’t bear anything less.”
I don’t open my eyes, too afraid of what I’ll find staring back at me if I do.
Instead, I press my forehead against his.
I want to tell him I’m ready to give him everything—but I know I can’t make promises I won’t keep.
Not with August. He’s too important, and whatever just happened between us is far too real.
Our past, and the people in it, is far too complicated not to consider.
I nod, and he sighs against my lips.
“You were in love with me?” I find myself asking for—needing—the confirmation. Confirmation that someone could’ve ever yearned for me like that, because a small part of me has always wondered if it was me, if I was the problem, the reason he couldn’t call it that.
My eyes are still closed as he pulls away, shuffling with movement before he nudges something sharp against my hand.
When I open them, I drop my gaze to his sketchbook propped between us.
I take it between my hands, slipping my thumb through the cover before lifting my eyes to search his for permission.
He offers a shallow nod, and as I flip through the book, I find page after page of…
me. In black and white, drawings of myself stretch across the canvas paper, images of me reading, laughing, even working—curled on my couch, brow furrowed in concentration with my computer on my lap.
For years, August and I have spent our days and nights in peaceful silence—me reading or writing, and him drawing. He’s always been private about his pieces, but I never could’ve imagined he was spending his time studying me.
Shocked tears drip down my cheeks, emotion lodged inside my throat and rendering me speechless.
I softly close the book, setting it on the ground beside us before surging forward and taking his face between my hands, pressing my lips to his.
He said he wouldn’t kiss me again, but I don’t have words to express the feeling coursing through my veins, I can only attempt to show him.
“I’ve always been in love with you,” August whispers, kissing away the moisture beneath my eyes.
I shiver as his words move through me, planting themselves inside my chest. For the first time in my life, I feel capable of being loved—I’d just been asking for it from the wrong person.
I open my eyes, taking in the sight of the man below me. I’ve always felt like he was the most beautiful person I’d ever known, but looking at him now, it all feels heightened.
“I think I could fall in love with you, too.”
He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t say that again until you’re sure.”