Chapter 8 #2
“Isn’t it? I mean,” she laughs dryly, tears rolling down her flushed cheeks, “your parents didn’t want me for you because of how I was raised. Because my mom cleaned houses and we had to learn English. Because my dad ran off with some woman and left us. I know what your parents thought of me.”
“I’m not my parents.”
The look in her eyes is like she’s ready for battle. “Right, well, you could have fooled me.”
“That’s not fair,” I breathe.
“Isn’t it?”
“You haven’t even stopped for one. Minute. To ask why I’m here.”
“I’ve tried!” Lana cries. “The only thing you keep telling me is that you’re here for me.”
“Isn’t that enough?” Please let it be enough.
“No, because I’m beginning to think it doesn’t matter and you’re only here for your own benefit.”
“It matters, Lana! It. Matters.”
“Then tell me why, you giant rich idiot!”
I sigh on a grunt. “My money means nothing to me, Lana.” She opens her mouth to speak but I stop her. “No, it’s my turn.” She frowns, breathing out through her nose, and her shoulders drop. “I came back for you. Only you.”
She scoffs and turns on her heels. “You say the same shit every time, Christian—”
“Lana, would you please just listen to me? I’m trying. I am…begging you.”
“No, Christian, because if I let you beg and apologize and win me back, I’m going to get hurt when you leave again.
I’m stronger and smarter. I’m not going to let the past or your pretty face ruin all of the progress I made getting over you.
” Her voice cracks. “Because it has taken me…forever to get over you, and somehow I’m still not.
I can’t do it. So no, I can’t just let you beg if you’re just going to break my heart again because I won’t survive it this time. It’ll kill me.
“Do you have any idea how I burned—how I bled? You left. No word, no call, no text, no note. You left, Christian, and I felt like I was dying because I had you! It was you and me for nearly three years. We were living together! I wake up with you next to me and we’re okay.
We’re so happy and you kiss me good morning and you make love to me, and then I get home that evening and you’re gone.
The jar was gone. Your clothes, your shoes, almost every trace of you went missing.
I call you and it goes straight to voicemail. I text and those went unanswered.
“So no. You don’t get to beg and apologize because, if you do, I don’t know if I’m strong enough to look you in the eyes and deny you.
Because you hurt me and I had to find ways to fix myself.
To not feel empty when I walked around this town so people wouldn’t look at me and ask if I was okay.
I have lost so much, and when you left and I lost everything I had left of me.
I have nothing left… Now, what, Christian?
Now you’re just going to get on your knees and beg for a second chance?
The worst part about this is that you might not deserve one—who knows—but I know myself well enough to know that you’re going to get one anyway. ”
Lana stands frozen and I take careful steps toward her. My frame forms a shadow over hers, and her brown eyes, as round as saucers, are welling with tears I wish weren’t about to fall in my name.
Slowly, I lower myself onto my knees. My hands wrap around her calves and she inhales sharply. I run my hands up the backs of her legs until I cup the backs of her thighs. “I’m begging you.”
The tears fall and she wipes them away. “Christian.”
I put my forehead to her stomach. “I came back for you, Lana.”
“But you still haven’t told me why,” she murmurs. “I need the answer you aren’t giving me. Why now? What happened?”
“I’ve…” I don’t even know how to tell her. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to. She’s finally asked me why and what, and I don’t know any words. The things I’ve done just flash in my mind like the most traumatic montage, and I cringe. “Can you trust me?”
She sniffles. “I don’t know.”
That’s a no.
I let it go for now—pretend it doesn’t sting and make me want to reach for a drink or anything to make it go away. I put my hand to my chest and rub hard over my heart.
My forehead presses into her thigh, and I try to stay here as long as I can with my eyes closed and hands on her skin. She makes it go away.
I tell myself that I may never touch her again so I don’t take this for granted. So I can cut myself open and allow this moment to buries itself inside me before she tells me to get away from her forever.
But then I feel her fingers push through my hair and a tear falls out of my eye. “Stand up, Christian.”
I shake my head and croak, “I’m begging.”
“Come beg up here.”
I stand, my eyes on her, and cup her face in my hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t just tell me anymore, Christian,” she whispers. “You have to show me. I need more than just words.”
“I know,” I breathe. “I know. I know, Lana, I’ll give you anything.”
“I don’t want anything,” she whispers. “I just want…”
Lana inhales shakily through parted lips and my eyes drop to them, waiting for the next words to come out of them.
“I just want you,” she whispers, and I watch her lips take the shape of each word.
I look back into her eyes and they’re so soft, so warm.
Sad, even. “Maybe I’m an idiot, but I just want you, Christian.
We can’t go back to who we were and that’s fine.
I never expected us to, but this will take a lot of work and—”
“We’ll be better than that,” I say. “We’ll be better than who we were—I’ll be better than who I was and I’ll show you. I’m here now and I’m not going to keep waiting or living without you. Please. All I want is the chance to try. If it isn’t enough… If I am not enough, I’ll go.”
She only blinks slowly. Doesn’t say anything else as I graze my thumbs up her cheekbones.
“Just trust me a little bit, baby, please,” I ask quietly, lowering my forehead to hers. “That’s all. I just need a little bit of faith.”
Lana wets her bottom lip before sucking it in. “A little bit of faith.”
I barely nod.
A string of silence stretches between us where all I hear is our breathing, and I think the hammering of my heart echoing.
“Fine,” she breathes and her eyes drop to my lips, and I don’t even think about it.
My lips move over hers and her tiny gasp turns into a moan, her small hands coming to my waist and fisting my shirt as she presses herself into me.
“Christian, we—” she breathes.
“I love you,” I breathe against her lips. Four years. Four years.
“You aren’t allowed to say that.”
“Says who?” I ask between kisses.
“Me,” she moans. “I’m supposed to be holding my ground. I’m… I’m supposed to be a shark. Ma-Make you beg.” Another breathy moan.
“Fuck that,” I breathe against her lips and she pulls me in harder. “I’ll beg for the rest of my life.”
I’ll beg until my knees are raw and bloody.
Her hands are in my hair, pulling, and she’s arching against my chest and my arms wind around her. In a second, I’ve got her pressed against the wall with my forearm over her head to keep me steady.
Lana has a habit of making me weak. She could poke me with her slender finger and I’d crumble like a sand castle because my entire existence is at her will. And it feels, and has always felt, like I only ever exist when I’m next to her.
“Christian,” she breathes like she’s trying to convince herself that we should stop. I’m hoping to whatever god that she doesn’t stop me because I think… Fuck, it’d kill me to have her this close, to have this much of her, and lose it so quickly.
We move too easily. We know what we’re doing and we don’t miss a beat. This is us—unbridled and unfiltered. Just lips, teeth, and tongues at war, and her leg hitches up around my waist. My other hand wraps around her thigh, my fingers burrowing into her skin, and Lana moans into my mouth.
“Lana,” I whisper, and I don’t know for what.
She’s the kind of thing that swallows you whole.
I’ve been to several grand, extravagant events for my job—the company I was forced into—and a lot of them took place in museums with art from all around the world.
I’ve seen a fuck ton of paintings and sculptures that entrap their admirers.
But her… She’s more than that, bigger than that.
She consumes thoughts, dreams, ideas. She takes up canvases and pages of prose and poetry. She’s the muse for almost all the art in the world. She’s the ocean and I’m just a rogue fish—a tiny dot compared to the immensity of it all.
“Ohh,” Lana moans, her hands twisting in my hair when my lips explore her neck.
My hands move to her waist, under her shirt, and up until my thumbs sweep just beneath her breasts—making her shiver. Lana arches and I know that tell. I sweep my thumbs up higher, grazing her hard nipples, and she gasps against my lips.
“Christian,” she whimpers and my hands are curling around the waistband of her sleep shorts. I give them one soft tug, waiting, and she grinds her hips against mine. Another tell.
I pull the shorts down her hips. She takes another kiss before I’m on my knees and I’m lifting her legs onto my shoulders. Lana tugs at my hair, making my scalp prickle in pain, and she arches again. “Christian.”
I look up at her with a grin. “Yes?”
She’s squirming, breathing heavily, and biting into her lip. “Please,” she breathes.
I kiss the inside of her knee. “Beg.”
She moans. “Christian,” she pants when I bite her inner thigh, my stubble scratching her sensitive skin. “Please. Touch me, please.”
I bite her other thigh.
“Fuck, baby, please,” Lana cries with a gasp. “Please.”
I lick up her pussy once with the flat of my tongue and her sigh sounds like relief.
This is my favorite thing to do to her. Foreplay with Lana is like a much more torturous game of chicken—waiting to see who can last the longest before we crash into each other, before I push myself inside of her and make myself at home, or before she shoves me onto my back and straddles my thighs, taking everything she wants from me.
But this…