Chapter Twenty-Five
Impossibly Lost
Livia
The party stretched into the night, winding down somewhere near when Cinderella’s carriage turns into a pumpkin.
The music had softened, the band gone and replaced by quiet classical music from Chloe’s phone, and only the core of us remained.
Aleks and Mia collected empty glasses from tabletops, laughing together as they bumped hips.
Vince and Maven stacked plates at the bar, their bickering playfully punctuated by stolen kisses.
Jaxson and Grace perched on the edge of a lounge chair, Jax whispering something in Grace’s ear that made her cheeks pink even as she swatted him away.
From beside the pool, Ava squealed, hiking up the hem of her tulle dress before launching herself straight into the water. A chorus of gasps and laughter rang out — and seconds later, Will kicked off his loafers and jumped in after her, the splash enormous.
Chloe’s jaw dropped, her delighted shriek carrying over the water. “William Perry!” she yelled, tossing off her heels and diving in, too. The three of them surfaced, sputtering and laughing, and the whole backyard echoed with joy.
I smiled to myself, warmth blooming in my chest at the sight of it. For a brief, fragile moment, it was enough to simply stand on the fringe, martini in hand, watching love ripple outward like rings in a pond.
Then a hand slid into the crook of my elbow.
I startled, turning — but Carter was already guiding me wordlessly away from the crowd. I abandoned my drink on a cocktail table as we passed, looking around to make sure no one had eyes on us.
The only one who did was Maven, and she made a motion like her lips were zipped shut.
Carter’s grip was steady, his body close enough that his heat bled into mine, and before I could ask what he was doing, we rounded the house and my back hit the wall.
His mouth found mine with a hunger that stole every ounce of air from my lungs.
His hands braced the wall on either side of my head, caging me in, his chest pressed hard against my dress, his breath shaking like he’d sprinted from the ends of the earth to get to me.
“I couldn’t wait another second to kiss you,” he rasped against my lips. His hands moved from the wall to my hips, bunching the fabric there. “You in this dress…” He groaned, kissing me again, reverent, desperate. “You in anything. You existing, Liv — it’s the very thing that undoes me.”
My pulse thundered. I kissed him back because how could I not, because every ounce of me had wanted this, but my body trembled with confusion, with fear of what it meant.
This wasn’t a lesson. This wasn’t something safely outlined in a contract.
This was Carter’s graduation, and for his final assignment, he was claiming me like there was no other option than for me to be his.
He finally broke our kiss, his forehead against mine as our breaths met in a panting rhythm between us. My hands clutched his jacket and his held fast to my waist.
I felt the heaviness of the emotions warring inside him before he spoke them into existence, but I still wasn’t prepared for their impact.
“Livia, I… I can’t do this anymore. I can’t skate within the boundaries of the deal we made or the contract we signed.”
My pulse was razor sharp and unsteady, and I didn’t know if I was petrified of what he’d say next or filled with an unshakeable hope.
Carter wet his lips, shaking his head — not like he was unsure of what he wanted to say, but more that he was uncertain of my reaction to it.
“I want more,” he finally spoke, his voice low and raspy.
“God, Livia, I need more. I know I said I understood the terms and conditions when I signed. And maybe I meant it at the time, but fuck, honestly, I’m not sure I did.
Even then, I knew you held a key to unlocking a part of me no one else had access to.
And you have. You’ve… you’ve shown me all I’m capable of.
You’ve made me the best version of myself.
But more than anything, you’ve let me see the best version of you.
” He kissed me again, this time slower and more urgent all the same.
“And I can’t go back to just being your friend.
I can’t lie to myself any longer, and I refuse to lie to you.
It’s not about lessons anymore. It hasn’t been for a while.
I want more. And I’m asking you to stand up to every ghost of uncertainty coming alive inside you right now and give it to me. ”
As if he’d conjured them, I felt the spirits of my dark past rising within my chest, long fingers wrapping around my throat and squeezing tight.
“Okay, Rookie,” I said on a breathy, frail laugh that betrayed me. “Is this your practice run for Bachelor in Paradise? Because you’ve got the dramatic declaration down pat.”
The words left my mouth on autopilot, my go-to armor of sarcasm, but even as they hung between us, I heard how brittle they sounded.
The joke didn’t land — not with the pounding in my ears, not with the tremor in my voice that gave me away.
My pulse was still thundering, my hands still fisted in his jacket like I was clinging to a cliff edge.
And Carter didn’t smile.
His jaw flexed, eyes steady, unwavering.
“You always think I’m joking,” he said, voice low and hard as steel, each word pressed with purpose. “That I’m a joke. And you know now, better than anyone, how much that hurts.”
Instantly, any mask of indifference left me. I shook my head, concern for my negligence eating me alive. “Oh, shit. Carter, I didn’t—”
“No,” he said firmly, stepping in even closer somehow, like he wanted to crawl inside me to deliver his next hit.
“Don’t soften it. Don’t take it back. You wanted me to stand my ground?
Well, here I am.” His breath shook, his chest rising against mine as if this cost him everything.
“I mean what I say, Livia. I’m not joking. ”
His eyes burned, steady and sure.
“I love you.”
The words detonated between us.
My world tilted, ears ringing, the dust from the blast clouding every thought that battled for dominance inside my mind.
I shook my head, panic rising like a flame in the aftermath. “No. No, you don’t—”
“Yes.” He caught my chin, his thumb gentle even as his eyes were fierce. The way he stared at me, so intently, cleared everything, the dust settling, my senses rushing back at once. “I do. I love you.”
I didn’t mean to break. I didn’t mean for emotion to warp my face, for me to lean into his touch as tears welled in my eyes and fell in a silent stream down my cheek.
“You don’t think I know you don’t want to hear that?
You think it doesn’t kill me to know you don’t feel the same?
” His voice cracked, and still he never wavered.
“But I can’t keep doing this halfway, Liv.
I am impossibly lost inside the notion that you could actually be mine, if only I can stand my ground and claim you. ”
And then I was kissing him.
It was hard and messy and unbridled, teeth meeting teeth, my nails clawing at his back to get him closer. I mounted him, lifting one leg until he took my weight before I wrapped the other around him and held fast.
Carter pinned me to the wall, meeting my desperation with a kiss so powerful I felt it like a prophecy in my soul, like it was destined to be, and we were at the mercy of a higher power.
I pushed at his chest even as my mouth devoured his, shaking my head against the truth of it, against the part of me that wanted to collapse into him completely.
Carter frowned, still kissing me, but his hands steadied. “Are you telling me no?”
I whimpered at the question, at the way my body revolted against my soul with the answer.
“You know the safe words,” he murmured against my lips. His hands framed my face, patient and certain.
He waited.
The fucking gentleman that he was, he made sure. He wasn’t going to let me get by without using my words.
I hated him for it almost as much as I…
“You’re wrong,” I finally croaked, still shaking my head even as I clawed at him and wordlessly begged for more. “I do want to hear it. And I do feel the same.”
The words broke out of me like water from a shattered vase, and Carter’s face lit up with disbelief at their existence. But it was only a moment, a pause in the turning of our planet before his hands were on me again, more insistent this time, his kisses heated with pure need.
It was all in flashes after that.
His hand at his buckle, unfastening, unzipping.
My dress hiked up, thong yanked to the side.
A rock and a gasp, a moan that vibrated through the very foundation of who I was and brought all my walls down in a thundering crash.
Carter sank inside me like an anchor, flexing hard and wrapping his hands around my shoulders to pull me down farther, as if there was an unreachable depth he was determined to find.
I didn’t know when it happened. I didn’t know if it was in the searing moments of teaching him, in the honest moments of him opening himself to me and me feeling safe to do the same, or in the inconsequential moments, the ones where we were floating on a board side by side or laughing at a bar or sneaking glances across a room crowded with our friends — but I had fallen for him.
It scared me more than anything, and yet I didn’t have the will to fight the truth.
I could have pushed him away. I could have invoked the contract and reminded him what he signed up for, what he agreed to. I could have reinforced my walls and crawled back into my lonely hole of safety.
But I didn’t want to.
Claiming me against that wall, Carter was no longer my student, no longer timid or unsure. He seared me with every thrust, marked me with every kiss, scarred me with every shuttered moan of my name.
And he was right. I did know the safe words.
But I didn’t reach for them.
Instead, I leaned over the edge and into the free fall, into him and everything he was promising.
My past screamed the whole way down, begging me to reconsider.
But it was too late.
I was his.
I only hoped it was warm, welcoming water at the end of that dive and not cold, hard concrete.