Chapter 31 #2
I haul her against me, mouth crashing into hers like I’ve been starving for years. She tastes like cherry lip balm and victory and every single night I’ve spent wanting her—sweet, addictive, impossible to get enough of.
I yank that ponytail hard, wrapping the braid around my fist and tilting her head back so I can claim her deeper, growling low against her lips like the sound has been trapped in my chest for months. She gasps into my mouth, and the vibration of it shoots straight through me.
I press myself flush against her, every hard line of my body molding to her soft curves until there’s nothing left between us but heat and need.
Her legs come up instantly, wrapping tight around my waist like they were made to be there.
I spin us, backing her against the nearest padded wall with a solid thud, one hand cupping her perfect ass to hold her up while the other keeps that braid fisted. My hips roll forward, pressing myself right against her core, and the delicious friction rips a raw groan from deep in my throat.
She answers with one of her own—soft, needy, trembling—her fingers digging into my shoulders as our lips tangle again, hotter, slower, like we’re both trying to pour every unsaid I love you and I’ve missed you and I’m never letting you go straight into each other’s souls.
She smells like citrus and warm skin and that faint trace of gym rubber that somehow only makes her more intoxicating, more real, more mine.
“Vale—” she breathes against my mouth, the sound breaking on a shudder.
I groan louder, the sound vibrating between us, because this is it. This is finally giving in. No more distance. No more almosts. Just her, wrapped around me, trembling and perfect and mine.
My eyes snap open. The dream still clinging to me like smoke. The accounting textbook lay open on the floor. The numbers were still waiting.
Sweat soaks my hair, my neck, the pillow under my head.
I’m hard. Aching. Furious.
“Fuck.”
The word rips out, raw.
I slam my fist into the couch cushion once. Twice. Three times—hard enough the table shakes.
Stella.
Still her.
Always her.
I stand up, chest heaving, staring out into the night beyond the window.
She’s not here.
She never was.
Just a dream.
I drag a hand down my face, groan low in my throat.
I wanted her.
I still want her.
And the worst part?
She knows it.
She’s always known it.
And tonight my subconscious decided to remind me—in Technicolor, surround sound, no mercy—that choosing myself doesn’t mean the want ever really goes quiet.
It just waits.
Patient.
Starving.
Ready to snap the second I let my guard down.
My fists clench. Should I just text her? End this right now. Tonight?
Go over and crawl into her bed and never get out?
I stand there, breathing ragged, skin too hot, body too alive with the ghost of her.
And I know—I fucking know—
I’m not winning this war tonight.
The next morning I need caffeine. Double what I usually order. I spent half the night curing under the spray of an ice cold shower. And even debated taking the melatonin sleep gummies, my roommate swears by.
I push through the door of the indie coffee shop and stop so fast the girl behind me almost walks into my back.
Stella sits at the corner table by the window like she owns the light pouring in around her.
The morning sun spills across the scarred wood floor and catches the tiny gold hoop at her ear, turns it molten.
Her head is bent over a stack of notes, dark hair twisted up in that careless way that isn’t careless at all, because it leaves the long line of her neck bare.
Exposed. A soft brown curve disappearing into the collar of her fitted white tee.
My mouth goes dry.
I’m so fucked.
There are a dozen empty seats in this place.
And a hundred reasons to turn around.
Instead, I stand there staring at the one woman I’ve been trying to starve out of my bloodstream for weeks.
She doesn’t look up right away.
That somehow makes it worse.
It gives me time to notice everything I shouldn’t.
The way her lips purse slightly when she reads something she doesn’t agree with.
The delicate flash of that earring when she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
The elegant slope of her shoulders.
The smooth column of her throat.
All the places my mouth has never landed and still somehow knows by memory.
I’ve imagined that neck under my lips more times than I’ll ever admit.
Imagined dragging my mouth from just below her ear to the pulse point at her throat until her breath catches.
Imagined those sharp, beautiful eyes going soft.
Imagined her in my arms, all fire and surrender, breathless because of me.
Punishment, I’ve learned, doesn’t kill desire.
It feeds it.
Her gaze lifts then, like she felt me thinking about her.
We lock eyes across the room.
And there it is.
That hit.
That instant, merciless jolt low in my body that says mine before my brain can remind it of all the reasons that word is a problem.
Her expression barely changes, but I see the flicker.
Surprise first.
Then caution.
Then that maddening composure she wears like armor.
She looks back down at her notes.
Dismisses me.
Or pretends to.
I should leave.
Instead, I walk to the counter, order my coffee without hearing a word the barista says, and take the cup with a hand that feels too tight around the cardboard sleeve.
Then I go sit at the table right beside hers.
Close enough to smell her.
Vanilla, maybe. Coconut. Clean skin warmed by the sun. Something soft and feminine and wholly Stella that slides under my ribs and makes me want things I have no business wanting.
I set my laptop down with more force than necessary.
She keeps writing for a beat too long.
Then, without looking at me, she says, “You cannot be serious.”
I open my laptop like I’m here for any reason other than self-inflicted torture.
“What?” I say. “It’s a coffee shop.”
That makes her glance at me.
Those eyes are dark and direct and infinitely more dangerous than they have any right to be in broad daylight.
“There are other tables.”
“So?”
Her brows rise the tiniest bit.
I’ve wanted that brow arched up at me in challenge, in irritation, in pleasure. Wanted to kiss the sarcasm right off her mouth and listen to what sound she’d make if I finally got her under me and didn’t stop until she was shaking.
I drag my gaze back to the laptop screen before it can linger on her lips too long.
It lingers anyway.
Full, pink, slightly parted now in disbelief.
The kind of mouth a man could ruin himself on.
She clicks her pen once.
Sharp.
Impatient.
“Did you hit your head at practice?”
I lean back in the chair and look at her fully now, because restraint is already losing.
“No,” I say. “I’m trying to figure out if someone posted a Snap that this was our place. Because I’ve never once run into you here.”
That gets her attention.
I hold her gaze. “T and T…?”
Her mouth curves then. A smirk.
“How’s that going for you?” She evades my suspicion that she came here hoping to run into me.
I huff a laugh under my breath, wincing. “After you drove a dumpster truck through it?”
That almost pulls a real smile from her. “I’m… sorry? Nah, not really.”
“I do owe her…” I say, quieter now. “Something.”
Her expression shifts.
The teasing eases.
The room feels smaller.
“Closure?” she asks, softly.
There’s no mercy in the word. Just truth.
And that’s always been her most brutal weapon.
I glance at the coffee between my hands, then back at her.
“Maybe.”
She studies me for a long beat, and I can feel it everywhere—that look, the memory in it, the wanting she’s trying not to show, the same way I’m trying not to drown in mine.
Then she goes back to her notes like she hasn’t just opened a seam in my chest.
She admitted she wanted me back.
That’s the part that keeps wrecking me.
Not the flirting.
Not the tension.
Not even the memories.
The honesty. She gave me that truth, and I still walked away.
Because for once in my life, I was trying not to disappear inside wanting someone. And she hurt me, maybe more than I’ll ever admit when she chose herself over the possibility of us.
This, would be easier if she were less beautiful.
If she weren’t sitting three feet away with sunlight turning the loose strands near her temple to silk. If her lips didn’t purse like that while she read. If I hadn’t spent nights imagining those same lips parted under mine, her body arching into me, my name breaking from her on a breath.
I look away first.
Because I have to.
Because if I don’t, I’m going to say something I can’t take back.
A minute passes.
Maybe two.
The espresso machine hisses behind the counter.
Someone laughs near the door.
A chair scrapes across wood.
And all I can hear is the faint rustle every time she shifts in her seat.
“You’re staring,” she says quietly.
I shouldn’t answer honestly.
“I know.”
Her pen stills.
When I look back, her eyes are on me again, and this time there’s no sarcasm in them. No armor. Just that terrible, aching awareness that lives between us now because the truth is out and neither of us can hide behind pretending anymore.
The air changes.
It gets heavier.
Closer.
“What do you want me to do, Stella?” I ask, voice lower than I meant it to be.
Her throat moves.
“Everything,” she taunts.
“I already did that to you,” I respond huskily, “and then I woke up alone. Covered in sweat and rock.. hard.”
Her fingers tighten around the pen. Her pupil dilate. The tiny pulse at the base of her throat is running a marathon.
“What?” I quirked a brow. “You sat at my table and dropped truth bombs. I’m just returning the courtesy.”
Her gaze flicks to my mouth and then away. Her breathing changes just enough for me to notice.
“Right.” She exhales and closes the notebook. “Are we going to finally do this then, Vale?”
“I don’t know.”
“Scared?”