Chapter 37 #2
When you said you wanted to stop somewhere,” he said, “I didn’t expect it to be prison.”
I reached him and clicked my tongue. “I’m disappointed, Sterling. By now, I should have become predictable to you.”
He shook his head, taking my hands in his. They were cold. They’d gone cold in the few minutes since I’d left the car, despite the fact that he’d spent the entire drive holding them, rubbing warmth into my fingers and pressing them to his lips whenever he thought I wasn’t looking.
“You could never be predictable,” he said.
His thumbs moved slowly over my knuckles. Then he sighed, his shoulders finally dropping as though seeing me again had released some tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying.
“I should have gone with you.”
“Absolutely not.” I squeezed his fingers. “You would’ve just glared at him. It wouldn’t have been fun.”
He frowned—that particular frown he wore when he was trying very hard to be offended and not quite pulling it off.
“I can be fun.”
I tapped his cheek. “Of course you can.”
I turned toward the car. He was already moving, stepping around me, pulling open the door before I could reach for it.
I slid into my seat. He walked around to the driver’s side, got in, and started the engine.
I buckled my seatbelt and turned toward him.
“Are you finally going to tell me where the date is?”
This was something new.
Something we’d fallen into without really meaning to—dates every weekend, taking turns surprising each other.
One week mine, the next his. Sometimes, though, we planned them together, sprawled across the couch with our phones in hand, scrolling through lists of things we’d never tried and places we’d never been, arguing over which ones sounded fun and which ones sounded like potential lawsuits.
In the last few months, we’d done things I never would have imagined us doing.
A glassblowing class, where he made me a lopsided little bowl that I kept on my desk.
A midnight hike to watch the sunrise from a hill neither of us could name.
We held a cooking competition in our own kitchen that ended with flour in his hair and my laughter bouncing off the walls.
Last month, I took him indoor skydiving. He screamed the entire time, and then the moment we were back on solid ground, he demanded we do it again.
His turn had been a nighttime picnic in the middle of nowhere. He’d spread out a blanket beneath the open sky and pointed out constellations he had clearly looked up the day before.
This week was his turn.
He’d refused to tell me anything.
For seven days, every time I’d asked, he’d just smiled that infuriating, wonderful smile and said, “You’ll see.”
He glanced at me, something mischievous in his eyes. “All I will say is—I’ve packed extra clothes. Because we’re going to get very wet.”
I waited.
He blinked. “We’re going to a waterpark.”
“There it is.”
“It’s more of a water event, really.” He was already talking faster, the way he always did when he was excited. “There are activities. Races. Obstacle courses. Things we can do together.”
I scowled, just to see him squirm. “I don’t want to be in a waterpark with other people, though.”
His smile widened. “That’s why I booked the entire place. Just for us.”
“Nice.” My hand found the back of his neck, my fingers threading into his hair. He leaned toward me without thinking, as if some part of him was always being pulled toward me before the rest of him had time to catch up.
I pulled him closer, my lips brushing his ear.
“I knew there was a reason I was keeping you.”
His mouth crashed into mine.
He groaned, low and warm, his hand sliding to my waist and pulling me closer.
His lips moved against mine, fast and hungry, the way they always did when I caught him off guard.
And I let him. I let him kiss me until my lungs burned, until his breath was heavy against my mouth, until there was nothing else I could feel but him.
He finally pulled back, breathing hard, his forehead resting against mine. Then he kissed me again, softer this time, before pressing his lips to my forehead and letting them linger there.
“I love you,” he said.
He said it every day now. Sometimes ten times. Sometimes twenty. He said it in the morning, his voice rough with sleep. He said it over the phone between meetings. He said it when I laughed, when I frowned, when I did nothing at all.
I kissed the corner of his mouth. “I love you too.”
He smiled against my lips, soft and warm, and somehow I felt it everywhere.
“I used your money, by the way.” He pulled back just enough to look at me, his cheeks flushed, his eyes bright. “You’re richer than me, after all.”
My hand found the back of his neck again, my fingers threading through his hair, feeling the warmth of him beneath my palm.
“I knew it,” I said, keeping my voice serious even as my lips twitched. “I knew you were only with me for my money.”
He sighed, dramatic and defeated. “Damn it. I was hoping you wouldn’t find out.”
He turned forward, reached for his seatbelt, and clicked it into place.
I shook my head, still holding the back of his neck, still feeling the pulse beneath my fingers. “Just shut up and drive.”
The car pulled out of the driveway. He drove with one hand, the other resting on my knee, his thumb tracing slow circles against the fabric of my jeans.
“I can’t believe I actually missed getting bullied by you.”
My brows lifted. “I don’t know what you’re calling bullying, Cassian. I’ve never even once shoved you against a locker.”
He glanced at me. Something in his eyes shifted. Darkened.
His voice dropped. “I wouldn’t mind getting shoved against a locker. If you’re the one doing it.”
I pressed a hand to my chest, scandalized. “We’re in public, sir. You can’t just seduce me like that.”
He glanced at me again, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “I can if it’s working.” A pause. “Is it?”
I laughed, the sound filling the car. “You’re such a dork.”
“You love it.”
“I tolerate it.”
He shrugged, easy and completely unbothered, then lifted my hand from his neck and pressed a kiss to my palm.
“You’re stuck with me either way.”
He was right.
I was stuck with him.
Stuck like two stars in the same orbit. Stuck like roots that had grown together underground, tangled and inseparable. Different notes in the same melody, impossible to hear one without the other.
The thought settled into my chest like a key turning in a lock. Like the way home feels final when you’ve been walking for a long time and finally, finally, you’re there.
I was stuck with Cassian Sterling. And I was exactly where I was supposed to be.