Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Back away. Pull away. Stop this right now.
But I couldn’t.
I felt the heat of his breath on my lips, and I gasped, parting my own, feeling the most intense mixture of warning and desperation swirling within me that I had ever felt in my life. It was elemental, primal, powerful.
Unstoppable.
His hands slipped into my wet hair, tilting me even more toward him, and his bare, wet abdomen brushed my chest, eliciting a sharp inhale from my lips.
It was his nose that touched me first, warm and wet, sliding down the bridge of my own before his forehead melded with mine. His hands gripped harder where they held my hair, and that’s when I realized.
He was shaking, too.
His arms trembled as I wrapped my hands around them, holding onto him, begging him not to pull away as much as I begged him to put distance between us because I knew we should — and I knew I couldn’t be the one to do it.
Every new beat of my heart was a flash of memory, of a past life, searing through me like hot sparks as I gripped him tighter. I saw what once was, what maybe could have been, and more than anything, what never was.
My breaths were ragged and shallow, eyes still shut, every other sense on high alert. Tyler’s lips were so close that when I licked my own, I tasted his, and I whimpered at the shock of that small, almost imperceptible touch.
And that’s when Tyler let out a long, slow exhale of a sigh, shaking his head so softly I almost wondered if I imagined it.
“I would have run to you,” he said softly over the rain, his lips touching mine as he did. “I would have pulled you into me. And I would have never let you go.”
My eyes fluttered open, the tip of his nose where it met mine blurring in my vision. His words knifed me between the ribs.
“You are my weakness, Jaz,” he husked. “You always have been.”
I swallowed, pulling back just a sliver, just enough to look him in his eyes.
But then, contrary to what he just said, he let me go.
He released me all at once — his hands from my hair, his eyes from my own, his lips, nose, forehead — all gone with one giant step back as he ran a hand over his face, rubbing the stubble on his jaw like it was the root of all his frustration as he turned his back on me.
“Goddamnit,” he murmured, shaking his head. Then, he kicked the porch railing, which was already too old and soggy to hold. It broke instantly, and Tyler kicked it again, and again, until his chest was heaving and the entire railing was falling off into the weeds below.
The rain let up — not completely, but enough. Enough that the lightning and thunder rolled on across the lake. Enough that the storm that had been outside existed inside us now. Enough that Tyler jogged down the steps, and across the yard, and past the car to the trail that led the back way home. We used to ride our bikes down that trail, before we could drive, and it wasn’t short, but it wasn’t so far that you couldn’t walk it if you wanted to.
Except Tyler didn’t walk.
He ran.
I didn’t try to stop him. I didn’t run after him, though every muscle in my body ached in protest and begged me to.
I just lifted two shaking fingertips to my lips, touching the flesh that he’d whispered those words into.
And I watched him go.
“Okay, and you’re sure you packed all the party favors in Tyler’s truck?” Morgan asked two days later, checking off the list on her clipboard with her glasses falling down to the tip of her nose repeatedly. Each time, she’d just push them up with her middle finger, only for them to fall down again. “The little champagne bottles, the custom Yeti cups, and the chocolate balls, right?”
“Affirmative,” I barked, standing at attention like a soldier.
Harry had his own copy of the list in Morgan’s hand, and he was checking through it, too, looking like his life depended on whether they had everything on it packed or not.
“And you have the beach towels for the bridal party?” Morgan asked me.
“Check,” I said, holding my hand up to my forehead in a salute.
“And I already double-checked that we have everything on my list in the Escalade.” She worried her bottom lip, eyeing me and then Tyler’s truck in a way that told me she did not trust me when it came to making sure none of us would have to drive three hours back to the house for something forgotten. “Maybe I’ll just run through my list for Tyler’s truck once more, and then we can get on the road.”