CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HANNAH
*This book contains sensitive subject matter. If you are affected by triggers or have experienced serious trauma, it may not be for you.
Not recommended for persons under 18 years of age.
Not recommended for persons under 18 years of age.
Excerpt
[Playlist Idea: Infinity by Jaymes Young]
“I can’t.” He lazily shakes his head. “I can’t touch you and not feel something. If I’m going to move on, we have to stop pretending we can be friends—because we can’t. I can’t be your friend, Hannah. That was made painfully clear the moment I saw you with him.”
His jaw ticks. “I can’t be in the same room with you two without wanting to go caveman and beat the shit out of him—for being able to love you the way I still want to. And yeah, maybe that makes me an asshole, because I know I lost my right to feel that way. But I’m not strong enough to be around you and not want to touch you. To not see you as mine.”
His chest shudders. “There’s not one second I don’t covet the miles Ryan gets to walk with you. Every. Single. Day. Because I never should’ve let you go.”
“I—” My mouth opens and closes like a fish.
The thought of not seeing Gavin anymore feels like a death all of its own. Because on some level, I need him. Like he’s somehow merged into my DNA—a part of me. He’s responsible for the life I have, and I’ll forever be tied to him. Whether I have the imagery to match the details or not.
Panic turns the ache in my stomach into a raw, open sore.
“I don’t know if I can let you go,” nearly launches from my mouth—unfiltered, desperate. I don’t know where it’s fully coming from, but I somehow manage to keep the compulsion under wraps and instead say, “What if we take it slow? I could keep my distance for a little. Give you more time to adjust. I want you in my life, Gavin. I just… What do I have to do?” I basically beg him not to push me away while knowing he’s right—though I don’t want him to be.
I know it’s unbelievably selfish of me to want him to hold on, to force him to feel the pain of loss, but I can’t picture my life without him in it.
He closes his eyes, seeming to hold them for a count. When he opens them again, he’s already steeled himself, mumbling, “Fuck it,” under his breath.
He prowls across the sofa into my personal space.
“What—what are you doing?” My voice is panicked as I shuffle backward to increase the distance between us, but he crawls over me.
Braced only inches above at any given point, he hovers his mouth over mine, letting his hot breath invade me, smelling of beer, setting off a riot of non-friendly sensations inside me.
“What’s gotten into you?” I try to escape, but I’m pinned beneath him with nowhere to go.
“You. You’re what’s gotten into me, Hannah. There’s not a part of me you haven’t possessed. One minute you tell me we have to be friends, and the next you’re begging me like you can’t live without me, and it’s killing me.” He groans a low rumble as he weaves his nose back and forth in the space over mine, ghosting the surface with phantom sensations.
The motion causes his mouth to follow in tandem, sweeping his laboured breaths across the skin of my lips. Its dampened warmth searches out the sudden dryness in mine. And it’s then that I realize I’m parched. Like my mouth has been filled with an arid desert that hasn’t yet discovered water.
“Why can’t you just admit it?” he begs.
“There’s nothing to admit.”
“Don’t lie to me. Your body betrays you,” he says in a throaty voice—nearly guttural. “Tell me you can feel it, too.”
He shifts slightly closer—still not touching—and I whimper, feeling his presence caressing every nerve ending on my body, humming beneath my skin.
“I—I can’t.” My heart vaults against my ribs, trying to escape the overwhelming sensations storming my insides.
When he sees the conflict in my eyes, he licks over his lips, then slides over to nuzzle near my neck.
“If you want me to stop, I will. But God, Hannah—do you feel that? That feeling? That intense yearning beneath your skin… It’s your soul reaching out to mine. It doesn’t want to let go. Because even if we physically don’t touch, our souls always will. They’re one and the same. One dies without the other.”
He moves impossibly closer without actually touching me, and I gulp, sliding my hands between our chests, planning to push him away, but my hands won’t do it. Instead, they dig into the fabric of his shirt, clenching tightly, feeling the rippling muscles twitch beneath my fingertips. The heat of his body.
I can feel his attraction swelling against me, barely concealed through the thin cotton of his joggers, because his body is entirely too close. It’s muddling my already jumbled head.
“Gavin…” I whisper, breathless, bringing him back from where he’s teasing me.
He visibly swallows as if he’s pushing past the thickening in his throat. His voice sounds strangled—rough—when he finally manages to speak.
“This… This is why I shouldn’t be around you.” He searches my eyes. “When I see your reaction to me, it makes me question if this is all in my head, and I have to wonder if you do, on some level, remember me. And that’s a dangerous place for me, because I might just give in and give you those million kisses we’ve been dancing around.”
He lifts his hand to the space just beside my face, though he fists it, then burrows it into the pillowed arm next to my head instead.
“You know, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t touch you. But every time I see you, I’ve been gritting my teeth, struggling to keep my hands to myself because I’m weak, Hannah. You make me so fucking weak.”
The sound of our heavy breathing fills the room.
It pulses simultaneously with our racing hearts.
Adrenaline burns through my veins as I fight the instinct to pull him closer, knowing nothing about this situation is right—no matter how right it feels.
Somehow, I manage to force my voice through the constriction in my throat, panting for breath. “We can’t do this.”
I shuffle my body to the side, wiggling, struggling to slide out from beneath him. When he notices my agitation, he immediately hinges back, positioning his knees behind my legs at the back crease of the sofa. When he throws up his hands in surrender, I lunge off the front cushion and scurry my feet across the room, gasping for the air that can’t seem to find my lungs.
Gavin’s face pinches with frustration. Then, as if he can’t help himself, he hops to his feet and tries again, giving it one last try to convince me.
“If this isn’t what you want, then why do you keep coming here, Hannah? Why do you keep toying with me?”
He pounds against his heart.
Before I can answer, he continues, “You know what I think?” he challenges. “I think the Hannah I know is still in there, and she’s fighting like hell to get out, to reach me.”
He slowly stalks toward me—each step deliberate. Lithe. Seductive.
His eyes darken, holding me captive with an intensity that’s searing.
“She needs me as much as I need her.”
I shake my head, holding on to my denial. “She’s gone. You need to let her go.”
“If I’m wrong, then why are you still here? Why aren’t you running back to your fiancé? I told you—I can’t be your friend.”
He takes a step forward, and I take two steps back.
“I—I don’t know.”
“You want me, Hannah. We’ve been bouncing around our feelings for too long.”
Step.
“That’s not true. I care about you, yes—but I love Ryan.”
“Then why. Are. You. Here?” he repeats, emphasizing each word, taking another step as I steal two more behind me.
“Because…because I can’t accept never talking to you again.”
“Why?” he presses, moving closer. “Why does it bother you? You don’t remember me, right? You should feel nothing.”
I hesitate. “But I don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Feel nothing,” I confess.
I said it before, but for some reason, this time, it feels different. Like it could change everything. Like a struck match about to catch.
Gavin licks over his lips and steps again, drawn by a force neither of us seems able to fight.
“Then what do you feel?”
I pause again as my chest pumps harder. “The electricity.”
“And?” he prompts, each answer pulling him closer.
“The tension.”
His head slants as his eyes rake over me. “Do you feel it like I do? On your skin?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
“In your blood?”
“Yes.”
His voice deepens. “Inside you?”
My breath catches, every nerve feeling like it’s vibrating.
I wave my head, pulse thrumming. “Gavin, I…”
I backpedal until my spine hits the wall, and he closes the distance, gently threading his fingers through my hair, his body less than an inch from mine.
“If I can’t have you, then tell me I shouldn’t love you or feel you with every cell in my body. Tell me to leave you alone and never look back. Tell me…tell me not to kiss you.”
His hot breath pulses against my lips.
“Please,” he whispers, his voice cracking—splintering with desperation.
He stares so deeply into my eyes I’m sure he can see right through all the walls my brain has put up.
I try to say the exact word he’s asked of me, but it’s like I’ve lost control over my entire body, the electricity arcing between us short-circuiting my mind’s ability to resist, rendering my mouth speechless.
My moral compass is spinning out of control as my body falls victim to the hold he has over me.
If I asked him to stop, I have no doubt he would. But I can’t seem to curl my mouth around the words.
He must take my silence for acceptance because, in the next achingly charged breath, his body melts against me, and his gentle mouth covers mine.
He passionately pours a sated moan between my parted lips, and it feels like a cold rain after a year-long drought. Relief rolls over me like it’s just crested the top of a waterfall, then it all comes crashing down, slamming me into the truth of what he’s done below.
I finally find my voice.
“No! Get off me!” I shove hard at his chest, and he immediately stumbles back, panting. “What have you done?!”
“I can’t.” He lazily shakes his head. “I can’t touch you and not feel something. If I’m going to move on, we have to stop pretending we can be friends—because we can’t. I can’t be your friend, Hannah. That was made painfully clear the moment I saw you with him.”
His jaw ticks. “I can’t be in the same room with you two without wanting to go caveman and beat the shit out of him—for being able to love you the way I still want to. And yeah, maybe that makes me an asshole, because I know I lost my right to feel that way. But I’m not strong enough to be around you and not want to touch you. To not see you as mine.”
His chest shudders. “There’s not one second I don’t covet the miles Ryan gets to walk with you. Every. Single. Day. Because I never should’ve let you go.”
“I—” My mouth opens and closes like a fish.
The thought of not seeing Gavin anymore feels like a death all of its own. Because on some level, I need him. Like he’s somehow merged into my DNA—a part of me. He’s responsible for the life I have, and I’ll forever be tied to him. Whether I have the imagery to match the details or not.
Panic turns the ache in my stomach into a raw, open sore.
“I don’t know if I can let you go,” nearly launches from my mouth—unfiltered, desperate. I don’t know where it’s fully coming from, but I somehow manage to keep the compulsion under wraps and instead say, “What if we take it slow? I could keep my distance for a little. Give you more time to adjust. I want you in my life, Gavin. I just… What do I have to do?” I basically beg him not to push me away while knowing he’s right—though I don’t want him to be.
I know it’s unbelievably selfish of me to want him to hold on, to force him to feel the pain of loss, but I can’t picture my life without him in it.
He closes his eyes, seeming to hold them for a count. When he opens them again, he’s already steeled himself, mumbling, “Fuck it,” under his breath.
He prowls across the sofa into my personal space.
“What—what are you doing?” My voice is panicked as I shuffle backward to increase the distance between us, but he crawls over me.
Braced only inches above at any given point, he hovers his mouth over mine, letting his hot breath invade me, smelling of beer, setting off a riot of non-friendly sensations inside me.
“What’s gotten into you?” I try to escape, but I’m pinned beneath him with nowhere to go.
“You. You’re what’s gotten into me, Hannah. There’s not a part of me you haven’t possessed. One minute you tell me we have to be friends, and the next you’re begging me like you can’t live without me, and it’s killing me.” He groans a low rumble as he weaves his nose back and forth in the space over mine, ghosting the surface with phantom sensations.
The motion causes his mouth to follow in tandem, sweeping his laboured breaths across the skin of my lips. Its dampened warmth searches out the sudden dryness in mine. And it’s then that I realize I’m parched. Like my mouth has been filled with an arid desert that hasn’t yet discovered water.
“Why can’t you just admit it?” he begs.
“There’s nothing to admit.”
“Don’t lie to me. Your body betrays you,” he says in a throaty voice—nearly guttural. “Tell me you can feel it, too.”
He shifts slightly closer—still not touching—and I whimper, feeling his presence caressing every nerve ending on my body, humming beneath my skin.
“I—I can’t.” My heart vaults against my ribs, trying to escape the overwhelming sensations storming my insides.
When he sees the conflict in my eyes, he licks over his lips, then slides over to nuzzle near my neck.
“If you want me to stop, I will. But God, Hannah—do you feel that? That feeling? That intense yearning beneath your skin… It’s your soul reaching out to mine. It doesn’t want to let go. Because even if we physically don’t touch, our souls always will. They’re one and the same. One dies without the other.”
He moves impossibly closer without actually touching me, and I gulp, sliding my hands between our chests, planning to push him away, but my hands won’t do it. Instead, they dig into the fabric of his shirt, clenching tightly, feeling the rippling muscles twitch beneath my fingertips. The heat of his body.
I can feel his attraction swelling against me, barely concealed through the thin cotton of his joggers, because his body is entirely too close. It’s muddling my already jumbled head.
“Gavin…” I whisper, breathless, bringing him back from where he’s teasing me.
He visibly swallows as if he’s pushing past the thickening in his throat. His voice sounds strangled—rough—when he finally manages to speak.
“This… This is why I shouldn’t be around you.” He searches my eyes. “When I see your reaction to me, it makes me question if this is all in my head, and I have to wonder if you do, on some level, remember me. And that’s a dangerous place for me, because I might just give in and give you those million kisses we’ve been dancing around.”
He lifts his hand to the space just beside my face, though he fists it, then burrows it into the pillowed arm next to my head instead.
“You know, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t touch you. But every time I see you, I’ve been gritting my teeth, struggling to keep my hands to myself because I’m weak, Hannah. You make me so fucking weak.”
The sound of our heavy breathing fills the room.
It pulses simultaneously with our racing hearts.
Adrenaline burns through my veins as I fight the instinct to pull him closer, knowing nothing about this situation is right—no matter how right it feels.
Somehow, I manage to force my voice through the constriction in my throat, panting for breath. “We can’t do this.”
I shuffle my body to the side, wiggling, struggling to slide out from beneath him. When he notices my agitation, he immediately hinges back, positioning his knees behind my legs at the back crease of the sofa. When he throws up his hands in surrender, I lunge off the front cushion and scurry my feet across the room, gasping for the air that can’t seem to find my lungs.
Gavin’s face pinches with frustration. Then, as if he can’t help himself, he hops to his feet and tries again, giving it one last try to convince me.
“If this isn’t what you want, then why do you keep coming here, Hannah? Why do you keep toying with me?”
He pounds against his heart.
Before I can answer, he continues, “You know what I think?” he challenges. “I think the Hannah I know is still in there, and she’s fighting like hell to get out, to reach me.”
He slowly stalks toward me—each step deliberate. Lithe. Seductive.
His eyes darken, holding me captive with an intensity that’s searing.
“She needs me as much as I need her.”
I shake my head, holding on to my denial. “She’s gone. You need to let her go.”
“If I’m wrong, then why are you still here? Why aren’t you running back to your fiancé? I told you—I can’t be your friend.”
He takes a step forward, and I take two steps back.
“I—I don’t know.”
“You want me, Hannah. We’ve been bouncing around our feelings for too long.”
Step.
“That’s not true. I care about you, yes—but I love Ryan.”
“Then why. Are. You. Here?” he repeats, emphasizing each word, taking another step as I steal two more behind me.
“Because…because I can’t accept never talking to you again.”
“Why?” he presses, moving closer. “Why does it bother you? You don’t remember me, right? You should feel nothing.”
I hesitate. “But I don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Feel nothing,” I confess.
I said it before, but for some reason, this time, it feels different. Like it could change everything. Like a struck match about to catch.
Gavin licks over his lips and steps again, drawn by a force neither of us seems able to fight.
“Then what do you feel?”
I pause again as my chest pumps harder. “The electricity.”
“And?” he prompts, each answer pulling him closer.
“The tension.”
His head slants as his eyes rake over me. “Do you feel it like I do? On your skin?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
“In your blood?”
“Yes.”
His voice deepens. “Inside you?”
My breath catches, every nerve feeling like it’s vibrating.
I wave my head, pulse thrumming. “Gavin, I…”
I backpedal until my spine hits the wall, and he closes the distance, gently threading his fingers through my hair, his body less than an inch from mine.
“If I can’t have you, then tell me I shouldn’t love you or feel you with every cell in my body. Tell me to leave you alone and never look back. Tell me…tell me not to kiss you.”
His hot breath pulses against my lips.
“Please,” he whispers, his voice cracking—splintering with desperation.
He stares so deeply into my eyes I’m sure he can see right through all the walls my brain has put up.
I try to say the exact word he’s asked of me, but it’s like I’ve lost control over my entire body, the electricity arcing between us short-circuiting my mind’s ability to resist, rendering my mouth speechless.
My moral compass is spinning out of control as my body falls victim to the hold he has over me.
If I asked him to stop, I have no doubt he would. But I can’t seem to curl my mouth around the words.
He must take my silence for acceptance because, in the next achingly charged breath, his body melts against me, and his gentle mouth covers mine.
He passionately pours a sated moan between my parted lips, and it feels like a cold rain after a year-long drought. Relief rolls over me like it’s just crested the top of a waterfall, then it all comes crashing down, slamming me into the truth of what he’s done below.
I finally find my voice.
“No! Get off me!” I shove hard at his chest, and he immediately stumbles back, panting. “What have you done?!”