We both engage in a quiet laugh.
“I’m here because I want to be.” Tears glisten in his eyes, and the breath gets sucked right out of my lungs at the sight of those glittery beacons. “I’m here for you, for us—for everything we can be.” He swallows hard. His jaw clenches. That slightly swollen cheek is starting to take color. “Do you think you can open your heart to me?”
In this one moment, this tiny slice of time, Cade James looks every bit the little boy I saw in him that first night at the Black Bear. There was something adorable about the innocent way he looked up at the world from under his lashes. It was just a glint of a moment, a flash that was here one second and gone the next, but this right here brings it all back.
“Yes.” It comes out hoarse, weak. “Hell yes,” I say it again with a little more bite. “I have my whole heart, my whole world opened up for you.”
“Come here.” Cade pulls me in so tight, embracing me with such fervor the way you would someone you thought had been lost at sea. I hold on just as tight if not with ten times more desperation. “God, I missed you.” He pulls back and brushes the hair from my forehead. “You’re beautiful.” His eyes roam freely over my features, and I feel his gaze warming over my scar—not with judgment or disdain but with love. “Can I kiss you?”
“Now that’s one question I don’t ever want you to ask again.”
A broad smile comes to him, the first time all night, as he crashes hard over my lips. I open my mouth as he falls in, hot and wet, loving me with strength and power, and best of all—every last bit of his affection. Cade and I kiss like tomorrow may never come. It feels as if hours pass, weeks, as his hands roam up and down my body, my hips pressed tight over his. These are desperate, hungry kisses. Cade and I are so very starved for affection we simply cannot get enough. I try my best to swallow him down, to pull him into me, to just breathe Cade.
This moment right here is pure and right.
Cade and I are right.
But if we’re so right, why haven’t I worked up the nerve to let him know how I feel yet?
Cade drives us down long stretches of Hollow Brook highway until we come up on the university. He cuts a quick glance my way as the turn lane splices up ahead.
“Say you’ll come home with me.”
“That’s a funny way of asking.”
That devilish grin perks on his lips. “That’s a funny way of accepting.”
“That’s a funny way of assuming to know what I’m thinking.”
The car slows down as we come upon a fork in the road. “I know what I would like for you to be thinking, but I want to do what makes you happy. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.” A beat of silence ticks by. “Please come home with me.”
“Please take me to your home.”
And he does.
Cade parks in the driveway and jumps over to help me out. That swollen patch on his cheek has taken on a powder blue.
“Cade.” Now it’s my turn to swallow hard. “Before we go inside, there’s something I have to say.”
His features cloud over. “Anything.” He circles my waist with his warm arms, his sad gaze searing to mine.
“There’s a reason I’m having such a hard time sharing my feelings with you.” An ache as deep and wide as the ocean twists my heart in half.
He nods, wordlessly begging me to go on.
“Cade—outside a handful of people, and I can list them all on one hand, I haven’t exactly been…” For the life of me, I can’t find the word. “Wanted?” A line of pain opens from my heart to my stomach like a clean incision, and it’s as if the ick I’ve carried around with me all these years spills right out. “I guess that’s the word.” I close my eyes, and Cade brushes a kiss over each of my eyelids.
“I want you,” he whispers. “I want you forever, Cass.”
I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him down toward me. My heart thumps so hard over his chest, it’s practically speaking to him in Morse code. I think it’s time I put into words what my heart’s been trying to say all along.
“I think you’re the one with a heart of gold around here.” I land a delicate kiss to the tip of his nose. I pull back and fall deep into those brilliant blue eyes. “And that must be why I’ve fallen in love with you.” My entire body sings with relief when I say those precious words. I’ve felt it for Cade I think as far back as that first night we met. There was just something about him. Sometimes, you just know.
He ticks his head to the side, that sexier than hell grin of his spreading from ear to ear. “You love me?”
“A heck of a lot more than my poor heart can take. I think I need two beating hearts to hold all the love I have for you.”
“I’d give you mine, but you already have it.” He buries his face in my neck a moment. “I love you, too, Cassidy.” Cade lands a kiss over my lips, and it feels richer this time, far more seductive, tender and daring all rolled into one.