“You are worth it, Tanner. Worth every bit of it, but not from me. I can’t give you what you need.”
“That’s bullshit!” I yell as I get in her face, needing to do something to expel the ache in my chest. “Then why not leave well enough alone, huh? Why send me the fucking text? Why give me false hope?”
“Because… because…” Then she stops with her eyes welling with tears I don’t want to see. I fell for them once. Believed them once. I won’t be as quick to fall again. Our faces are inches apart, and it takes everything I have to keep from pulling her to me or pushing her farther away. “I wanted you to know that how I felt for you was real.”
“Goddamn it, Beaux!” When I slam my hand on the console beside me, the sound resonates through the empty house just like her words do through my heart. “Tell me what he does to you! Tell me so that I can try to make it better. Tell me so that I’ll stop going fucking insane trying to figure out why you told me you loved me when you were married to another man!”
“Tanner —”
“Don’t Tanner me. Don’t anything me!” I yell, my mind spinning from her mere proximity.
“You need to go,” she says again.
“No! I won’t go until I hear you tell me that you don’t want me. I know what we had was real too, Beaux. Why do you think I’ve tracked you down and am fighting like hell to get you back?”
“I’ve never been yours to fight for.”
Her words leave her lips and die in the space between us, and yet she never says what I need to hear to force me to walk away. I step closer so that she’s backed against the wall, and my body presses into hers. And even through the anger, I can still feel the snap of the live wire of our combustible chemistry when we touch.
“Tell me you don’t want me.” I grit the words out as our breaths mingle and lungs breathe like one.
“I don’t want you,” she deadpans. For a second I believe her. For a moment I hesitate, plan to step back and walk away. But I know her. I know how feisty she is and how she doesn’t back down until she’s won, and I don’t see that right now. Not a single ounce of the fire within her that I’ve come to love, and so I take one last chance to win back the girl that by now I don’t think I ever really had.
“Bullshit,” I sneer at the same time my mouth slants over hers and takes everything I’ve been wanting and then some for the past three weeks. The kiss is horrible and wonderful all at once because it’s like coming home and being shown what you’re going to no longer have.
She struggles against me, pushing against my chest as our mouths fight a savage dance of denied desire and frustrated passion, shifting into resistance and acceptance, as our tongues meld and teeth nip and throats moan with want.
She drags her mouth from mine, her eyes drugged with desire beneath heavy lids, and lets her words slash out at me. “I don’t want you.”
“Don’t you fucking dare lie to me again! I deserve better than that. Tell me! Tell me that again!” I shout at her with one of my hands gripped in her hair and the other digging into her hip.
She doesn’t say a word. She just stares with tears filling her eyes until she whimpers. “I can’t, Tanner. I can’t.” But afterward she leans forward and presses her lips to mine in the most tender of kisses. It’s like a drug and a poison to me, pulling me further under its haze and hurting me all at the same time.
“You can,” I urge, my own voice thick with emotion when she brushes another kiss on my mouth, but this time I can taste the salt of her tears on her lips, and my chest constricts at whatever is going on that I can’t comprehend.