“It’s not your fault.”
“No, it is,” I insist firmly. “I overreacted that day in your car and I’m sorry. I was scared but it was about all the wrong things. I wasn’t worried about my dad and the paparazzi, not really. I was afraid of you meeting him because what if he knew everything in the world about you, your every single stat from college to pro, and he couldn’t remember my name? I didn’t think I could stand it. I can’t begin to explain how humiliating and painful that would be and I didn’t want you to see that.”
Colt’s face is clouded with concern as he pushes up off the bed to sit up straighter. “Lilly, I had no idea. I wouldn’t have agreed to go with you if I’d known.”
“I asked you to go, it’s on me, but I shouldn’t have. I wasn’t ready.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to be ready for anything. I’ll wait as long as you need me to.”
“I love you,” I blurt out. The words shock us both. I feel my body burn with adrenaline when I hear myself say it, but I don’t stop. I let the truth poor out of me at a blinding speed. “I love you so much and I don’t want you to wait. I want to rush and run with you. I want to fly. I want to feel alive. I want to feel like I’m living my life and I want to live my life with you because—“ I take a breath, realizing I haven’t done that in a while. “Because I love you,” I laugh shakily.
He grins and it’s a lovely thing. A charming, boyish, delicious thing.
“I love you too, Lilly.”
“You do?”
“Yeah,” he chuckles, his voice deep in my blood, in my heart, thrumming in my ears. “I’ve been miserable since you walked away. I haven’t been myself. I’ve never felt this way, and I can come back from anything. Any loss, any hit.” He shakes his head, his voice dipping softly. “But not you. You are the one thing I can’t bounce back from. And I don’t want to, but you’ve gotta know that this is my life right now. Tomorrow it could be different. That hit today, it could have changed everything. They all could. Every one of them could be my last, there’s no way of knowing. I understand that I have a shelf life. This ride is going to come to an end and probably soon, so I’m enjoying it while I can. Ten years from now I’ll probably be a mechanic back in Galena with a tattered old jersey framed on my wall and a scrapbook full of all of these memories, and I’m cool with that. But I owe it to that mechanic to give him as many memories as I can.”
“Are you saying you’ll see me in ten years?” I ask, half-joking, half-heartbroken.
He shakes his head seriously. “I’m saying I hope you’re still with me in ten years. I hope you’ll ride this ride with me and know that that’s what it is; a ride. An adventure that we’ll look back on, because it’s not going to be this way forever. But you and I, we are. We’re tiramisu, Lilly. Sweet and complicated, but so fucking good it’s worth it. Every last bite.”
I laugh shakily, my eyes welling with hot tears.
It’s been a month since we met. Such a meager amount of time to make such a strong declaration to each other, but I think I first felt it that night in the bakery when he kissed me. When the batter was burning next to us and sweet sugar filled the air. I’ve been denying it ever since, pushing back and pushing back. Going slow. Running away.
But I’m not going slow tonight.
I step to the door, throwing the bar lock quietly.
“Lilly?”
I shed my jacket, letting it fall to the floor. I lift the hem of my shirt. I pull it up over my head. I drop it on the floor at my feet.
Colt’s eyes go wide. Interested. “What are you doing?”
I reach behind me to unhook my bra. It releases, falling slowly off my shoulders. I drop it beside my shirt.
Colt’s eyes are very interested now.
“How drugged are you?” I ask him.
“Not that drugged. I’d have to be dead before I’d put a stop to this.”
“I’m not taking advantage of you?”
He smiles slow and easy. “Never.”
I unbutton my jeans. I drag the zipper down slowly. I keep my eyes on his, a slow smile curving on my lips.
“I can’t stand up,” he reminds me, his voice husky and low.
“You don’t have to.”
I shimmy out of my jeans. Out of my underwear. I stand naked at the end of his bed.
“I’ll come to you,” I promise.
I can see his breathing change in the rise and fall of his chest. It’s shallow and rapid. His thin athletic shorts rise as I kneel on the end of the bed, crawling toward him on my hands and knees, my eyes lock on his.