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“You’re okay.” He peppered kisses along my throat. “I got you. You’re okay.”
A car drove by at a snail’s pace but kept going, not bothering to check on us. My heart still pounded, ricocheting off of his, while soft music played, doing what it could to ease my tremors.
When I inched back, his eyes were glowing with worry and torment. I pressed a quivering hand to his cheek like a thank you; a thank you for keeping me safe and protected. “Are you okay?”
He nodded slowly, his throat working through a swallow. “If you are.”
We couldn’t stay diagonal in the middle of the street forever, so I pulled away and relatched my belt, a silent request for him to keep driving. Another frazzled moment passed before he sucked in a breath and turned us around, continuing forward. The truck was no longer sideways in the roadway, but everything inside of me was. Images of splintering glass and blood-soaked skin consumed me as the truck crawled down the gravelly road. Panic still lingered in my chest and pulsed in my veins, while my limbs shook with slow-dying shock.
We could have died.
I could have lost him—really lost him.
It was the only thing on my mind as we pulled into Reed’s complex ten minutes later, the drive over filled with treacherous silence after he’d turned off the music. The trek inside his apartment was also silent, and I wasn’t sure why he’d brought me here—again—instead of to Whitney’s house, but I was undoubtedly grateful for it anyway. I didn’t want to be alone. I couldn’t bear the thought of not being close to him moments after nearly losing him to a metal-crunched bloodbath.
Shivering, I followed him into the apartment on autopilot, slipping out of my high heels and tossing my purse and camera to the entryway floor. I wobbled on jelly-like legs. My breathing escalated. Reed sliced a hand through his hair, then shook out of his leather coat and let it fall beside my items. He rubbed at his forehead like he was begging his mind to form words. I didn’t know what to say either. In the wake almost dying, the only words that sounded marginally appropriate were a solemn acknowledgment of the fragile line between life and death that we had just bridged. A “thank you” to the universe for a second chance.
A thank God you’re still here.
Our eyes met from a few feet away. I inhaled, exhaled, my breaths wheezy and fraught. Tears glistened and clouded my vision as I watched him step toward me, landing on the entry mat, a reach away. Did he feel it, too? This energy spooling around us, something bigger than us both. Heavier than our circumstances and our unfair fate.
I shook my head a little. For no reason, for every reason. Tears burned hotter, welling up like someone had stuffed a sock in a drain and turned the faucet on. The water had nowhere to go, other than to overflow.
Cupping a hand over my mouth, I kept shaking my head as the tears fell down. Everything came to a peak, until down was the only direction left.
Reed caught me as my knees failed me and I crumpled, landing in his arms. A soft-landing. The only landing that could keep my fraying pieces in place. I clutched the front of his muted-gray T-shirt in both fists, smashing my face to his chest and sobbing.
“Comet,” he murmured, his breath as warm as that nickname as it danced across the top of my head. He gathered my limp curls in two hands and held me close while I unraveled, string by string. “Shh. We’re okay.”
“Are we?” I croaked out.
“Yes.”
I needed the lie right now, so I allowed it to soothe me. My nose nuzzled against the fabric of his shirt, my breaths sporadic and shaky. He walked us backward until my spine was flush with the apartment door, and I fell back as my chin tipped up, my fingers still clasping soft cotton.
Extending a hand, Reed reached behind me to flick the lock, securing us inside.
My shoulder blades grazed against the cool wood, my eyes unwilling to leave his. He swallowed, his focus dipping to my mouth as he blinked twice, then lifted both hands to cup my cheeks in a tender grip. I loosened in his arms, becoming dead weight, while his hands clenched tighter. His eyes panned back up and tangled with mine, and we stared at each other, our bodies and gazes holding, alighting, brimming with electrical currents and indecision.
Neither of us wanted to let go. Neither of us wanted to end this before we had a taste of what it could become.
“You should get to bed.” He glanced back down at my mouth. “Take the guest room.”
“Okay.” My pulse unsteadied as my hands journeyed up his chest and wrested his shoulders, and Reed’s grip on my cheeks turned firm and bruising. A contradiction to our fruitless words. I tilted my head back, my lips parting with a tiny whimper when he curled one hand around my neck.
All of his staunch reasoning and well-intentioned plans became background noise. A distant, aimless hum. None of it compared to this feeling. This falling.
He leaned in closer, breathing meaningless words against my mouth. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“I know.”
I knew, and he knew, but neither of us cared.
All that mattered was that we were here. Alive and hot-blooded.
Together.
“Why did you?” I arched my back against the door, craning my neck, cinching his shoulders so hard my nails would leave marks. Our pelvises brushed and I felt his erection straining against his jeans. Another mewl slipped past my lips as I ground against him and trailed my hands up his neck, pulling him closer. Our mouths touched, a graze, a gavel slamming down on our fate.