“Now how in the hell do I argue with that?” I muttered, accepting I’d just run smack into another Knox dead end.
“You don’t. You let it go.”
When his thumb trailed down my nose, dipping to the bow of my lips, my eyes closed. “I let it go?” It was a concept I wasn’t familiar with.
“You let it go,” he repeated.
“Well, shit.” I followed his suggestion, trying to let it go. Maybe not forever, maybe not even through the rest of the night, but for this moment, I let it go. Instead of firing off every question I had for him, I draped my arms around his neck, slid a bit closer, and swayed to a silent beat.
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking thoroughly confused, even as his arms draped around my waist.
“If I can’t get you to open up to me, I’ll make you suffer in other ways.”
“Other ways like dancing?” Knox smiled at me, his hands heating my lower back even through the many layers of my toga.
“Although, gauging by your relaxed, almost contented expression, I’m clearly doing something wrong.” Lowering my head to his chest, I tucked it under his chin and hummed the most sappy, sickening slow song I could think of.
“No, Charlie, you’re definitely not doing something wrong.”
My brows rose. “We’re two people dressed in togas and the male and female pariahs of Sinclair. About five hundred people just found out what you look like in a jockstrap, and right now we’re dancing on the sidewalk leading to the kinesiology building while I hum an awful song only outdone by my atrocious dancing skills. How does that not top about every wrongness level in existence?”
One of Knox’s hands ran up my back. It didn’t stop until it had molded around the back of my neck. Chills cascaded down my spine. When he spoke, I didn’t have to see his face to know there was a smile on it.
“Because everything about this feels so right it scares the hell out of me.”
IT SEEMED LIKE I’d just closed my eyes on what had quite possibly been one of the most eventful nights of my life when I found my eyes snapping open what felt like only a minute later.
White light flashed inside my room, followed by a crack of thunder a few seconds after. Rain pounded the roof so hard I was waiting for it to collapse. Rolling over to check the time on my phone, I found what had felt like a minute had been an hour. It had been almost one when Knox and I made it back to his place, and after a couple of goodnights and trying to pretend the tension between us wasn’t tipping the intolerable scale, I took a long shower then fell asleep the moment my head crashed into my pillow . . . and I would have still been asleep had it not been for the storm of the century waking me.
But it hadn’t been the thunder that had woken me. I’d snapped to during a flash of lightning. A different noise had startled me awake. As loud as the rain was pinging against the roof and gutters, it hadn’t been that either. It had been something else, something that had managed to enter my dreams and nudge me back to reality. My heart pounded as another flash of lightning drenched my room, and that was when I heard it—the sound that had woken me.
Knox.
The noise wasn’t coming from his bedroom next to mine but from the backyard. How I heard him in the midst of a thunderstorm, I didn’t know, but it served as more proof that something undeniable tied Knox and me together. Somewhere along the way, his soul had attached to mine, and mine to his, and they’d become a part of the other person. One part of Knox was forever inside me, and a part of me would always be with him too. That realization was as comforting as it was heartbreaking.
When the thunder clapped again, it seemed to shake my bed . . . but still, I heard him. Throwing my blankets off, I ran to the window and threw the curtains aside. The yard was dark. All I could see were the thousands of rivers trailing down the window. Splaying my hands on the glass, I pressed closer, sure I could see him if I looked hard enough.
Then another flash of lightning filled the sky, illuminating the yard long enough for me to see him. He was beneath the tree, squared in front of the tire punching bag and driving his fists into it like I’d never seen him before. The punching bag swung so far back from his hits that when it swung in his direction, it drove him a few steps backward before he could pop off a few more punches. He was in his standard workout gear—boxers and a whole lot of nothing else—and while I was used to seeing him drenched at the end of a session, it wasn’t sweat rolling off of him. No, it was the rain and very possibly, from the cries I heard tangled with the rest of the sounds of the night, tears.
After a cry louder than any of the others, right as the punching bag hit him so hard he nearly fell back, I raced across my room and into the hallway. Grabbing my sweatshirt draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, I threw it on and rushed to open the slider. I sprinted toward him, leaping over the lounge recliner and realizing too late that I should have slid on a pair of shoes.
“Knox!” I yelled, not slowing as I got closer. “Knox!”
He was in another world—one I wasn’t a part of, one I wasn’t sure I ever could be a part of. The wide branch the punching bag hung from was whining as the bag swung back and forth, and when Knox threw the next punch, the punching bag swung so violently, I was sure the branch would snap.
“Knox!” I tried again, but he couldn’t hear me. I was lost to him.
When the punching bag flew back at him, instead of dodging it or meeting it with his fists, he opened his arms wide, dropped his head back, and let it hit him square in the chest. A cry barely escaped his lips, but the sound that came next—the one that accompanied his return hit—was haunting. It was so chilling I knew I’d never forget it. Almost as if so much pain was barricaded inside him, it had spilled over in the form of a wail that echoed all the way into the marrow of my bones.
“Knox, stop. Please,” I choked out, slowing when I was a few steps away from him.
How that muffled note had made it through to him when my screams had not, I couldn’t understand, but his body froze. Just when I was wincing in anticipation of him taking another hit to his chest, he threw his arms out and stopped the bag as it came for him.
“What are you doing out here, Charlie?” His voice was so strained, so tight with emotion, I barely recognized it.
“What are you doing out here?” I waved at him. He was soaking wet and splattered with dots of rain, mud, and . . . “Shit, your hands. You’ve got blood all over them, Knox.” In a seamless motion, I stripped my sweatshirt off and pressed it into his knuckles, where the blood seemed to be coming from.
“I know.” He turned his hands over and over like he didn’t recognize them.
The rain had already drenched my hair, my pajamas, even my sweatshirt. Every time I dabbed at his knuckles with the wet sweatshirt, instead of soaking up the blood, all it seemed to do was smear it around. “I can’t clean it off. I can’t wipe it clean, Knox.”
I was about to pull him inside to dry him off and bandage him up when he stopped me. “I know. I’ve tried.” He flashed his hands in front of his face, fanning his fingers and turning them over. “They don’t come clean.”
I shook my head violently. “Everything can come clean.”
His hair was plastered across his forehead, dripping into his eyes, but I was sure I’d never seen them so clearly. “Stop lying to yourself, Charlie. Don’t let me be the reason you start doing that.”
When he stepped away from me, I stepped right back into him. “You’re right. I have been lying to myself, and you’re the reason I have been, but it hasn’t had anything to do with hands coming clean.”
Oh God, was I doing this? Now? In the middle of a thunderstorm while Knox was so close to snapping I could see the last thread he was holding on to starting to unravel?
“Then what exactly have you been lying to yourself about?” From the look on his face, he didn’t want to know the answer.
“Do you want the short answer or the long one?” I sucked in a breath and made sure I was rea
dy for this—ready to accept the repercussions and fallout from Knox hearing the truth.
“I don’t think I want either,” he admitted, hitching his hands on his hips. He stared at the wet soil like he hoped he’d sink into it.
“Well, tough, because you’re going to hear one. You make the choice, or I’ll make it for you.”
Another flash of lightning lit up the night. The only darkness it couldn’t seem to touch was the shadows in Knox’s eyes. Backing a few more steps away from me, he said, “The short one.”
I exhaled, feeling equal parts relief and dread. The upside was that it would be out in the open in the span of a single sentence. The downside was that I didn’t have time to work myself up to the grand reveal. Wiping the rain from my eyes, I moved closer to him. “I’ve been lying to myself for weeks now, months, about the way I feel about you.” Thunder exploded as I finished my sentence, but Knox’s eyes told me he’d heard every word.
“How do you feel about me?” he shouted above the thunder.
I didn’t have to search for the right words—they’d been on the tip of my tongue for what felt like an eternity. “What I feel for you scares me, Knox. It terrifies me.”
“Why?” he pressed, even though his jaw seemed to want to clamp shut. “What terrifies you?”
“That the person I thought I’d have to search the world and a lifetime for might be standing in front of me right now,” I shouted above the wind and the rain and even the next clap of thunder. I shouted the words that I’d stifled for months. “That the very person I doubted existed is flesh and blood and right here. That the man who adds more aggravation and angst and just about every other noun to my life is the same one I can’t imagine living without.” Closing the gap he’d put between us, I reached for his hand. For the first time ever, it felt cold, but it didn’t take long before mine warmed his. “That this very hand in mine now is the one I might be holding when I prepare to take my last breath seventy years from now. I’m terrified that every time I look into your eyes, I see my future. I’m terrified that when you look away, it vanishes. I’m terrified because right now, this very minute when I’m confessing all of this and you’re staring at me like I’m either crazy or misguided, all I really want to do is repeat that night in your truck—the way that night was supposed to go.” As I pulled in a long breath, I realized what had started out as the short story had turned into the long version. “I’m scared of you. And I’m scared of me. But I’m terrified of us together. And I’m terrified of why I’m terrified in the first place.”
Knox had remained silent, his expression unreadable, but when he looked at our hands knotted together, his forehead lined. “I’m terrified too. I’m terrified because everything I touch withers up and dies, and I’d rather live without you than watch the same thing happen to you.”
I squeezed his hand and waited for him to look at me. “I’m not delicate. I’m not fragile. I’m not going to wither up on you.” I lifted my other hand and settled it on his chest. His face might have looked dead, but his heart was still alive. “So why don’t you kiss me before I kiss you first?”
“Hate me, Charlie. Now. Before my willpower runs out.” His voice was still tight, but it was knotted with something else too. Instead of despair, it was rough with an emotion I was all too familiar with—desire.
Looking into his face, I moved closer to him. “There’s no way I could hate you with the way you’re looking at me right now.” My mouth was so close to him, the rain rolling off his lips fell onto mine.
His eyes squeezed closed when the top of my mouth brushed the bottom of his. “Last chance. Hate me.”
His words, more the way he’d said them, made me want to weep. So instead of crying, I slid my mouth over his again, though this time I lingered long enough he trembled.
“Would I be standing here in front of you, holding my breath for your willpower to run out, if I could hate you, did hate you, or one day would?” I whispered against his cheek. “Stop talking about hate, Knox, and show me the opposite.”
I didn’t know if it was my words or my hand curling into his chest as I sucked the rivulets of rain from his bottom lip, but suddenly that great wall of willpower Knox had built came crumbling down. I found him pulling me to him, lifting me and wrapping my legs around him. His mouth was on mine before my surprised gasp sounded. His hands were like vices on my back and neck, holding me to him as though he were afraid of what would happen if he let go.
“Charlie?” he got out in the space between our mouths, gravel in his voice.
I lowered my mouth to just outside his ear as another flash of lightning lit up around us. “I know, Knox. I know.”
A shudder rolled down his body before he pressed two fingers into my cheek, angling it back toward him. For the first time, his eyes looked more brown than black. “Good.”
This time when he kissed me, his mouth moved so slowly against mine, so deliberately that I was the one trembling through that kiss. When his tongue touched mine, his fingers wove into my hair and he pressed me closer, tasting more of my mouth. The longer we kissed, the more the ache inside me grew, until it became unbearable. So unbearable, I pulled back from him long enough to grab the bottom of my shirt and pull it over my head. The moment I was free of it, I tossed it aside, and it landed with a wet smack.
At first, it didn’t seem like Knox acknowledged I was freshly shirtless. His mouth moved to my neck, one hand still in my hair and the other formed around the middle of my bare back. We were still beneath the tree, and while it should have provided some cover from the rain, tonight’s storm couldn’t have been softened by anything. The rain came down in such powerful sheets it was almost painful, but if Knox felt anything at all, it wasn’t the rain. When his mouth ran lower, exploring the hollow at the base of my neck, I forgot the pelting rain as well.
Something was bumping up against my back, lightly and repeatedly. When I realized the hard, smooth surface was the tire punching bag, I leaned back into it, waiting for Knox to realize I was now as naked as he was. My pajama shorts and his boxers were the last pieces of clothing keeping us apart. I felt him ready against me, and each time my body slipped down his before he adjusted me higher, that ache inside me was satisfied for one short moment, only to return twice as powerfully.
As his hand in my hair unwound and made a slow journey down me, Knox finally recognized that more of me was bare than when that hand had made the journey up. The backs of his fingers skimmed down the center of my chest, and just when I was sure it was going to keep dropping, his hand slid to the side. His fingers spread over my breast, and the touch came as such a surprise that I let out a sharp exhale. When his fingers splayed farther apart as his mouth dropped to my nipple, my head fell back against the tires and my hand wove into one of the chains holding the tires to the branch.
His mouth was gentle at first, lightly sucking the rain from me, but when his kissing became more urgent, taking more of my breast into his mouth, my other hand tied into the chain as my hips moved against him. A sound that came from deep within rolled past my lips, low and long, and as I felt the space between my legs quickening. Knox’s mouth slowed before coming to a stop. When his face angled up at me, braced against the tires and supported by chains, a wicked flash lit up his eyes as a smile crawled into place.
“This right here might be the damn sexiest sight I’ve ever seen. However, having your wrists wrapped around chains in the middle of a lightning storm isn’t quite like holding a baseball bat above your head in an open field, but close enough.” Like it was agreeing with him, lightning lit up around us again. Knox untangled each of my hands from the chains and backed away from the tires once I was free.
“If you didn’t know just how to use your mouth on a girl, I wouldn’t have been forced to put my life in danger.” I planted my hands on either side of his neck and stared into his eyes. The same eyes that had been so lost minutes ago now looked like they’d never been so sure of anything.
“I
’d apologize, but I’m not sure that’s something I want to apologize for.”
“I’m not looking for an apology.” I tightened my legs around him as he continued to back us away from the tree.
“Then what are you looking for, Charlie Chase?” With each step he took, the wet mud suctioned to his feet, trying to slow or stop him, but he kept going, one fought-for step after another.
“I’m not looking for anything,” I said, my hands forming around his face. My thumbs lowered to the corners of his mouth as I pressed my mouth into it. “I’ve already found it.”
“If I’m what you’ve been looking for, I don’t know whether to be sad for you or fucking over the moon for myself.” Knox’s hand pulled my head back to his until our foreheads connected and our mouths were so close we could feel each other’s breath.
“Choose how you want to feel, Knox. It’s a choice to be sad or happy. It’s as simple as a choice. That whole mind-body connection goes both ways, you know. You can tell yourself to feel happy, and it’ll listen. You can tell yourself to stop believing that all you deserve is sadness, and it will believe you.” It was almost impossible to keep staring into his eyes at this range, but I didn’t let myself look away—not when I’d finally gotten past some of his walls. “Be happy with me, Knox. Be happy.”
We were almost to the edge of the patio when he sighed. “All I can promise is that I’ll try. I can’t guarantee I’ll succeed, but I promise I’ll try.”
I felt my smile pull into place. “I’ll take it. I’ll take that.”
His fingers curled into my neck as he continued to pull me out of the storm. “So when and how do we start this quest for happiness? I’m in unfamiliar territory here.”
He was just passing the lounge chair when I unwound myself from him and set my feet on the ground. His brows pulled together with confusion when I grabbed his hands and led him across the patio.