Page 94

My mood takes a nosedive once I look away from her and to the lucky soul who’s gotten to be the recipient of her happiness.

Jealousy taints my mind like poison. It’s an emotion meant for insecure idiots. But if that’s really the case, then I’m both insecureanda giant fucking idiot.

Giana Mitchell stands beside Daisy, her head moving up and down as she nods along with what’s being said. It’s been a while since I’ve last seen her, but she looks the same. Short with flared hips and thighs and a freckled face that doesn’t hide her disinterest, she’s the tightest-strung of the Mitchell daughters, and I’d bet that has to do with her job. Spending every day every day with sweaty, arrogant men is my personal definition of hell. Especially when the majority of them know how attractive they are.

But Giana isn’t why I’m feeling the way I am. It’s the woman beside her that I don’t recognize. The one who’s watching my girl with a sincere interest that chafes.

Daisy holds simple, polite eye contact with her, and my grip on the box in my hand turns brutal. It crumples a beat later, theliquid inside gushing from the popped bottom. It soaks the tops of my boots and the grass surrounding them, making everything as sticky as my fingers.

I lower my eyes to the ruined box and glare at it with the fire of a thousand suns.

“Fuck,” I mutter, stretching out my fingers around the cardboard.

With my attention stuck on the mess I’ve made, I block out all of the surprised, prying glances I can feel pricking my skin like a hundred tiny needles. I’ll scold myself for this later, but right now, I’m too close to exploding. The walls are closing in around me despite the cool fall air I keep gulping into my lungs. It was a bad call to come today when I knew I was all fucked up inside.

“Was that for me?” Daisy asks, having snuck up on me.

I don’t flinch in surprise despite not hearing her approach, and that’s a great example of how close she’s gotten to me emotionally. With a flex of my fingers around the ruined box, I meet her calm stare and say, “It’s for the grass now.”

“I see that.”

“I’ll get you another one.”

She hums, low and soft. Her tongue wets her lips before she digs her teeth into the lower one. I lean forward on my toes, a magnetic force yanking me closer to her. Even my brain says to back up.

“Thank you, but I’m craving the taste now.”

“Wha—”

I gawk at her, the word disappearing into thin air when she uses a soft touch to lift my hand between us. She takes the ruined box from me and then brings my fingers to her lips, holding them there for a long, weighted moment before pushing two into her mouth.

Her tongue flicks out and wraps around the tip of the digit before sliding down the sides and over to the next. Then, with her eyes slashing into mine, she pushes both fingers further into her mouth and sucks.

A dimple appears when she smirks around my fingers and releases them with a pop. “Your mom wants to murder me and bury me in the mountains.”

I think I’m the one buried in the mountains. Twenty feet below the surface where air no longer exists.

“I could have used a napkin,” I croak, speaking without thinking.

She winks, and there’s something so vibrant and alive in the simple act. “I like my way better, but we can always go find you one after.”

“After what?”

A small, sly smile transforms her expression as she glances from me to the space behind me and back again. “This.”

Her hands cup my cheeks, and then she’s bringing her lips to the corner of my mouth, to the same spot she kissed me in my dream.

I slam my eyes shut and immediately allow myself the time to soak in the feeling of her lips on mine once again. It’s different than the full press of her mouth that night, where my mind jolted awake after hours of dozing and my very bone marrow sang with bliss. But it’s still just as right.

Her thumb strokes the curve of my cheek, and I shudder at the care behind the touch. My heart flutters, the ache behind my ribs disappearing. She lingers when her lips part. The kiss should end now, but neither of us moves.

I open my eyes, and suddenly, it’s as if the past week never happened. Somehow, we’ve closed the gap between us, and every molecule in my body screams at me to take it just one step further. After tonight, it could be the last time I’ll ever have the chance to.

Driven by pure instinct, I drop the box to the ground and move. Her hair is so soft between my fingers when I shove both my hands into the thick mane of it and use the hold to guide her head back. She doesn’t pull away from me, even as she tremblesin my arms and reaches up to touch my wrist, as if she needs the contact for stability.

A tease of the pupil-blown eyes beneath her fluttering lashes steals my next words. With a steadying breath, I bring my mouth to hers in a full, time-halting kiss.

It’s a silent declaration from me to her that if given the chance, I’d do this every minute of every day for the rest of time. I wouldn’t need anything else. No wealth or success. I’d toss my tattoo guns off the top of a snow-peaked mountain for the chance to kiss her like this even once more, let alone the rest of my life.