Page 89 of Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake
“When we finally got home, she shut the car off and turned to me. The way she looked at me… She started talking like she was imparting some greatwisdom. Asking what I expected, acting the way I did. Telling me I’d never find someone to love me if I continued to be this overwhelming of a person. This careless and easy. Thismessy.”
Even now, the words delivered with a tone of kindness and care, slapped and stung at her skin, shame vibrating in her bones. “And maybe I’m overreacting, but it’s always felt like she knew exactly what to say to hurt me the most.”
Rake let out a deep breath. His hand moved from her head to her waist, sliding her out from beneath her mattress. Lizzie let him. She let his hands guide her body, his touch keep her on the floor so she wouldn’t sink too far into the memories. He hovered over her, hands planted on either side of her head as he stared down. She looked back up, feeling the heat of his body, absorbing the tenderness in his look.
“I pretty much left after that,” Lizzie continued, watching Rake’s pulse beat at the base of his throat. “I had to. I was surrounded by people but so fucking alone. I couldn’t take it much longer. I powered through to graduation, booked myself a plane ticket, and bounced.”
She’d spent the summer fucking and drinking her way through Europe, working odd jobs when she could. She unlearned every restriction she’d created for herself, feeling everything she’d always tried to suppress. She leaned into pain and lust and freedom and happiness, oftentimes all at once. And if it all ever became too much, there was always a body or a drink on hand to smooth down the sharp edges for the night.
Lizzie had managed to stitch herself back together, slowly, in each new city she’d discovered. She found pieces of herself in artmuseums and coffee shops, in cobbled streets and pulsing clubs. She learned to love her sensuality, embrace sex and lust without shame. But she was never able to convince herself that anyone else would ever want her both bodyandmind. Even though she came to accept her distracted, impulsive brain, she knew no one would want to deal with her outside of tangled bedsheets.
By the time fall had rolled around, she’d abandoned any intention to go back home. But through it all, a tiny piece of her always hoped—with a desperate, human type of strength—that she could one day win her mom’s approval. One day, their past would be erased and they would have the closeness and love and affection for each other that Lizzie had always been hungry for.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Lizzie said, reaching up her hand to trace over Rake’s stern features.
He let out a breath. “I’m thinking,” he said slowly, closing his eyes for a moment before meeting hers with unparalleled focus, “that I adore you.”
Lizzie swallowed. She hadn’t been expecting that.
“I’m thinking,” he continued, his voice low and rough, “that I want to murder every person that’s ever hurt you. Get my knuckles bloody on anyone that ever dared to try to dim your shine.”
Lizzie’s mouth opened, but she couldn’t find any words, could barely hear him over the wild and reckless clanging of her heart against her chest. Small tears bloomed at the corners of her eyes.
“And I’m thinking,” Rake said, using his thumb to brush the tears away, “that I value you. On a deep and terrifying level. And it makes me scared to lose you, because my life would never be the same without you.”
Lizzie searched his face, absorbing the tenderness of his words and the way he looked at her. Part of her wanted to run from it, afraid that she’d ruin it. Destroy this small fragile thing between them. But another part of her, the bold and brazen part,wanted to absorb it, dance in the storm of what the emotions might hold.
She sat up suddenly, Rake moving back to give her room, and she wiggled her dress up her body. Rake’s hands stopped hers right before she pulled it over her head.
“Lizzie, we don’t—”
She touched her finger to his lips, quieting him. “Just hold me,” she pleaded softly. “I just… I just need to feel your skin on my skin.”
She watched Rake swallow, tracing the movement down the column of his throat, before he nodded. She pulled off her dress and tossed it to the side.
“You too,” she whispered, pointing at his clothes. Rake nodded again, his eyes traveling over her body, landing on her face. He sat up, his hands shaking as he worked the buttons of his shirt, a sweet vulnerability wrinkling the corners of his eyes. Lizzie reached out her hand, tracing the planes of his face, feeling his skin. He nuzzled closer into her touch.
He threw his shirt into a pile with her dress, then stripped off his pants. Lizzie’s eyes landed on his tented boxer briefs, and an autopilot reflex made her reach for him, but he put a finger on her chin, nudging her eyes back up to him.
“Let me just hold you,” he whispered, repeating her words back to him.
Lizzie nodded, the moment feeling heavy and poised for pain or pleasure. She felt fragile, her heart a delicate globe of blown glass teetering on the edge of a shelf, primed to break.
She stood up, reaching out her hand to help him to his feet, and laid herself on the bed, pressing against the wall to accommodate him on the narrow mattress.
Rake pulled her tight against his chest, tucking her head under his chin and running his large hands over her skin, like he was stitching together all the invisible cuts and nicks that still hurt her. Under his touch, she surrendered to the feelings thathad been piercing her gut and tightening her throat. Rake let out a soft hum of pleasure as he cherished her body, giving every inch of her skin loving affection.
Lizzie splayed her palm across his chest, feeling the gentle rhythm of his breaths, the ticking of his pulse. She wanted to sink her fingers into it and grab his heart. Own it. Or take her own out and shove it next to his.
Rake pulled back after a moment, brushing her hair off her face so he could look into her eyes. Lizzie felt exposed under that look, and she fought every instinct to pull away, to squirm into action. She saw the moment Rake registered her urge to retreat into herself, like he could see through her skull into her wild brain, and it made him smile.
“I love your freckles,” he said, ducking his head to kiss a dense cluster above her breast, giving her words and touch and sensations to focus on.
She let out a breathy laugh, twisting her fingers into his hair. He let out a grunt of approval at her soft tug.
“They’re like a work of art,” he said roughly into her skin. “You’rea work of art. You’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
Lizzie pulled him closer, emotion making her throat thick and painful. He took a deep breath, inhaling against her skin, his exhale filling her with a soft, golden shimmer of adoration.