Page 102 of Severed Heart

I do, as the blaze from minutes ago reignites fully in his eyes. So easily summoned that my entire body draws tight in response, and a pulse between my thighs begins to pound, demanding relief.

“You’re the most beautiful goddamned woman I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he states emphatically. “I’m sorry you don’t like that to be noticed, but just so you’re aware, for me, it’s fucking impossible not to.”

When I try to escape his caging embrace, he keeps me loosely trapped between his swollen biceps, his palms on the freezer. Eyes drilling into mine, breath becomes hard to hold at the intensity residing inside them. “Tell me why I can’t say it. Tell me why I’m not allowed to take notice of it or compliment you, even if only to do that.”

“You know why.” I swallow. “Men’s attention has brought me nothing but misery.”

“Because of Alain?”

The casual drop of his name unnerves me further. “This is not for us to discuss.”

“Do you everfeelbeautiful?” he demands.

“Let me go.”

“No, I’m sorry, not this time,” he offers, “this conversation is past overdue. I’m done tap dancing around this, Delphine. We can’t even go a few minutes anymore without fucking each other with our eyes, and I don’t want to, I fucking refuse to ignore it anymore.” He pins me with his fire. “I want you so fucking much, it’s eating me alive, and I’m done playing ignorant to the fact that you want me too.”

I gape at him. “You don’t know what you are saying. So much can change in a short time, Tyler ... within a single blink.”

“You think I don’t know that? My whole life has imploded in blinks the last few years, but this isn’t a blink type of thing. I want to give you all of them.”

In his eyes, I see his resignation to continue to confront the feelings between us. To deny me the retreat to put us back in our place in an effort to keep his precious friendship.

“I’m pushing nineteen now, Delphine, and you know—”

“Nineteen,” I scoff. “Do you hear yourself, Soldier? Let me go.”

“Fuck no,” he snaps. “No, we’re doing this.”

“I watched you grow up,” I swallow.

“I could say the same, but we both know that’s bullshit. We never really or truly saw each other until that day in the living room. Even then, I’m positive I was the first to notice, and you’re all I’ve seen since.”

“Tyler,” I groan, every hair on my body raising on its end as his mouthwatering smell surrounds me, making this fight so much harder.

“Nearly two fucking years we’ve spent together, and you know everything about me,” he says adamantly. “You know me inside and out, my every weakness, about my parents, about my darkest thoughts, and I know almost as much about you, aside from one fucking elephant that’s constantly in the room and is now in our way.” He hesitates only briefly before stating his demand. “It’s time to tell me about Alain.”

“How do you even know his name? I’m positive I have never spoken it to you once. I never speak it to anyone. Ever. Drunk or not.”

His eyes drop. “Do you want me to lie?”

It’s then I see the truth of what I’ve suspected for some time. Since I saw his eyes roaming over highlighted passages of my French translation bible when he thought I wasn’t looking. His eyes movedwith easebecause he wasreading.“You are fluent.”

He nods slowly.

“You read my letters.”

He keeps unapologetic eyes on mine. “Yeah, I fucking did,” he counters as humiliation stings me as well as his easy admission.

“Get out,” I say, ducking from beneath him as he grips my arm and pulls me flush to him.

“I know it was wrong, and trust me, I felt that guilt, but I had to know,” he whispers roughly, his voice weak with torment as he cups my face, sliding his thumb over my cheek. Even as fury and embarrassment threaten, I see the pain in his eyes. “I had to know,” he rasps out, “what or who hurt you so severely that you numb yourself.”

“It was not your fucking place to know,” I snap, as tears of humiliation sting my eyes. “Not your place!”

“Why not me?” He continues to gently sweep his thumb across my cheek as if I am what is most precious to him, and I feel the sincerity. Have felt it. “Why isn’t it my place? Why can’t it be? I’m the fucking man who’s been scraping you from every surface your pain leaves you lying on. Talking you down on your worst days, facing your fears with you before tucking you in at night. I don’t have a right to know?”

“I’ve never asked you for any—”