Page 163 of The Fall

“What do you want?” The question barely escapes my lips.

His eyes open, and they’re drowning. The blue is so intense it’s painful, swimming with unshed tears and a look of terror mixed with desperate hope. His hands come up to cover mine where they hold his face.

“Everything,” he rasps. “I want everything with you. I want to wake up and not dread the day. I want to remember what it feels like to be whole. I want— I want to stop being so fucking scared all the time. Of losing. Of feeling. Of you.”

“Blair, I’m already?—”

Yours. I’m already yours. I’ve been yours since the first time you looked at me like I mattered. Your love unraveled my soul. My heart is a monument to your name. I’ve dreamed of your touch every night for months.

That agony in his voice is the same one that lives in my marrow.

The words lodge in me, too big, too true. My thumbs brush over his skin, and he leans into the touch, desperate and starving. His hold tightens around my wrists.

“You’re not scared of me,” I whisper. “You’re scared of what happens if you let yourself have this.”

“Same fucking thing, isn’t it?” His eyes search mine, wild and lost. “Because having you means I could lose you. And I—” His voice cracks completely. “I can’t do that again. I can’t survive it.”

His grip on my wrists is bruising now, but I don’t pull away. I lean closer instead, until our chests touch, until his heart hammers against mine.

He makes a sound like I’ve punched him, and his hands release my wrists to slide down to my waist. He’s holding me like I might disappear, like I’m smoke he’s trying to capture between his palms.

“Blair, look at me.”

His eyes snap to mine, pupils blown so wide the blue is a thin ring.

“You think you’re the only one who’s terrified?”

His breath catches. “Torey?—”

I hold my fingers to his mouth, and his lips part beneath them. His eyes close, and he turns his face into my palm. I feel every line of him against me, all that barely contained strength, all that carefully controlled power. But underneath it, he’s shaking.

“I don’t know how to do this halfway,” he says, voice rough as gravel. “I don’t know how to want you a little bit. It’s all or nothing with me, and that should terrify you.”

“It doesn’t.” Nothing about Blair has ever scared me, not his intensity, not his grief, not even his walls.

Another broken sound escapes him, and then his mouth is so close to mine I taste his breath. “Tell me to stop,” he says againstmy lips. “Tell me this is a mistake. Tell me we’re going to ruin everything.”

“Tell me not to kiss you, and I won’t.”

The words hang between us for a heartbeat, two, three. His breathing stutters against my lips. His hands on my waist flex. “I can’t. I can’t tell you that.” There’s nothing careful about the way he’s looking at me now, eyes dark and wild and full of so much want it steals the air from my lungs. “Kiss me, Torey,” he begs. “Please.”

The distance between us collapses. Our mouths crash together, graceless and desperate, and that first touch of his lips on mine shoots fire through my every vein. His lips are rough against mine and urgent, like he’s been dying of thirst and I’m water.

He tastes like need. Like finally. The kiss is messy. We’re both shaking too hard to find any rhythm at first. His hands tangle in my hair while mine grip his shoulders, pulling him closer, always closer. He kisses me like he’s trying to crawl inside my skin, and I kiss him back like I want to let him.

We’re teeth and tongues and broken sounds. My back hits the wall and he follows. His mouth opens under mine and I chase the heat of him, swallow the sound that escapes him when my tongue slides against his.

My hands search for the hem of his shirt, slipping beneath to find his warm skin. He jerks at the contact, breaks away long enough to breathe my name against my jaw before capturing my mouth again. I map the planes of his back with my palms; the muscles bunch and release under my touch.

I need more. I need everything. I tug at his shirt, trying to pull it up, trying to get closer to the heat of him.

His hands catch mine, stilling them, and he breaks the kiss with a hiss, our foreheads still together, his breath ragged. “I want to,” he whispers. “God, I want to. But I— Torey, my headisn’t right when it comes to you.” He leans in. “I can’t be casual about you. I won’t even pretend to try.”

I croak out a little snort. “When have you ever been casual about anything?”

That makes him laugh. It’s rough and raw, barely more than a huff of air against my cheek, but it’s real. His hands are still on my waist, thumbs brushing over my hip bones in these absent little circles that are driving me insane. “You’re not wrong,” he says, his voice soft. “And that’s why I need to get this right. With you.”

The skin high on his cheeks flares. “I don’t have a map for this. I’m not—Maybe you think I’m swimming in loads of experience here, but I’m not, and you mean too much to me…” He squeezes his eyes shut. “So if you don’t want to wait for me,” he forces his words out, his voice turning to gravel, “or if you need to hook up before I can give you… Don’t tell me, okay? If that’s part of this... Don’t tell me. Keep me in the dark.”