A wave of tears stung at my eyes but I fought them back. “I can’t.”
“Why?” he asked, leaning his body gently against mine. The heat of him made a small gasp escape my lips and I needed to look away for a moment to hide from the intensity of it.
He pressed harder against my back.
A wave of iciness crept up the front of my body and I was suddenly struggling to breathe. Anger exploded red-hot in my brain. My muscles quivered and my pulse sped. “You really wanna know why, you big dick? Because I don’t want to ever feel that gut wrenching feeling again when you walk away. I don’t want to look in your eyes and see you staring back at me with that empty look because you don’t want me.” I choked on my words and my voice shook. “Just go back to California. Our three weeks is over. Find someone else to play with.”
He pressed harder into me. What the hell? Now it was starting to get uncomfortable. I was getting ready to hit him.
“Now you’re going to listen to me. You don’t have any clue how I feel or what’s going on in my head. You never did.” He took a deep breath and grabbed my chin to tilt my head up to look at him. It wasn’t hard, he was gentle, but the intensity of his eyes made a sob rip out of my chest. I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. He left me. He hadn’t wanted me.
“I left because I was angry. You lied to me. I wanted to talk to you…and I called. I called again and again, and I texted. I needed to go to California for my father. And when I got there I thought I would just let you go, let you go without ever telling you how I really felt.” His breathing faltered and the pressure of his hands tightened around me. “But… I woke up the first morning without you and I couldn’t breathe. The thought of you not being there, me not able to reach out and touch you—hurt.”
Good. I was glad it hurt. “You’ve been gone for a month. I’m sure you got over it,” I snapped.
“No. See, Lex, that’s the thing. I thought I could, you know. I thought it would be like every other relationship I had…forgettable. But the next morning when I woke up I grabbed for you, and when I realized the bed was still empty, it hurt even more.”
I pressed my hand to my chest to try to stop it from cracking open.
“I told you I never felt it before with anyone. I never knew if I could. Love? I didn’t know what it was, Lex.” Then suddenly his arms dropped and he stepped back. The places where his hands were still felt a ghost of his touch and made me swallow hard.
“Love was just a confusing, empty word to me,” he shrugged, “until you made it mean something.”
I covered my hands over my mouth as my skin tingled from head to toe.
“I didn't even have a choice about falling in love with you. You walked down a hotel hallway and that was the first time I remember ever feeling anything. It was the first time I ever felt—alive inside.”
“And then you found out I lied to you—” I said, spinning to face him.
“I lied to you too,” his voice was low, dark. Harsh.
I looked away quickly—couldn’t raise my eyes to meet his. I didn’t want to get hurt. What could he have lied to me about?
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a crumpled up piece of paper. I tried to focus on it, but it blurred around the tears that fought to break free.
“This is your list,” he whispered hoarsely, holding out the paper between us. The walls instantly felt like they were closing in on me. Closer and closer, they seemed to move. “Number ten,” he whispered, “I did it. Fuck, Lexa, it was the first thing I did on your list.”
The ground seemed to pulse and give out under my feet and my eyes shot up to his. His eyes went wide for a second and then he looked down at his hand and the note that still lay folded inside of it. Taking a quick, deep breath, he flattened out the paper and brought it closer to me.
“You changed everything. Everything I ever thought was important, everything I ever wanted got questioned the minute I saw you in that hallway.” He nodded his head at me, “Cheesy line coming—I realized the only reason I looked up from that miserable hump of snacks, the only reason I was out there in the hallway at three in the morning, was because it’s where I was meant to be. I was meant to be with you. Now, tell me what you want, Lexa.”
“You,” I whispered. “I just want you.”
The note fell to the floor, fluttered and flipped like a weightless feather, and landed right side up as he reached his hand to mine.
#10 Have someone fall madly-desperately in love with me
The slight contact of his fingers on my skin spread heat through my veins until I was gasping for breath. He entwined his fingers through mine and my heart thumped hard and fast in my chest and pulsed into each of my nerve endings, until I felt as if I were made of heat and light and sound.
He didn’t speak. He stood there and stared at me with parted lips and bated breath. Slowly, he blinked and pulled me closer. He pressed his forehead to mine, fingertips reached up to hover gently over my face. His voice shook in a rough, heart-wrenching ache, “I am completely and utterly in love with you, Lexa.”
His words made me tremble, tiny wracks of shivers that started somewhere deep in my chest and traveled out over every inch of my body. I loved him too.
My head stupidly nodded as the words jumbled and collided with the huge knot that seemed to lodge itself in my throat. Something weird like, “I…rov…eww,” tumbled and spilled from my lips, but I knew he understood. I knew he did. His lips opened on a sigh and both his hands reached out to pull me in. He stepped into me, breathing hard, hands sliding up my throat and wrapping around my neck. I grabbed onto his arms and his muscles instantly loosened. With something that sounded like a small whimper, he pressed me into the wall and slammed his mouth hard over mine.
The kiss was frantic—our bodies shaky and uncontrollable. His hands slid up my arms and curled under the straps of my top, yanking them down to my wrists in a desperate, heady move that tugged my shirt completely off my breasts and made me moan out his name. He stared into my eyes and slowly ran his fingers back up the side of my arms. “Tell me again.”
“I love you,” I gasped.
His lips tugged up into a smile and his hands softly brushed over my uncovered breasts until his thumbs circled and circled over my nipples. The sensation made them ache and grow heavier.
“Tell me what you need right now, Lex.”
My body trembled more and I struggled to think clearly and find my words. All I thought was please, please, please. “Everything. James…I want everything,” I said as I arched my back, pushing my breasts closer to him.