Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
If it meant we wouldn’t have to hurt each other all over again.
Staring at her, I knew it was already far too late for that.
The first time I’d seen her, I’d known I’d never set my eyes on anything more beautiful.
The girl was better than any flower or rainbow or piece of priceless art hanging in a museum.
Aster Rose was my poetry.
Kneeling in front of her, I tried to keep my shit together. “Tell me if you’re hurt.”
Aster’s voice was thin. “I think you already know the answer to that.”
My ribs clamped around my heart because this pain had little to do with her fall. Still, I searched her, eyes racing as I hunted for any injury. Her coat was wet, and her dress was ripped on the left side. I lifted the tattered fabric a fraction. Aster flinched, and I cringed when I saw the trickle of blood above her knee.
Pushing to standing, I stretched out my hand. “Come here.”
Aster wavered, her attention dipping toward the ground, her profile so goddamn gorgeous I had to stop myself from leaning down so I could run my lips along the length of her defined jaw.
“Please, let me help you.”
Agate eyes met mine. A burn of hope and a glimmer of dejection.
She set her hand in mine.
Energy lapped, a warm buzz that eclipsed reason and sight.
I pulled her to standing. She winced again.
“I’m sorry that I upset you.”
“It’s not even that.” Her head barely shook.
It was everything.
Everything that felt insurmountable.
Old wounds and a new trauma that somehow felt unavoidable.
And still, something I would hold.
I took her chin between my fingers and tipped up her face.
So she would see.
So she would understand.
“I regret every instance I have ever hurt you.”
At my confession, her expression deepened.
I let my fingertips flutter down the length of her neck as I rounded her, and I grasped her coat so I could slip it down her trembling arms. I tossed it to my bed before I reached out and gathered the bulk of her hair and tucked it over her shoulder.
I inhaled.
Hyacinth and magnolia leaves.
A new beginning.
A fresh start.
Aster shivered.
Everything slowed, and I swore I was tripping into a dream.
When my fingers found the top of the zipper, Aster’s spirit stormed the room.
“Why does it have to hurt so bad?” It was a breath of agony.
I angled down so my mouth was at her ear. “It hurts because we didn’t end up where we were supposed to. Because there has been a piece missing in each of us. An ache that can never be filled.”
Old wounds throbbed and moaned in the bare space that separated us.
My mouth found the cap of her shoulder and ran the length to the back of her neck. A kiss that really didn’t exist.
Chills flashed across her skin as I slowly dragged her zipper down.
It sparked like shocks in the night.
The fabric slipped off her shoulders, and I let it go so the dress pooled at her feet.
Aster was frozen, like she was terrified to move, though her entire body was vibrating so violently I was afraid with one wrong brush, she would burst into flames.
She stood facing away in her underwear, the fire illuminating her curves, her perfect shape, the piece of my heart that had gone missing. An outline that had crusted over with that unrelenting pain.
“I want to hate you,” I murmured at the nape of her neck. “I want to hate you, Aster. But I remember it…it didn’t matter what you said, I read what was in your eyes.”
Coming around to her front, I let my eyes roam her body.
Her small, round breasts.
Her flat, quivering belly.
The contour of her full hips.
The fear I’d felt when she’d fallen slammed me anew when I saw the huge welt on her upper thigh, red and abraded with the promise of turning black and blue. Blood oozed from the abrasion in the middle of it, and a tiny rivulet had run down and was smeared near the top of her knee on the outer edge.
“I’m sorry I caused you to fall. This was my fault.”
My fault for being a dick.
“Wait right there.”
I moved into the bathroom, grabbed a bandage, and dampened a cloth under hot water. I snagged a T-shirt from the closet before I strode back into the sorrow-addled room that fizzed with something else.
The girl the gravity in the space.
An orbit.
An obligation.
A destination never meant to be.
I climbed down onto my knees in front of her.
An illogical offering.
I pressed the cloth to the wounded flesh.
She whimpered, then swallowed and held onto my shoulders as I wrapped my left hand around the back of her leg so I could properly clean it.
“I’m sorry.” The grunt of an apology scraped my throat like dull razors.
I glanced up to catch Aster staring down at me.