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by Jennifer Hartmann

“Well, you failed.” My shield went up, my weapon drawn. I was mad. So irrevocably mad. “You just had to be so perfect. My white knight. My rescuer. You had to be everything I’ve dreamed about, every wish I’ve made on falling stars and birthday candles and pennies in mall fountains, and you had to make me fall in love with you.” Words spilled out of me, assaulting him like an ambush. “How could I not? It was so damn easy. You made it easy.” His brow was wrinkled, features taut and brimming with tension. “Nothing about this is easy.” “Falling for you has been the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” I confessed through the anguish. “Everything else? Painful. Torturous. Difficult beyond belief. But loving you…” The anger died out, flatlining to a dead pulse. “Effortless.”

“Are you here to save me?” Another kiss landed on my hairline, and he lingered there, squeezing me tighter, exhaling ragged breaths against my skin. “You never needed saving, Halley. You were never lost.” “I was,” I cried. “I was lost when you found me, and I’ll be lost when you leave me.” “No.” He kissed my forehead, my tear-tipped lashes, my quivering upper lip. “You were searching for something you already had.”

His eyebrows arched as lust glinted in his eyes. “You’re insatiable.” “I’m in love.” He pulled me to him, resting his chin on top of my head and stroking a hand down my spine. Tingles erupted, blooming like the balloon of happiness in my chest. “I always knew we had that kind of love,” he told me, sighing with an air of solace. “What kind of love?” I was putty in his arms, a sagging, boneless heap. Reed swayed me gently, side to side. “The growing old together kind.”