Forever Never

by Lucy Score

She had hugged, kissed, poked, prodded, and leaned into him about a thousand times over the years. There was a spark of something special every time they touched. It fascinated her. Comforted her. Confounded her.

Remington Ford had never once in her entire life been fine. She’d been wonderful. She’d been devastated. She’d been on top of the world. She’d been shattered. But never something as flat or normal as fine.

The girl with the wild red hair lighting up the room and making it all possible.

No matter what had transpired between Remi and his younger sister Audrey—her former best friend and Brick Callan’s ex-wife—the smiling, built bartender had remained friendly toward her.

“Those are excuses. Not reasons. I’m done being rejected. Maybe you’re too thick-headed to understand how I feel about you. How we would be together. Or maybe you’re just a big, muscly chickenshit. Either way, I deserve someone I don’t have to beg into my bed. Someone I don’t have to convince to love me. I’m done waiting on you, Brick.”

sometimes it looks like you can’t decide if you want to devour me or destroy me.”

He leaned in until their foreheads touched. She wished she could bottle the smell of him. She’d call it First Crush and make a billion dollars.

What she was able to accomplish when motivated by revenge was awe-inspiring. And terrifying.

“I don’t want you to let me in just a little. Give me just a glimpse of what goes on in your head. Because you’re just going to shut me out again. You’re just going to reject me and tell me I’m not good enough or not what you want or get pissed off about something I do. So let’s not.”

“I don’t know how to be what you want.”

You can’t be my keeper and keep me at arm’s length. You can’t protect me from the big, bad world while protecting yourself from me!”

“I don’t want you to pull back. I want you to trust me to take it all.”

She wanted to be the place he found and lost himself.

She felt closer to him than any other human being on the planet.

There was a clear demarcation in his life. Before he’d made her his. And after. Now.

The idea of living in a world without her was unthinkable.

The possessiveness, the unmitigated rage he felt because someone dared cause her pain burrowed itself into her chest and planted roots.

He deserved more than that. He deserved someone who not only remembered his special moments but actively celebrated them.

“I want as many pieces of you as I can get.”

She wanted him as wild as he made her.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting more. There’s also nothing wrong with demanding help so you can pursue things you want to do.

But he couldn’t ignore the gravitational pull of her. Just being in her orbit made his world bigger, brighter, more colorful. And he was fucking terrified.

She was electrified sitting there with him in the dark. As if her entire being was plugged into his. As if those broad shoulders and wide chest were the home she’d sought. As if he was a beacon in the dark, a lighthouse.

How could she love a man she didn’t trust with her heart?

“You aren’t making any fucking sense! What is so horrible about the idea of being with me?” “Because I won’t survive you! Because if I did get lucky enough to lock you down, eventually you’d find out.” “Find out what?”

“That I don’t deserve you. That I’m not good enough for you. That all I have to offer you is protection and sex.”

Dipping his head, he indulged himself and dropped a kiss to her fiery hair. She looked up at him. Those wide green eyes spearing right through him.

He loved her. He always had. There had never been another choice.

After so many years of chasing after her, the rush of possessing her physically was indescribable. And it already wasn’t enough. He wanted the commitment. The papers. The fuss and celebration. The acknowledgment of the world that she was his.

Fear was no replacement for respect.

After a decade and a half of missteps, they’d found their way back to each other.

“I’ll spend the whole rest of my life loving you so big that you’ll never have reason to doubt it for a second.”