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“But I could’ve gilded you,” I repeat. “Then you’d be a statue stuck right here on the stairwell, and I don’t think gold’s your color, Commander.” “I disagree. Gold has quickly become my favorite.” I gape at him, too dumbstruck to say a damn thing.
“You’re very floppy.” I rest my head against his firm, muscled chest. “You’re very hard,” I counter. A rich, dark laugh slips from his mouth. “You’ve no idea.”
“Your ribbons seem to like me.” “Well, they don’t have brains, so…”
“My own good was stuck on a pirate ship, with an aura like a beacon that flared across the Barrens,” he grits out, a thick spun voice meant to tie knots around me. “My own good was cowering before men who were nothing—fucking nothing—in comparison to her.”
“I’m saying that you are my own good. And for you, I gave you a choice, but you chose him.”
“I’m glad you’re choosing you,” he says quietly, and my lips part, like I want to swallow the rumble of his cadence. “You are?” I go completely still as he moves his hand and grips my chin, like he wants to make sure I’m paying attention. I am. “Yes, Goldfinch. Because I’m choosing you, too.”
Just a kiss. One kiss, and I’m wrecked, because I never want this to stop. I never realized that a kiss could be like this.
May I speak to King Ravinger, Ruler of Fourth Kingdom and Rotter of...Things?”
“But I’ll be the villain for you. Not to you.”
“You, Slade. I want you.”
“I’ve wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you, Goldfinch. I was just waiting for you to catch up.”
“Love happens in all kinds of ways. Fast. Slow. In bits and pieces, or immediate. Filled with lust, one-sided longing, a snap realization never noticed before. Deeply. Thoroughly. Love is a whisper we didn’t hear or a sound that drums in our ears and drowns out everything else.”
There comes a point in your life when you have to choose between having regrets and the possibility of making mistakes. I’d rather make those mistakes than live without ever taking a chance, because I’ve missed out on too much already. Taking chances can be like walking through a mudslide, where every inch of you gets stained, but regrets are the stagnant pools of deprivation, and I’ve been wading in them for far too long.
“I’d touch you if it wouldn’t turn you solid,” I admit. “One part of me is plenty solid already,” he says with a devilish smirk.
She is everything I don’t deserve. But I’m going to keep her anyway.
