Revive Me, Part Two: The Affair (New Haven, #3)

by J.L. Seegars

“I don’t know how to let you go.” The statement is a half whisper, half laugh, but there’s nothing amusing about the way his jaw clenches after he says it. He shakes his head like he hates himself for speaking those words.

There’s no point in arguing because I want him, and I’ll let him have me wherever he wants.

“Because from the second I found out Eric was gone, all I wanted to do was hold you long enough to absorb your grief. To take every ounce of the pain you’ve been holding and carry it for you. When I boarded that plane, I knew I had no right to want any of those things, to want anything from you, but I want this, princess. I want to be here for you. Will you let me?”

“Do you know how desperate you have to be to wish for someone who destroyed you, to crave their presence even when you know it’s only going to cause you pain?”

“Any reality without you in it is misery, princess.”

I learned that I didn’t have a clue about what real attraction was. It’s the magnetism that exists between two people even when there are a million other people in the room. It’s knowing exactly how many steps it will take you to get to them no matter where they are in relation to you. The frantic thrum of colliding hearts when you finally reach them, when you finally touch them.

When the laughter dies down, I bring a hand to her face, cupping her jaw, running my thumb over the smile lingering on her lips. “Still the thing I want most in the world.”

“The first time I kissed you, everything before you ceased to exist. Your taste, your touch, your smell, eradicated it all. You erased me, turned me into a clean slate, a blank page that only you could fill in. There was nothing before you, Mallory, and if I have my way there will be nothing after you. You are the first woman I’ve ever loved. The only one I’ve ever chased.”

“If I run are you going to chase me?” “I’d chase you to the ends of this Earth, Mallory.”

“I wanted there to be a way for both of us to have them. Even if we couldn’t have each other.”

“I would rather you hate me than let you go another day thinking that our love wasn’t enough.”

“You didn’t make it up or imagine it. I loved you. I still love you.”

“Your pain has always been real to me and so has your strength.

“I’m not leaving you. Every day of the last six years has been about getting back to you.

“We won’t ever be done, princess. If we’re both here on this Earth, breathing, living, existing, then we are happening. Nothing is ever going to stop me from loving you.”

“Don’t come back. Move on with your life. Let me move on with mine.”