Chapter 90 Chapter 90

Chapter 90 Chapter 90
Darren

I fall into step beside her, taking smaller strides to match mine to hers. For a long time, we do walk in silence, and I wonder if she’s doing her best to pretend I’m not here.

But as we reach campus and hang a left to hook onto the path toward her old dorm building, she finally speaks.

“I replay that fight in my head all the time. I think of all the things I wish I’d said instead of what I did. I imagine hugging my mom and telling her I loved her—because if I’d known that was the last time I would see her, that’s all I would’ve wanted her to know. Nothing else would’ve mattered. Not whatever stupid shit we were fighting about. Just that… that I loved her, and I was so glad she was my mom.”

My gaze finds hers in the darkness, and I nod. A few streetlamps dot the paved path we’re walking on, and her blond hair glows like a halo around her head.

She looks like a fucking angel.

“I think she knew that, Kim. Our relationship with someone isn’t defined by one single thing we say or do. It’s defined by how we are with them all the time, the entirety of how our lives intersect.”

Something passes over her face that I can’t quite read. It looks like guilt, but I can’t tell if it’s about her mom, or about something else entirely.

Then she says softly, “If that’s true, what defines us?”

She sounds like she’s really asking, and a lead weight settles into my stomach. What defines us?
It’s not this moment—this peaceful moment of walking across the deserted campus while I carry her laundry and our arms occasionally brush against each other.

I’m not even sure it’s the times in high school when things were good between all of us and we were a four-person unit that felt unbreakable.

The overarching theme of our relationship, the thing that seems to pop up over and over, the thing that’s defined how we see each other and colors every one of our interactions is… torment.

“I don’t know,” I say softly. “But whatever it is, I don’t think it’s too late to change it, Kim. I’m still here. You’re still here. The story isn’t over yet.”

Her footsteps stutter slightly, but before she can say anything in response to that, we reach her dorm building. She glances up at the window and sighs, shaking her head as her lips purse.
“Guess Gemma still isn’t back.”

I know where Gemma is—I saw her at my house before I bailed on Caden’s fucking party—but I don’t tell Kimberley that. I’m not sure why the hell Gemma decided to come, but it seems like kind of a dick move to me.

Why go to the party of the three guys who fucked with your roommate and got her kicked out of school? I have a feeling it would hurt Kimberley if she knew Gemma was still at my house, drinking and dancing and doing who knows what else. So I keep my mouth shut.

We walk up to her dorm room door in silence, and when we reach it, she unlocks it while I set the basket down.

With her hand on the doorknob, she turns back to me.

“Thank you for…” She swallows. “I didn’t want you to see you like that.”

“Like what? Human?” I smile gently and tilt her chin up with my fingers. “We’re all human, Kimberley. We all make mistakes. I don’t know how to make you believe me, and I don’t know if I’ve got any right to expect you to anymore. But I’m serious. What happened to your mom wasn’t your fault.”

She goes still, her wide brown eyes trained on me. I can feel the slightest shiver pass through her from the connection between us, and suddenly, I become intensely aware of how close we’re standing. Of how just one step forward would bring us flush together. Of how her sweet scent drifts through the air toward me like an intoxicating lure.

My fingers shift to run along the line of her jaw, and I see her swallow. Her eyelashes flutter slightly, and her pulse drums wildly in her neck.
I don’t know who moves first, me or her.

I don’t know who closes the distance between us.
All I know is that when my head drops and my lips find hers…
I’m home.

Kimberley

The kiss takes me by surprise.
I think it takes Darren by surprise too, because his body jerks slightly before his arms wrap around me, hauling me into his body as my hands find his shoulders.

I don’t know what shocks me more—the fact that I’m kissing Darren or the fact that I was the one who stepped forward, the one who pressed my lips to his. For the second time in as many days, I’ve broken my vow never to touch another Icon again, and I don’t know what to do with that.

“God, Kim. I missed you.”

His words are a groan, and he spills them into my mouth as he keeps kissing me, slanting his lips against mine as though he’s afraid if either of us come up for air, we’ll lose each other forever.
I don’t answer with words, but I tug on his shirt, pulling him into the room. It’s dark inside the dorm room since Gemma still isn’t back, and the laundry basket gets abandoned in the hall as Darren kicks the door shut behind us.

Little slits of light fall across the floor and my bed as the yellow glow of the streetlamps outside seeps into the room.

Darren’s green eyes glitter in the dim light as he takes my face in both hands, pulling back to look at me for a second before swooping in to kiss me over and over.

This doesn’t feel the same as kissing Caden did.
The same powerful, almost violent need is there, seeming to infuse my entire body. But Caden and I were resisting the pull between us, and every kiss we shared, every touch, every thrust as he fucked me, was full of a sort of desperation as we each tried to stop the uncontrollable force of nature that swept us both up in its wake.

There’s desperation in Darren’s kiss, and bruising need.
But unlike Caden, he’s not resisting it.
He’s giving in to it, choosing it.
There’s something deliberate in his movements, a sort of certainty in his touch as he runs his large hands over my body possessively.
He’s sure of this.

For some reason, that terrifies me almost more than what it was like with Caden. With Caden, I could convince myself we were two people who hated each other, and that the electric chemistry between us was nothing more than out of control pheromones.

But with Darren? I can’t tell myself that same lie.
Because he kisses me like he means it. Like this is everything he wants in the world.