Long Way Home

It’s not. “I trust you.” Just him. “I do. I don’t know how to trust me.”

I used to trust myself. Never doubted my decisions, had the confidence that could move mountains, but I lost that. Lost myself. Way before the kidnapping, it happened after my father’s death, but now I’m spiraling.

Someday, I hope to trust me again. Trust my emotions. Trust my instincts. Trust that I’m going to be able to live with the fallout of the choices facing me.

“I trust you,” he says. “I always have.”

He shouldn’t. No one should. I lift my head and Chevy tucks strands of my hair behind my ear. He does it once, twice, a third time, and each time he brushes his fingers against the side of my neck. His light touch is warm and causes tingles that reach my toes.

“Talk to me, Vi,” he says.

I open my mouth, but there are still no words. No way to explain why my pulse beats so hard and why my mind is running at a thousand miles per hour and how I feel that the world has tilted in the wrong direction and is picking up speed. “I’m scared.”

“If it’s the lineup, I meant what I said earlier. We’ll tell them they have to deal with me being the only one doing the fingering.”

Fear is clawing at me, eating me from the inside out. Fear of the Riot, of their reach, of their rage, but that’s not the fear festering in me now. If I get the account numbers and betray Eli, I’ll never be able to look Chevy in the eye again. Eli is like a father to him, a friend, his mentor. Betraying Eli means betraying Chevy.

If I don’t fulfill my duty, then maybe I’ll pay the ultimate price. Maybe I’ll die, because that’s what would happen before I ever let anyone touch my mother or Brandon.

The blood drains from my face and my bad knee starts to give. Chevy uses his strength to hold me up. “Violet?”

I love him. I never stopped and it’s hard to describe when it began because he’s always been a part of my life. Loving him was easy. It’s life that’s hard.

I swallow to calm the nerves. “I want you to kiss me...now.”

His eyebrows rise. “We’re in a police station.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to kiss me?”

“Mr. McKinley?” comes a questioning voice from behind, but Chevy keeps those dark orbs right on me.

“I will be there when I show. Interrupt me again and I’m walking out of this building and your damn case can crumble.” Chevy says it in such a calm yet commanding tone, and he does it all while letting his fingers slide up and down the small of my back.

The caress is familiar, it’s intoxicating and it takes me back to the first time he kissed me in the field between my home and Cyrus’s. Chevy kicks the door to the small room shut.

“There’s a window,” he says. “People will see.”

Though I should... “I don’t care.”

My blood is buzzing, the cells in my body waking after a long hibernation.

Chevy tilts my head up as he lowers his and I suddenly find it hard to breathe. But then he smiles. The endearing one. The dimpled one. That one that has haunted me in my dreams since we’ve been apart.

“I have never been able to understand you.” His lips whisper against mine and it’s like a tease and a promise of what’s to come.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Never.” Chevy kisses me and my entire body hums. Hums. A sweet song, a vibration in melody. His lips are warm and his push and pulls gentle, yet a winding begins in my belly.

My hands wander along his back, along his neck, and when I tangle my fingers into his hair—fireworks.

Chevy’s moving, his feet guiding me back. I follow along in the dance and he uses his arms to brace my body when we hit the wall. The edges of my mouth tilt up as we continue to kiss. I’ve missed all of this. The way Chevy’s hands wander all of me as his lips devour mine, the way he presses his body into mine as if we share one skin, the way there’s an air of reverence in how some touches are so strong and then other caresses so soft that I could cry with the tenderness.

The familiar heat in my bloodstream grows hotter and our kiss borders on out of control. We know each other, feel each other, and we know all of the buttons to push. His hands on my face, my fingers curling along his back. If I shift left and he shifts right, we’ll be arrested for very indecent things.

Arrested. Police officers. There’s a window.

My palm to his chest, a push and Chevy sucks in a deep breath as he backs away. Like always, after a kiss, he keeps my hand. My heart melts.

His eyes are on fire, full of light, full of happiness. If only he could always look this way. “We’re not done.”

I’m not sure if he’s referring to kissing or to our relationship or to the messed-up conversation we were having about me being scared and what I’m hiding.

A knock on the door, then Chevy pulls me close for a hug and a short kiss on the lips. He looks down into my eyes again and I’d give anything if we could stay locked in this room forever.

“I’ve got you,” he says.

I wish he did.

“I love you.” Because I do love him. I’ve always loved him. Even when sometimes that love bordered on hate, I loved him. I love him and it needed to be said.

The sun rises by his expression alone. “I love you.”

Another knock, Chevy lets me go, and when he walks out, he’s greeted by Eli muttering, “About fucking time.”