The Worst Kind of Promise (Riverside Reapers Book 2)

FAYE

I don’t trust the ocean. Only five percent of it has been explored, and the sea floor is crawling with freaky, bioluminescent creatures that look like they’re straight out of a sci-fi movie. But I’d traverse the ocean for Kit. I’d even go as far as dangling my feet in the blacked-out depths for him.

Date after date, sex marathon after sex marathon, we’ve spent a whole week attached to each other’s sides. It started with our book date and our…um…time in the Been There, Bun That bathroom, then he set up a blanket fort and projector in the backyard for a scary movie marathon (which the guys thankfully didn’t find suspicious). And the next day, after treating me to multiple orgasms in the shower, we went on a day trip to San Diego.

I know we can’t really put a label on our relationship, but this is definitely veering into boyfriend-girlfriend territory.

Today marks our fourth consecutive date, and I would’ve been happy just watching some trashy reality television in the living room, but Kit had to pull out all the stops as usual. So he proposed a boat date. A boat that I had no idea was registered in his family’s name and had been gathering dust in the garage this whole time. We eventually got the boat towed to Kit’s Jeep, and we headed westward to Lake Elsinore.

Boats are…romantic, I think? I never really saw them that way, but there is something appealing about being out on the water, miles away from people, and having Kit all to myself.

The end of my sarong billows in the salt-crusted air, the metal from the railing finally beginning to warm underneath my palms. The sun seems to sizzle in the clear blue of the sky, dripping slowly down the bare length of my spine and reflecting in fragmented diamonds off the purling water below. There’s a handful of boats out right now, but I doubt anyone will pay much attention to us.

Deflecting the sunrays, I snag a quick peek at Kit, who’s currently manning the steering wheel. The propeller cuts through the brackish water with splashes and gurgles, leaving behind a trail of pressurized bubbles.

I empty out a sigh. I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time. Hayes seems to have backed off for the time being, I have Kit’s full attention and commitment, and I have no other responsibilities to worry about right now. Hell, sometimes I even forget what brought me to California for the summer in the first place. I don’t think I’ve cried in…a week? Which, I know, seems like nothing, but when you were crying nightly like I was, that’s a big improvement. And since I’m in such a good headspace, I think I’m finally ready to tell Kit I love him. What better place to say the big L-word than on a boat? Preferably at sunset, surrounded by rose petals and a bottle of champagne.

I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but that’s prime romanticism right there. I’m going to outdo the doer. I want him to feel special for once. Kit deserves it. With everything he’s done for me, including jeopardizing his relationship with my brother, he deserves it.

Our cruiser glugs along before finding an unoccupied inlet, and I hear the buzz of the propeller shut off before I feel two strong arms wrap around my midsection. Kit’s body is hot from soaking up all the sun, and I nuzzle my head into his hard chest, the fragrance of his cologne and lightly scented sunscreen perfuming through my nostrils.

“I’ve”—he nips at my earlobe—“missed”—he lavishes my neck with a kiss—“you”—then drags his pillowy lips to the curve of my shoulder and bites playfully. I close my eyes and gouge my fingers through his wind-ruffled hair, lust summoning a breathy exhale from my agape mouth.

Kit licks my skin, the pleasured rumble in his throat juddering through me.

“It’s been fifteen minutes,” I laugh, turning around once he lifts his mouth off me, the delicious afterburn making lust eddy in the pit of my belly.

He grins. “What can I say? I have separation anxiety.”

I gently trace my fingertips over the grooves of his stomach and up to his firm pecs, where he captures my hand in his larger one. I look up at him through my lashes, chewing on my lower lip, and he stares into my eyes with a reverence I’ve never known before. It’s scary and startling and so overpowering that I lose grip on all my words.

My heart twists. “I—”

“God, you’re beautiful,” he says, the peak of his knuckles ghosting over my cheekbone. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just…I could spend forever staring at you, and it wouldn’t be long enough.”

I blink, and when I blink, tears threaten to overspill. Good tears. Happy tears. I don’t remember a time when I felt this loved before. Given my track record with men, it wasn’t something that I really believed would happen for me. At least, not for a long time.

“Your eyes outshine every star in the galaxy, Faye. And your laugh is my favorite sound in the entire world. I hear a lot of stuff on the ice—buzzers, whistles, angry and sob-filled screams, the hiss of skates on ice, the scuttle of the puck against my stick, shouts from my teammates. But none of it, none of it, compares to your laugh.”

Has your heart ever felt light and heavy…at the same time? I don’t know how to explain it. It’s a weird feeling, and it’s foreign, but whenever I’m with Kit, my heart goes through a million stages at once. Lightness from his outpouring affection, heaviness from the sincerity of his words.

“I’ve spent countless hours mapping your body, finding the places where it melds to mine, and I’ve spent even more trying to figure out how I got so lucky to feel you in my arms. I want that for the rest of my life. I want you for the rest of my life.”

I start to sputter like a fish out of water. “What does—what do you—”

“Don’t freak out, but what if…hypothetically…” He trails off, waiting for me to read his mind.

What if…what?

Panic has me caught in its undertow. “Kit, if you don’t get to the point—”

“What if I got your eyes tattooed on my arm? Like, over the tiger eyes.” All of his words are mushed together when they come out, a cannon fire of unintelligible strings, and the apples of his cheeks rosy with blush.

“What?” I echo dumbly, brows knitted.

He holds his right forearm up, where the tattoo mirrors his own eyes. “Your eyes, Faye.”

I don’t know what to say. He has to be the biggest idiot in the world, right? Shock and dubiety fleet through me, tying my tongue and failing to silence the warning sirens going off in my head.

“That’s permanent,” I blurt out, nowhere near ready to harbor the responsibility of tainting Kit’s flawless, golden skin.

He nods. “You’re permanent.”

“I…”

“If you feel uncomfortable with me doing it, I won’t. But I want to. I really want to.”

My nerves compress into an unswallowable lump in my throat. “I don’t want you to regret it,” I murmur.

“Hey.” He cradles the side of my face with his hand, the weight of his stare melting over me. “I could never regret anything when it comes to you. Ever.”

I’m frozen, and not just because Kit’s touch usually does that to me. I’m so overcome with affection that I can’t function properly. A part of me with Kit…always. No matter the distance that separates us. That means a lot considering summer is coming to a close, and I’m not sure where long distance will lead us.

“I don’t want to be known as the ‘Big Cat’ anymore. I want to be known as yours.”

Mine.

I never knew Kit felt that way. Violent bursts of love roar up in my gut, and I can feel the waterworks starting up again, though I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stop them this time.

Relieving me of the pressure to respond, Kit’s palm falls away from my cheek as he walks over to the hardtop. He rustles around in the bag he brought with him, pulling something out before heading back to me.

I’m not sure what I expected him to grab—maybe more sunscreen for my sunburnt skin—but a book is clutched in his hands, tiny, colorful tabs sticking out of the pages.

“Kit, what is that?” I ask.

The corners of his lips tick up into a proud grin. “After you schooled me on romance books, I did some digging myself. And I, um, I annotated this for you. I don’t really know what I was doing, but I wanted to try. I wanted to do something for you besides the usual bouquet of flowers.”

When he hands me the book, the first thing I notice are the giant hockey sticks on the front cover, backdropped by a cracked, white-blue ice design.

“A hockey romance?” I will my heart to stop flapping.

He scratches the back of his neck. “I know it’s not your monster romance, but I thought you might like it. Life imitates art and all that.”

He annotated a book for me. Kit Langley annotated a book for me. Kit Langley—the man who’s never been with the same woman twice—carved time out of his day to read a book and tab it. This has to be some kind of fever dream.

I slowly open the book to a random page and am greeted by a medley of pastel-colored, miniature sticky notes scattered through various paragraphs. And not only that, but there are passages underlined with little notes scribbled in the margins.

“Oh my God,” I breathe, emotion steamrolling over me.

“I underlined things that reminded me of you.”

He even doodled small hearts. Hearts. Like a teenage boy who has a school-grade crush on a girl.

My eyes rake over the first paragraph that catches my attention.

I’ll always crawl back to her. I’ll crawl to her on my knees across the broken shards of my heart. I’ll crawl to her when she’s thousands of miles away from me. I’ll crawl to her even if she never wants to see me again, because that’s the power she has over me. That’s the kind of love that possesses me. Unconditional, undying, unequivocal. I’m forever hers.

I don’t have time to formulate a coherent sentence…which is probably for the best, because I’d be blithering like a lovesick fool.

“I don’t want this to be a summer fling,” Kit says, recapturing my focus. “I know you have school. I know you’re going to be in Pennsylvania. But I want to be with you, Faye. I don’t care about the distance or your brother.”

This is everything I’ve ever wanted. And it’s all right in front of me, ready for me to take. The veracity of his confession floors any thoughts pinballing around in my brain. His vulnerability is like a naked flame in a perpetual bout of ruthless wind, always facing the possibility of being stamped out but refusing to seek shelter or be extinguished.

I drop the book to the deck of the boat. My body moves of its own accord, and my mouth slants over Kit’s, enveloping him in a time-stopping kiss of tongues and unfettered passion. And if I didn’t know any better, a healthy helping of love.

He falters at the beginning, a bit shocked by the intensity, but he returns the pressure on my lips, his hands clutching the naked flesh of my back. His nails dig into me, his kiss consuming me whole, the frantic, harsh nature of his touch at odds with the soft lull of his tongue. The charged air around us seems to crackle, my skin humming with pleasure.

“Okay,” I whisper into his mouth.

“Okay?”

I pull away from him, tipping my forehead up to his lowered one. “What about long distance?”

“We’ll make it work. I’ll find weekends where I’m free to come to you, and I’ll make sure to carve time out of my day so we can call or FaceTime,” he answers.

“But you need to focus on hockey. You’ll be so busy, and you’ll have games all the time.”

“I will be busy, and I will have eighty-two games to play. But I don’t care. I don’t care how exhausted I am. I will always make time for you.”

Speaking of permanent, the L-word is reaaally close to coming out. And I think I’m done trying to find the right moment to say it.

But before I can, Kit picks me up in his arms and swings me around effortlessly. My legs lift off the ground as I braid my arms around his neck to keep from flying away. My face is snuggled into his neck, and the richness of his laughter rumbles through me.

“Kit!” I half-shriek.

After a final spin, he gently sets me back down, smiling apologetically. “Sorry. I’ve been wanting to do that since I saw you.”

He tucks a flyaway strand of hair behind my ear, our bodies close enough that we could survive off each other’s heat if we were stranded in the arctic, and his eyes look drowsy with lust.

He’s leaning in. He’s going to kiss me again. And I have a feeling we aren’t going to stop until both of our swimsuits are on the ground. I need to tell him that I love him now, before he goes any longer without knowing.

No preparation. No grand gesture. I’m just going to say it.

With a fevered breath, I stop holding back. I stop overthinking. “Kit, I l—”

But of course, because the world is conspiring against me, the loud whir of a boat propeller escalates in the distance. Both of our heads snap toward the sound, and the sight of a cruiser headed our way has sweat breaking out over every inch of me. It’s not until it’s a few feet away that Kit’s eyes grow twice their size.

“It’s Gage and Fulton.”

“What?”

He drags me to the edge of the boat. “If they find out we’re out here by ourselves, they’re going to start asking questions.”

I’m cemented in place by fear, like a bug stuck in thick amber. I know that if we keep seeing each other, Hayes is eventually going to find out. But I wasn’t prepared for today to be that day.

“What do we do?” I’m freaking out, waiting for my untimely demise. My heart and pulse are competing to see who’s the fastest, and my stomach bubbles with nausea.

Now, there are a lot of choices Kit could’ve made in this situation. He could’ve had me hunker down in the cockpit. He could’ve started the boat up and driven away. He could’ve lied to them about us being alone, saying that some other people were coming to join us. But he doesn’t do any of those.

He glances down momentarily at the water, but not quick enough for me not to notice it.

“Kit…” I warn.

Their boat is getting closer. If they haven’t spotted my silhouette already, they will within a few seconds.

He wouldn’t.

“I’m so sorry” is all he says before he shoves me off the boat and into the freezing cold lake below.