The Internet Told Him to Leave Me, but He's Still Holding Me novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Rule Broken

Knox went completely still.

The hazards ticked.

"You read what?"

"A thread." I wiped my face with the cuff of my sleeve. "A week ago. It was about girls like me."

"Annika."

"And I looked at my phone, and I'd sent you fourteen texts that day. Fourteen. Three dogs and a cloud."

"The boot cloud," he said. "That was a great cloud."

"Stop being nice!" I hit the dashboard. "That's exactly what they said. You're nice, so you'd never tell me. You'd just get tired, and tired, and one day you'd be gone and I wouldn't even know which text did it."

He turned off the engine.

The car went quiet except for the ticking.

"So you stopped," he said slowly. "The kissing. The texts. The blanket."

"I thought if I stopped first, you wouldn't have to."

He put both hands over his face.

He sat like that for a while.

When he took them away, his eyes were red.

"I thought you were leaving," he said. "I've thought you were leaving for a week. I didn't sleep. I drew you from the back for six days because that's all I got."

"I saw the sketchbook."

He looked at me.

"I needed an eraser," I said. "You stole both of mine."

He laughed, wet and surprised, and then he stopped laughing.

"Listen to me." He turned in his seat, all of him, which in a Honda Civic is a lot of man. "I'd never get sick of you. You don't text me too much. You text me exactly enough. The dogs are the best part of my day. My regulars ask me what the dog score is."

"They do not."

"The mail carrier asked me Tuesday. I had to tell him we were in a drought."

I made a sound that wasn't a laugh or a sob.

"I like being clung to," he said. "I like it. That's not me being nice. I'm a big guy, people don't climb on me. You climbed on me the first week like I was a tree in a flood. Nobody ever did that."

I couldn't say anything.

"Is that all of it?" he asked. "The thread?"

And there it was.

The diary. Forty thousand people. The editor in New York.

My mouth opened.

He was looking at me so hard, and something crossed his face, and he said, "Annika, I should tell you something too."

I didn't want either one.

Not tonight.

So I broke rule one.

I took his beard in both my hands and pulled his face down and kissed him.

He made a sound low in his chest.

Then his hand was in my hair, and the pencil was gone somewhere.

He kissed me back.

Nothing polite about it.

His mouth was hot and he tasted like Gran's coffee.

My seat belt was still on.

I fumbled for it and he found it first and it snapped back and hit the window and neither of us cared.

I climbed over the gearshift.

I don't know how.

A Civic is not built for this.

My knee hit the horn and it blared under a bridge on 94.

Knox laughed into my mouth and pulled me the rest of the way into his lap.

"Hi," he said against my lips.

"Hi."

"Missed you."

"I was right here."

"You were on the other side of a blanket."

His hands slid up under my sweater, flat on my back, huge and warm, and stayed there, just holding.

I shivered so hard he felt it.

"Okay?" he said.

"More than okay."

I kissed his neck, under the beard, where it's soft.

His breath went ragged.

I felt him under me, hard against the inside of my thigh through two pairs of jeans, and I rocked down on purpose.

← Chapter 7 · All chapters · Chapter 9 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend