Read Online What You Leave Behind by Jessica Katoff - Free Book Online

anymore . He was the only guy I ever dated, and I thought he was it for me, you know? I thought I would be looking into those eyes forever. But seeing Sly, seeing those blues, it all just—it felt like a lie.”
    “What did?”
    “Loving him.”
    “Oh, Harp,” he nearly whimpers with pure empathy. “We’ve got to fix you.” The words are muted, spoken to her shins and the floor, but she hears the way they come out, weighted with poignancy. She stares at him in wait until he finally looks up at her again, his eyes full of something so devastatingly broken that to stare into them stops her breath. “You deserve so much more than a broken heart—so much more.”
    He hangs his head again and Harper slowly moves a hand from the sofa, tenderly brushes aside the windblown golden strands that fall haphazardly in Austin’s grey-green eyes. She feels it then, the same heat she felt at the pub, and a shiver cuts right through her, giving her justification to touch him and feel that warmth again. She strokes her hand slowly along his temple and feels herself ignite.
    As much as it kills him to do so, Austin reaches up and stills her hand against his hair and through the rough hold lust has around his throat, he manages to choke out her name.
    “I’m sorry—”
    “I’m not,” he tells her gravely. His whole body pulses with pain, old and new. Her hands seem to stem the ache, but he knows when they go, the comfort will leave with them, and he’ll be worse off. “But I will be.”
    “Why?”
    “Because if you touch me like that—” Her fingers slide from beneath where they’re tucked under his palm, and rake across his scalp, down behind his ear. “Yes, like that,” he says with a low grunt as his eyes fall closed. “I can’t—you can’t.”
    “You can’t?”
    “I can’t let myself…”
    “Is this about Liam?”
    “No, it’s about you.” Austin’s words are chosen carefully, deliberately ambiguous, and as her nails trail through the short, wispy hairs at the base of his neck, he pulls his lower lip into his mouth to keep himself from expounding on them with a lustful cry. His eyes flicker up to hers and he pulls her hand away, traps it beneath his on the sofa, and this time she surrenders, the pains of rejection clear in her eyes. “Harper—it’s just that you—you can’t do that, touch me like that, and…”
    “And…”
    “And not expect me to like it,” Austin admits starkly, all ambiguity gone.
    “You like it, but you don’t want me to?”
    “No, I do,” he confesses, his gaze steady on hers as he lays himself bare. He never imagined outing himself like this, or at all, really, but now that he’s started, he can’t stop. And he knows he needs to stop. But his need for her drowns out all reason and logic. “That’s the problem. I always want you to touch me.”
    “Oh.”
    “Yeah. Oh .” The word is a solemn echo, and Austin regrets having said anything at all. “I’m such an asshole, and this is all so out of nowhere, so sudden—”
    “Is it?”
    “It’s wrong of me to even—”
    “Austin, I want to—I want to touch you,” Harper admits, wholly bold and honest, and he heaves out a breath as the words stun him. She waits for a reaction from him that doesn’t come. He’s frozen in place, afraid that if he moves and doesn’t somehow end up inside of her, he’ll break. He’s sure of it, when she murmurs, “Let me.”
    Harper slips her hand from beneath Austin’s, who watches her with wide eyes and a decided lack of resistance, and strokes her fingers determinedly through his hair, from widow’s peak to nape. Austin’s lips part and his eyes fall shut, fingers pressing into the leather as he grips it roughly, and he’s consciously aware of the sound that comes from his mouth—something halfway between a grunt and a purr—as he leans into her touch.
    “Come up here,” she tells him. Her fingers pulling at his strands in gentle instruction as she scoots over on