Free Firsts by Rosalie Stanton

sweetheart—”
     
    “I don't know what to do,” she said. Her voice rode on a breath.
     
    Bugger this. He would not stand stupid when Savannah needed him. Thorn took a brazen step forward, arms open and ready, but he hadn't prepared for the torpedo of shaking girl that exploded against him. And before he could catch a breath, her small hands had captured his face, and her tear-drenched mouth had pressed to his. Her kisses wrangled hard and desperate, a force of their own. She bit his lips and soothed the ache with her tongue, shaking her head at a voice he couldn't hear.
     
    There lived so muchwrong in what continued to happen between them, but he couldn't stop.
    She moved too fast for him to keep up, her touch too harsh to be charged with nerves alone. Her every inch had braced itself for something horrible, and the only reason she stood here at all was to get it over with.
     
    This ended now.
     
    Thorn's hands closed around her forearms, gently pushing her back. “Savaanooohhh—”
     
    Her mouth burned his again before he could breathe.
     
    “Savan—”
     
    She shook her head again and raked him with her lips. Then her face cracked and washed away the flimsy mask of fortitude with a fresh incursion of tears. And while he knew to expect it, Thorn still shook hard enough to make him wonder if he had shattered with her. Fuck, he hated watching women cry. When it came to Savannah, he experienced everything. Everything. He felt every tear she shed tenfold.
     
    “I can't do this,” she whimpered, arms falling uselessly to her sides. “I'm so sorry, Wes. I just can't do this.”
     
    “That's all right,” he said, a mixture of regret and relief rolling off his skin. “It's all right.
    Told you that, didn't I?”
     
    If anything, his words only made things worse. Savannah's sobs became harder, and the tension in her shoulders tightened. Her head still shook as though she'd forgotten how to stop.
     
    “I can't.”
     
    “I know, baby. It's all right.”
     
    “No, it's not all right.” She sniffled miserably and looked away. “It's all changed. Us. You and me. Everything's changed.”
     
    An ironic smile tugged on his lips. No sense arguing what they both recognized as true, so he didn't pretend for the sake of pretending. Instead he shrugged a shoulder and said, “Hate to say 'I told you so,' but I bloody did.”
     
    Savannah looked confused, as though wondering how he could joke about something like this.
     
    He wondered how she couldn't. It was his best defense.
     
    “I can't just go back to the way things were, Thorn,” she said softly. And he knew she meant it. If nothing else, the way her voice wrapped around the nickname he never got her to say hammered the final nail into the coffin.
     
    “I know.” He blew out a breath. “Had it figured. Is that it, then? Are we done?”
     
    She blinked, and her lower lip did the trembly thing that drove him nutty. “Are we?”
     
    Now he felt confused. Either she wanted to end things or she didn't.
     
    “You just said—”
     
    “It's different now.”
     
    “Yeah, I got that memo, ducks. But—”
     
    “Aren't you going to ask me why?” Her voice climbed several octaves in a way he'd come to identify as something solely female. In most girls he knew, it signaled the first of many drastic mood swings, and while Savannah definitely did not stand immune to sudden fluctuations in temperament, he typically thought her more reasonable than most. Granted, and considering of course, the time prior to their relationship leaping off the deep end and into the territories of the unknown. Sex did changeeverything . “I mean,” she continued, “you seem to be taking this pretty well.”
     
    He stared at her for a second. “You're outta your head.”
     
    “About time you noticed!”
     
    “I noticed since the beginning! For God's sake, Savannah,how many times did I tell you this was a bad idea?” He threw his hands in the air before she could