He kissed me lightly. “How did you sleep?” he asked.

“Great! I really needed that. No nightmares about never being with you again. Waking up in your arms,” I sighed.

“Only good dreams from now on, Alexa,” he said as he rolled on top of me. “I love you so much, baby. I should have told you sooner.”

I opened my legs and rolled my hips against him. “Me too. I was so stupid to not see it sooner.”

He slipped the tip of his hardness inside and held still above me. “Alexa, no. Don’t ever say that. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Sorry,” I sighed, wiggling my hips to try to move him farther into my body.

He kissed me deeply and took a few slow strokes. “Now we don’t have to hold back anymore. I can love you the way I wanted to from the start.”

I tangled my fingers into his hair and kissed him back. “Thank you,” I whispered as I nuzzled his neck.

“For what, baby?”

“For saving me from the loneliness. For opening my eyes. For loving me.”

He touched his forehead to mine. “Let me love you, baby. I need to show you how you make me feel,” he moaned.

He propped himself on his elbows and looked deeply into my eyes. I wrapped my legs around his waist, keeping him close. “I love you, Drake.”

He continued to thrust slowly, in and out. He kept his eyes open, as though he didn’t want to miss a moment of us together. I gasped, my breath quickening, and tightened my arms around him. My muscles contracted around him, and I buried my head against his shoulder as I cried out in release. He took several more long strokes into me before he came, calling my name. I clung tightly to him, almost afraid to let go and find this was all a dream.

We eventually made it into the shower, washing each other slowly. We held each other under the pulsing water, kissing often. It was like a weight had been lifted now that our pent-up emotions were free and out in the open. As much as I regretted our fight and walking away, even for the short time it took to clear my head, our bond was now stronger than ever before.

Epilogue

Drake

I couldn’t stop staring at Alexa as she lay sleeping in bed next to me. Losing her, even for one weekend, had ripped my heart out of my chest. Before our fight, I thought I’d known how much she meant to me. Making her so angry and upset that she’d stormed away and refused to speak to me showed me that I’d had no fucking clue how important she was.

The moment I first saw her on campus, I should have chased after her and not wasted a single minute. I knew—I fucking knew right away that she would change my life. If I had just gone after her right away, then I wouldn’t have been such a dick when we finally met. I would have known that she looked at Jackson like a brother, even if his feelings for her went deeper than that. She had no fucking clue the way guys looked at her, how Jackson looked at her. She just went about her day, wrapped up in whatever thoughts were rolling around her head. Thank fuck that I was able to break in there and make her see me.

When my dad called me to ask about Alexa’s job and how she was paying for school, I’d been blown away by the rumor he had heard. I should have asked him for more details, but my mind had been filled with images of other guys touching my girl. I just couldn’t think straight. I lost my temper and almost messed up so badly that I couldn’t ever get her back. I didn’t know what I would have done if Jackson hadn’t made me see what an ass I was being. Once I’d been thinking clearly again, I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell she would ever do something like that.

When I called my dad back and realized that Sasha had caused all of this, I’d wanted to wring her neck. Jackson had promised that he’d make sure she didn’t interfere in our relationship again. He told me to focus on what was important—making Alexa understand that I never would have believed a word if it hadn’t been my own father who had called me. I went crazy not knowing where she was, and Jackson pulled through for me by hunting his sister down and convincing her to talk Alexa into hearing me out. He proved to me that he wanted what was best for Alexa, and I owed him a debt that I could never repay.

I’d spent the last month trying to prove to her that she’d made the right decision in taking me back. I couldn’t say that I was very excited by the whole Mile High Club flight thing since people had sex right behind her while she flew the plane, but I had a couple custom t-shirts made for us as one of her Christmas presents to show my support. She got a kick out of them and wore hers to bed most nights. I understood why she hadn’t told me about the flights earlier, and after thinking the worst, it was a relief to learn that an inside joke about them was what Sasha had overheard and used to try to drive a wedge between us. I wasn’t going to let anything else come between us again.