“Everyone leaves me. I’m no good. I’m not worth it.” I threw the bottle into the fireplace. “Because I’m fucking worthless.” I turned back to her.

Tears had filled her eyes and were now running down her face. I was making my angel cry. I destroyed things. I couldn’t let myself destroy her. She meant too much. She was special.

“I wasn’t meant for an angel. I never should have tried to get close to one. You were always too good for me. I just wanted to be near you. To see your smile. It made everything inside of me feel whole again. The nasty and tainted shit in my life was better when you were around. You have this light, Emily. It’s so fucking bright. It warms everything around you. It warmed me. I was always so empty and cold before you.”

She moved then. I thought she had heard enough and was leaving. I didn’t know if I would survive this time. Losing her was going to break me for good. Only so many times a guy could recover.

I sank to my knees and dropped my head into my hands. I had ruined it all.

“Kiro.” Emily’s voice was beside me, and her arms wrapped around me. “You aren’t worthless. You’re special, too.” Her words shattered what was left of my heart.

“Don’t say shit like that and then leave me.” My voice was raw. I had exposed everything to her. My weakness, my fears, my pain. I’d never shown anyone all of that. Ever.

“I’m not leaving you. I won’t leave you until you send me away. I don’t want to leave you. You make me happy. You make me feel things that scare me but excite me. I don’t want to go.”

The vodka was fucking with my head. “You want to leave. Go, Emily. Run from me, baby. I’m not worth shit.”

A soft sob close to my ear sent a bolt of awareness through my body. “Look at me,” Emily begged.

I lifted my head and saw my beautiful angel on her knees, with red eyes and tears soaking her face. She was holding on to my arm tightly, as if she refused to let go.

“I’m not leaving you. Ever. The only way to get rid of me is to throw me out and swear you never want to see me again. You, Kiro Manning, are worth it. You’re worth so much.”

I opened my arms, and she let out a loud sob as she threw herself into them and clung to me. I wrapped her up tightly and buried my head in her neck and inhaled. She smelled like honey. So fucking sweet.

“I won’t ever ask you to leave. I need you,” I said against her neck.

“Good. Because I need you, too.”

I tightened my hold on her and fell back against the sofa, cradling her in my arms. She wasn’t leaving me. She wanted to stay. She wanted me. How did I manage to get an angel to stay with me? I’d done nothing right in this world. I’d fucked up more lives than I could count.

“You did the right thing today. Pushing me away,” I told her, as I ran my hands over her hair, letting the silky strands slide through my fingers. I had left her room knowing I had no right to touch her like I had. She was too good for me.

“Did I?” she replied.

“Yeah, you did. I don’t deserve you.”

She tilted her head back and stared up at me. The tears had stopped, but her face was still damp. I hated knowing she had cried for me. I never wanted her to cry. “I was afraid I’d lose you if we did anything,” she whispered.

Lose me? She thought she’d lose me? God, did she still not get it? I was done. She was it. Even if this was all she gave me, the rest of my fucking life, I would be happy. I had her. “I would have become more insane about you than I already am, but losing me? Fuck, Emily, nothing you could do would make me not want you.”

She bit her bottom lip and frowned. I watched her think that through. When her bottom lip was finally freed from her teeth, I wanted to lick it, but I wasn’t sure I was allowed. “It would make things awkward between us. How could we be friends then?”

“By awkward, do you mean I wouldn’t be able to let you out of bed or shower by yourself?”

She chuckled and shook her head no.

“Then explain that, angel, because I’m confused as fuck.”

“I mean . . . if we slept together, then what would happen when you had other girls here . . . and I had to see it? You would feel awkward, I think, and I might not be able to handle it.”

Holy fuck.

I grabbed her hips and pulled her over me so that she was facing me. Her legs were straddling my lap, and if she sank down, my dick would be snuggled up tight against her pussy. Shoving that thought aside, I cupped her face. I needed her to understand me and fucking believe me.

“Emily, if I were to fuck you, then that would be it for me. No one else. A man can’t go to heaven with an angel and be satisfied with anything else again. I’d need your pussy and your pussy only. If you’d let me in, then yeah, it would have been awkward, because you would have become mine. Completely. That might have been awkward for you.”

Her eyes were wide as she listened to me.

I wasn’t holding back with her anymore. I was done with that shit. She needed to know it all. I had let her in, and I wasn’t keeping her out anymore. Not about anything.

“You don’t just want to sleep with me one time, then?” she asked, as her small tongue came out and wet her lips.

I rested my forehead on hers. “In this lifetime, I will never get enough of you.”

“Will you still feel that way in the morning when you’re sober?” she asked.

I smiled and pulled her back to my chest. She was right. I was drunk, but that had nothing to do with this. “Why don’t you stay right here in my arms tonight, and when we wake up in the morning, you can ask me that again,” I replied.