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His breath against my lips gives me chills and I have to taste his mouth. I lean forward slowly and give him a soft kiss. He slowly slides his hand behind my neck and I kiss him again as I grow more eager. This time he kisses me back, but he doesn’t open his mouth and it’s driving me crazy. I take his top lip into my mouth and he pulls away before I can taste him.
“I love you, Claire. I want to be with you forever.”
Like a switch going off in my brain, I think of Chris and I want to crawl into a hole. I close my eyes so I don’t have to see Adam’s face. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m a disgusting person.
I have two choices: I can be honest with Adam about what happened with Chris and hope that he can still stomach me or I can leave now and go home to Chris.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Adam
I SEE HER MIND WORKING like crazy and I know she’s going to talk herself out of this if I don’t act quickly. Claire is notorious for overthinking every situation. She worked herself into a frenzy trying to figure out why I never visited her during the week when we were first dating. And, of course, she spent nearly a year in hiding from everyone she knew because she was afraid of being judged for keeping Abigail a secret. I need to do something before she convinces herself to walk away, but I also don’t want to rush this.
I look into her eyes and her eyebrows furrow. She’s worried about something.
Ah, fuck it.
I pull her face to mine and crush my lips against hers. Her lips taste exactly as I remember. I slide my tongue into her mouth and she moans, but then she pulls away.
“Wait.”
“I’m tired of waiting,” I say as I scoop her up in my arms.
She lets out a high-pitched yelp then laughs. “Hey!”
“Hay is for horses,” I say as I carry her up the stairs toward my apartment. “And I have a great horse joke.”
“Oh, no.”
I dig my finger into her side, where she’s ticklish, and she squirms in my arms. I nearly drop her, but I’m full of too much adrenaline from the anticipation.
“Open the door. It’s not locked.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
I give her the most serious look I can muster, but she just laughs.
“You don’t scare me.”
She musses up my hair and I turn my face to kiss the inside of her forearm. Her smile fades and she waits a moment before she reaches for the doorknob and pushes the door open.
I step over the threshold and kick the door closed behind me. “What did one horse say to the other horse when he fell down?”
“What?”
“Help. I’ve fallen and I can’t giddy-up.”
“That is terrible.”
“I thought you’d like that.” I sit her down on a barstool so our eyes are level. “I just want to make you happy.”
Her smile disappears again and she looks down at my chest. “You did make me happy. You made me happier than I thought I could ever be. Then you left.”
I brush her hair off her forehead and she looks up. “Claire, we both left. You left to school and I left to Hawaii. I’m surprised we both made it back here at all.” I plant a soft kiss on her lips. “If we break up forever, we’ll both probably move on. That’s just reality. But I’ll never be the same. You changed me and I know I’ve changed you. You’re not the same scared girl hiding in a meditation cave all day long. You’re mine, and a piece of you will always belong to me the same way a piece of me will always belong to you.”
I kiss her cheek to catch the tears as they fall. She clutches the front of my shirt, her chest heaving as she tries to decide what to do.
“Come and lay with me,” I say, and she looks at me suspiciously. I shake my head. “Not to have sex. That was a long drive. You need to rest. Then you can leave if that’s what you decide.”
I wrap my arms around her waist and she wraps her legs around my hips as I lift her off the barstool. She rests her head on my shoulder as I carry her to the bed and set her down gently.
I kiss her forehead and step back. “I’m gonna get you a bottle of water. Do you need anything else?”
She shakes her head as she lies down and curls her legs up. She’s so beautiful; it’s difficult to tear my eyes away from her. I grab a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and glance at the cupboard above the refrigerator where I hid Claire’s surprise gift. I wish she had come looking for it when I told her about it.
I make it back to the bedroom and hand her the bottle of water as I lie next to her. She props herself up on her elbow to drink half the bottle then she screws the cap back on and places it on the nightstand. She turns back to me and I beckon her to lay her head on my shoulder. She does and I kiss the top of her head as I wrap my arm around her.
“Do you remember the first time I walked you to work?”
She lays her hand on my chest and I resist the urge to bring it to my mouth to kiss it.
“Of course.”
“You never asked me how I got your boss to give you the day off so we could go on a date.”
“I figured you fed her a dirty lie and I didn’t want to know anything about it.”
“That doesn’t make sense. You should have asked me so we both had our stories straight.”
She traces her finger in light circles over my heart and I can’t resist anymore. I grab her hand and lay a quick kiss on her knuckles before I place her hand back on my chest. She giggles softly and I continue.
“Anyway, I told your boss that I was pretty sure I had just met the love of my life and that I had to take you on a nice, long date to make sure my instincts were correct.”
“You did not tell her that.”
“I did. And she knew I was serious.”
We’re both quiet for a minute before she speaks. “I really miss being here. I miss seeing you and Cora and I miss how easy everything was before I went back to school. I miss waking up next to you or in the apartment below you. I miss being close to you.”
“I can get an apartment in Chapel Hill and commute to Raleigh. It’s only a forty-minute drive.”
“Why would you do that?”
“To be closer to you.”
She pulls her head away from my shoulder to look up at me. “You would do that?”
“Of course. I’m very serious when I say I want to be with you forever. I’ve already tried living without you and it nearly destroyed me.”
She climbs on top of me and lays her head in the center of my chest as she wraps her arms around my waist.
“What’s wrong?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing. I just can’t believe I’m here with you. I can’t believe you’re real.”
I want to ask her if she’d like to take off her jacket and boots to get more comfortable, but I don’t want her to think I’m just trying to get her into bed so I can have my way with her. I really want to have my way with her, but I can wait until the time is right.
I run my fingers through her hair and I can feel her body relax on top of me. After a few minutes, her breathing has slowed so much I’m certain she’s fallen asleep.
“Claire?” I whisper as low as I can.
“What?”
“I thought you fell asleep. Were you meditating?”
“No, just thinking.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Not since this morning. But I don’t want any mac and cheese.”
“Look who’s a comedian now,” I say as I try not to think of the surprise I hid for her in the cupboard. “You want to go out to eat or do you want me to order a pizza?”
“Order a pizza and we can eat in bed.”
The pizza arrives forty minutes later; forty minutes we spend catching up on what’s happened in our lives over the past four weeks. I tell her about the conversation I had with my dad when I quit. Then I tell her about the competition, but I leave out the fact that I qualified for the competition in Australia. She tells me about a meeting she had with he
r professor. Then she gets really quiet when she tells me what happened when she and Chris were invited to go see Abigail in the hospital.
We finish our pizza in silence, both of us scarfing down three slices.
“I’ve never seen you eat like that,” I remark.
She tosses her crust into the pizza box on the bed, but when she looks up at me she’s serious again.
I have an awful feeling there’s something she’s not telling me, and my gut tells me it probably has to do with Chris. But I don’t want to jump to conclusions or accuse her of anything she hasn’t done.
