“Okay?” he asked.
I nodded, reaching up to pull him down. “Better than okay,” I murmured against his lips.
He rolled away only long enough to roll on a condom, then he settled back between my thighs, sinking into me slowly. A long groan echoed between us, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, urging him deeper. We moved together, a dance of give and take, push and pull. Each stroke fanned the flames higher; each kiss bound us tighter.
This was what I’d missed. What I’d craved all these years. Not just the sex, but the connection. The intimacy. The sense of being seen, known, loved.
I clung to him, nails digging into his back as tension built again. He slid a hand between us, thumb circling that sensitive bundle of nerves. And when I came undone again, he followed me over the edge, my name on his lips.
Afterward, we lay entwined in the tangled sheets, our bodies still humming with the aftershocks of what we’d just shared. Sunset had given way to dark, and the room was warm and intimate around us. Our breaths slowly steadied, the frantic rhythm of passion giving way to something deeper, more peaceful.
His fingers traced lazy, meandering patterns on my back, each touch sending little shivers of contentment through me. My arm was draped across his chest, fingers splayed over the firm muscles there. The heartbeat beneath my palm thudded strong and steady like the man himself—the same reliability that had drawn me to him all those years ago when we were both so young and uncertain about everything except what we felt for each other.
The silence between us was comfortable, filled with the kind of understanding that only came from truly knowing someone. I listened to the quiet sounds of the night outside—the quiet hum of cars, the rustle of leaves in the breeze, the faint echo of laughter from somewhere down the street. So different from the constant noise and pressure of my life in the city.
“I love you, Gill,” Diego whispered into the dark, his voice rough with emotion and lingering passion.
The words settled over me like a warm blanket, familiar and right. I pressed a soft kiss to his chest, tasting the salt of his skin and breathing in that scent that was uniquely him—clean soap and something indefinably masculine that made my heart skip. “I know,” I murmured against his skin.
Because I did. I always had, even when I’d tried to convince myself otherwise, even when I’d thrown myself into my career and my carefully planned life in Chicago. And in that perfect moment, wrapped securely in his strong arms, sated and safe and more myself than I’d been in years, I couldn’t imagine ever leaving this place—leaving him—again.
CHAPTER 16
Gillian was draped half over me, her leg hooked over mine, the sheets twisted around us. The air in the room was warm, heavy with the salt of sweat and the faint sweetness of her shampoo. My chest loosened for the first time in I longer than I could remember. Easy. Like all the years between now and that summer had folded in on themselves, and we’d found our way back to the middle.
It wasn’t merely the sex. It was her breathing syncing with mine, the weight of her hand resting on my stomach, the way my body had stopped bracing without me telling it to. This seemed like forward motion. Like perhaps the years apart hadn’t erased the part of us that mattered.
I brushed her hair back from her face, my fingers catching in the waves. “You’re gonna make it real hard to let you leave this bed,” I murmured, lazy, content.
She stilled. Not pulled away—just quieted in a way that had nothing to do with rest.
“I have a confession to make.”
The words cut straight through the haze. My gut tightened, instinct kicking in before my brain caught up. Confession wasrarely good news. I shifted enough to see her face, bracing for whatever she was about to drop between us.
“Okay.” I drew it out, like giving the word more space might tell me where this was going.
She shifted onto her side, propped up on one elbow, the sheet sliding down enough to expose the warm curve of her shoulder. “I got offered a promotion. To junior partner.”
Junior partner. A year out of law school. I wasn’t sure how all that worked, but I suspected that wasn’t simply a good offer; it was the golden ticket. The kind of thing people killed themselves for. The thing she’d been killing herself for. The thing she’d ultimately left for the last time.
She continued, words careful, measured. “It’s more responsibility, bigger clients, more travel. It’s… everything I’ve been working toward.”
More work. Less time. Less life.
My chest tightened, not because I didn’t understand what it meant—I did, well enough—but because suddenly the space between us stretched wide again, like someone had shifted tectonic plates beneath the bed. The room still smelled like her shampoo, that subtle vanilla scent that had been driving me crazy all night, and my skin still held her warmth where she’d been pressed against me moments before. But that easy, loose sensation from a minute ago was gone, evaporated like smoke, replaced with the weight of what she’d dropped between us.
“So… you’re taking it?”
Her gaze slid past me, fixing somewhere on the wall. “I don’t know.”
And right there, the bottom dropped out of the moment. The warmth between us bled out so fast it was like somebody had cracked a window in January.
My jaw tightened as I processed it, the way my body always responded to threat before my mind caught up. Because that’swhat this was—a threat to whatever fragile thing we’d been building in the space between yesterday and tomorrow. The sheets were suddenly too warm, the air too thick, and I had to resist the urge to put physical distance between us just to think clearly.
She didn’t know. After all this? After the way she’d looked at me, touched me, like she meant it?
It twisted in my gut. Not only the uncertainty, but the echo of four years ago, when she’d stood at the edge of everything we could’ve been and walked the other way without looking back. Chosen a path that didn’t have room for me.
