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chest. His heart beats for me and mine aches for him.
When I put my fingers under his chin and try to kiss him, he turns his head. Pain slices through me. I better get used to this feeling. After I tell him everything and he spends time alone with Dakota, we will be done anyway. I’d known this day would come since the first time I kissed him, but I hadn’t expected to care as much as I do. This was all just supposed to be fun, and I was going to be the older woman he could fuck for a few weeks and then we would go our separate ways. But now that he’s turned away from me, I don’t know how we got here. When did we cross the line from friendship to this?
What is this?
I start to apologize. “I’m sorry about—” I don’t even know where to begin.
“Don’t. Let’s talk when we are . . .” He looks down at me. “Let’s get dressed.”
I agree with him, not because I want to, but because it’s what he wants. Right now I want whatever he wants.
When we step out of the water, he grabs a towel and turns to face me. Landon bends down and rubs the towel over my feet and up my calves, drying my skin. He’s dripping wet himself, but here he is kneeling at my feet, worrying himself with drying me.
My throat burns with words for him, but I can’t find them. I pull at his arms and make him stand up. With the same towel he used, I dry his body. He doesn’t stop me; he closes his eyes, and I take my time collecting the droplets of water on his body. I ask him to sit down on the toilet so I can reach his hair, and he obliges. His eyes and mouth are closed, and I wish I could rewind to the first day I met him and have a do-over. If this were one of those fantasy books he likes, I could cast a spell and turn back time. I would concoct some type of truth serum to slip myself so I would be forced to tell him the truth from the start.
I reach for the pile of his clothes on the back of the toilet and take the black briefs in my hands. I bend down, touching his thigh, and he lets me dress him. He balls his fist, then flexes his fingers, and repeats this over and over until I’m finished. His green T-shirt is wrinkly and his wet hair is a mess on his head. It hurts me to look at him.
I dry my body the rest of the way and grab my black pants from the floor. He tugs at them and takes them from me. “I’ll give you something to wear.” He collects my clothes from the floor.
I wrap the towel around my body and follow him to his room. When the door closes behind us, I drop the towel. Landon’s eyes rake over my naked body, and I shiver under his gaze. He pulls his drawer open and hands me a pair of light gray briefs and a sleeveless shirt.
He doesn’t look at me as I dress, and my insides feel empty. I know it’s a superficial thing, wanting him to crave my body, but his deliberately looking away from me only fuels my insecurity.
When I’m dressed and feeling even more vulnerable than before, I sit on the edge of the bed. He takes a drink of his Gatorade and joins me. He hands me my water.
There’s no point in stretching this out any longer.
“I got married when I was nineteen.” Landon sucks in a breath and keeps his eyes level on the wall. “I did it for a number of different reasons. To rebel against my parents, to better piss his parents off, to be able to go to college for free. I didn’t want a dime of my parents’ money for college. Marrying Amir was the answer to that. Once married, my income was no longer based on my family’s wealth.”
Landon seems to take this in and, as always, hits at the heart of the matter. “And where is your husband now?”
If only it were that simple. “My husband is in a field somewhere between here and Scarsdale.”
That’s where his spirit is, anyway.
Landon’s forehead creases and he looks over at me.
“At first, we were just kids who signed a paper and were suddenly married. Both of us felt like we were getting out of the iron grip of our parents. We were in young love, the kind where everything is great until an actual problem comes along.”
I pause. Do you love me like that? I want to ask Landon.
