“You want to do this?” I ask.
“I want you.”
Whether she just means she wants me right now, like this—sexually—or whether she means she wants me…like, all of me, including the physical bit…my head can’t sort that out. It sounds like she wants all of me.
But now’s not the time to clarify.
Now is the time to make her desires a reality. And it doesn’t matter, really, because however she wants me, she can have me.
“I’m yours,” I say.
As I say it, I realize I don’t just mean I’m hers in this moment. I mean I’m hers whether she wants me or not. I’m hers if she never speaks another word to me. I’m hers if she asks me to wait another ten years for her. I’d wait a lifetime even if it means I only get another eight days with her.
There isn’t a multiverse or a timeline where I don’t belong to her body and soul. So if this is the last of what time I get with her in this one, I’m not going to waste a second of it.
I guide her hips to the right position. She hovers over me for a second, and then she touches her forehead to mine as she lowers herself onto me. Both of us let out a quiet noise between a moan and a sigh. It’s filled with the relief of this moment, days of tension, maybe even years of it, breaking at our reunion.
A small voice buried deep in my chest whispers,finally.
As Abby moves on me, controlling the pace and intensity, her hands holding my neck, my face, running over my shoulders and chest and back up to my neck, looking at me like I’m the best part of her day, it becomes crystal clear to me that I will never be able to do this with another woman ever again. Nor do I want to.
It isn’t just that she feels good on me, or that she seems to know exactly what we’ll both like—it isn’t just physical. I feel as if my soul is stretching outside of me to tether itself to her.
Her breathing quickens and hitches, the furrow of her brow deepening. She tightens her grip in my hair to stay grounded, reflecting the building tension in both of us. She’s gorgeous like this, sweaty and trembling; I know she’s going to come again, and I want to come with her.
She lets me take over as I intensify my hold on her, sinking my fingers into her firm, muscular hips. I watch as she cries out,relishing in her clenching and squeezing around me. I can’t help but let go too, clutching her to me as I tip over the edge. I dig my teeth into her shoulder to try to muffle my cry, but it only makes her pull my hair harder. The pain and pleasure of it all is pure ecstasy. I hold her to me as I come down from where that orgasm sent me, focusing on her steady breaths against my chest and the way all my muscles finally seem to relax. Neither of us moves for a long time.
I couldn’t name the feeling at the time, but it dawns on me as our labored breathing echoes around us, absorbing into the walls, our pleasure etched into the history of this landmark. Familiarity. This was so familiar to me, but not in the déjà-vu way. Not in the “I’ve been in this moment” before kind of way.
It’s the feeling I had every time I stepped onto an ice rink. It’s the feeling I had walking into my childhood bedroom. It’s the feeling I have felt every time I’ve been around Abby for the last eight days.
It feels like coming home.
Abby feels like home.
Call me a believer or a conspiracy theorist, but I get it now. Home is a real feeling. The feeling I’ve been looking for for years is right here and it’s real. It’s not a myth and it’s not in a city, a state, a building, or a career. It’s in a person.
It’s inthisperson.
“Did this count?” I ask as Abby readjusts, nestling her head onto my shoulder.
Her hands skim down my arms, finding my hands. She interlaces our fingers. Her lips rest against my pulse point.
“Yes. This counts.”
Her words are whispered against my skin, my heart expanding as I take them in. She’s been fighting her own desires to be with me, and it sounds like her fight is over.
Maybe this means she is on the same page as me. That she wants me as much as I want her and all we need is to have a conversation and make it official. If we want to be together, why wait?
I know I don’t want to wait. Abby is it for me, and I’m not going to risk losing her again. I’m already hers and I want nothing more than to make her mine again.
19
ABBY
I had no intentions of having sex in a lighthouse in Cabo when I set off on the hike a few hours ago, but I don’t have any regrets.
Maybe it was inevitable that we would end up in this situation. I’m not a science girlie, but even I remember learning about the laws of motion. An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by outside forces. If Miles and I were both barreling toward each other, was our collision not inevitable? We could have passed by each other, but I don’t think we were ever on two separate paths, just opposite ends of the same one.
