“Don’t stop,” I cry out.
“I couldn’t if I tried.”
I ride him harder until the rhythm is wild. Water drips from my chin to his cheek. The car rocks. The seat groans. Thewindows are completely fogged. His hands claim and brand everywhere he touches.
He slides one down and finds my clit.
My hips jerk.
“I’m so close,” I pant.
“Come for me, baby,” he rasps.
And I do.
Fast and sudden, my whole body locks tight as I fall apart in his lap. My nails dig into his shoulders as I press my face into his neck and come with a strangled moan that rips through the quiet storm of the car.
He curses and thrusts up into me, once, twice, then he’s gone too. A groan vibrates deep in his chest as he follows me over, his arms wrapping around me so tight it’s like he’s afraid I’ll vanish.
We breathe, still wrapped around each other as the rain pounds the roof and the storm rages outside.
Thirty-Five
Wednesday.
I know it’s Wednesday because I counted back this morning in the shower.
Wednesday means three days.
Three days, and then the road ends and California keeps going without us, and we go back to being people with lives that exist in fixed locations, and I have… things waiting. An apartment I haven’t been back to, a family I’ve been in contact with only in the careful, loving, not-quite-ready way, and a life I dismantled at an altar eleven days ago that is still in pieces on the floor.
Three days.
I’m not thinking about it.
What I am thinking about is that I urgently need to pee.
“Griffin.”
“Piper.”
“I really need to pee.”
He doesn’t look away from the road. “I told you not to drink so much.”
“I had two coffees.”
“I told you not to drink so much,” he repeats in the exact same tone.
“Yeah, well.” I shift in the seat, which helps nothing. “I didn’t listen. Sue me.”
“We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?” I look out the window. We’ve been on a smaller road for the last twenty minutes, winding inland from the coast. There are pine trees on both sides, and a wooden sign that I couldn’t read fast enough. “Griffin, almost where?”
He doesn’t answer.
I look at him, but he’s looking at the road with the expression of a man who is minding his own business.
