“I don’t know.”
“Well, we have a few more days to convince her. He reached over and squeezed her hand where it lay at her side between them. Only, he didn’t let go. “Who knows? By the end of the week, maybe we’ll both have what we want.”
I want you.
She closed her eyes against the impossible thought and reminded herself to stay focused on the goal. Her mother moving, Noah’s job—those were the important things. Even if he was still holding her hand.
Callie turned her hand over, lacing her fingers through his, but kept her eyes focused stubbornly on the sky. At the end of the week, they’d go back to how things had always been—with Noah no more than her best friend’s older brother, and Callie just another foolish woman who wanted what she couldn’t have.
Noah’s free hand shot into the sky, pointing at a cluster of stars. “It’s a ladybug,” he said.
Callie squinted at the place where he pointed. “I’m pretty sure there aren’t any ladybug constellations.”
“Not with that attitude.” He traced a shape in the air. “See? Definitely a ladybug.”
“I guess it kind of looks like—”
“And there.” His hand darted to point out another grouping of stars. “That has got to be an otter.”
Callie tilted her head to the side. She could almost see it. “Mmm, there’s his tail.”
He shifted his hand again. “What do you think that is?” he asked, turning his face to hers.
“That is clearly a snowman.”
He barked out a laugh. “There’s a snowman constellation?”
“If there can be a ladybug constellation, there can be a snowman,” she said, tracing the shape in the sky. “See? He even has the top hat.”
“And the carrot nose?” he teased.
“Obviously.” She let her hand float back down to rest on her stomach.
She turned to meet Noah’s eyes, and the look on his face stole her breath away. His eyes were more gold than green in the fading firelight, his stubble thicker at this point in the day. Before she could think better of it, she ran her palm over his jaw, his beard scratchy against her skin. He was so close she could feel the little bursts of hot air he expelled with each breath. So close and yet not nearly close enough.
“Callie…” He said her name like it was something special, something surprising and wondrous. Like he was saying it for the first time and memorizing the taste of it. The deep timbre of his voice vibrated through her.
And then his lips brushed against hers. Warm and soft, barely there. A whisper of a kiss.
She wanted more.
She tipped her chin to meet him, bringing their lips together again. There and then gone. He pressed his forehead against hers, the tips of their noses skating against each other as they breathed each other’s air. She squeezed her eyes closed, tried to focus on each individual sensation, to catalog and memorize them so she could remember them later.
He drew a shuddering breath that reverberated throughout her whole body, and then his free hand was sliding into her hair, angling her just so, and his lips were on hers again. This time, there was nothing soft about it. His kiss was hungry, searching, like he would learn every part of her by learning her lips. He licked over her bottom lip, and she parted for him, meeting his tongue with her own, swallowing his groan.
Callie had spent years imagining what it would be like to kiss Noah again. She’d tried to recall every detail of the last time, but neither her memory nor her imagination could live up to the real thing. This was want and need, power and tenderness all wrapped up in the way he owned her with his kiss. He pressed her back into the blanket and rose up above her, his body caging her in and pressing against her with just the subtlest of shifts in their position, and yet even then he was careful not to give her his full weight.
She gripped the fabric of his shirt, bunching it in her fist and urging him closer as their tongues stroked each other, certain that if she let go, she’d float away. His knee slid between her legs, pressing the hard muscle of his thigh against her where she was already wet and wanting. She moaned at the unexpected friction, grinding down against him.
He broke away, his hand still tangled in her hair and his nose sliding against hers. “What are we doing?” he asked, the gruffness in his tone tempered by something new, something tortured.
She couldn’t bear the uncertainty in his voice. All the times she’d imagined kissing him again, she’d never imagined he would be uncertain about it.
“We should stop,” she whispered.
She didn’t want to stop. She wanted more. But she wouldn’t ask him for anything he didn’t want to give, and she’d known all along that she could never have this with Noah. It might have been possible once, six years ago… She tried to tamp down the disappointment threatening to strangle her, the old frustration that being with him was yet another thing her illness had stolen from her.
He scraped his hand over his mouth. “Callie, I—”
