It doesn’t come clean. My brain wants to replay it all.
I get it now.
Why Henry thought he was so broken.
I curl into him. His breathing evens. Mine pretends to. Moonlight shines across the floorboards and climbs the wall. Zach sighs on the other side of Henry.
The nightmare hangs on me like smoke. It clings to my hair, my tongue, the back of my throat. I hold on to him tighter, until he moves.
“Tabitha?” His voice is sleep-rough but gentle.
I nod because if I try to speak I may burst into tears.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “I’m here.”
Something in me breaks and opens. I climb on top of him with a clumsy urgency that would embarrass me if I weren’t so distraught.
I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to be asked if I’m okay. I want the sound of his heart under my ear. I want the heat of his breath and the rough bristle of his stubble, anything loud enough to drown the echo still ringing inside my skull.
His arms come around me. The world narrows to his hold. I shake once—a full-body shudder—and then go still, inhaling his neck. He smells like soap and cedar and Henry.
“Tell me what you need,” he says.
I tilt my mouth to his jaw. “You. I always need you.”
He goes very still. His pulse thumps once beneath my lips. Then he exhales slowly. When he pulls back enough to see my face, I wonder if he’s reading me. The look in my eyes, the invisible tremors.
I lift my chin. I don’t want his slow and reverent stuff. I want hard and fast. The way he took me in the barn.
The way of us.
I kiss him. It’s not neat.
It’s heat and hunger and the merciless relief of drowning out a siren with a thunderclap.
His hands find my back and my waist. Mine find his shoulders and then his hair.
He breaks the kiss only long enough to rest his forehead against mine. We breathe each other’s air for a few seconds, and he strokes my cheekbone as if he’s smoothing the nightmare away.
His eyes darken with the kind of understanding that makes my chest ache. He kisses me again, slower at first, coaxing, and then deeper. The pace builds the way a storm does, like a distant rumble before the sky breaks open.
He slides his hands under my shirt, his palms hot against my skin. Every inch he touches wakes up, most intensely between my legs.
It’s almost too much, the care and the yearning tangled together. I lean into it and let both undo me.
“I need more,” I whisper.
“Show me,” he says.
I do. I tug his shirt up, and he helps, arms crossed and lifted so I can pull it over his head. God, his corded neck, hard chest, defined abs. I press my hands to him, infuse myself with his warmth and strength.
He cups my face, and I can’t tell if I’m shaking because I’m cold or because all at once I’m burning.
He kisses the corner of my mouth and then my jaw and then lower, a path that makes my breath catch. I tilt my head back, give him full access, while I slide my fingers over his strong shoulders.
“Tabitha,” he says against my skin.
I pull off my shirt.
