"This is mine. Every time I ruin you like this, you're mine. Say it back."
"Yours," she breathes, trusting me. "I'm yours."
And that undoes me.
"Good girl."
God, she is justsogood.
"One more. One more for my needy girl, and then you sleep."
She sighs deeply, full-bodied, her whole frame relaxing into the mattress. A tension leaves her that I hadn't known she was holding. Her eyes flutter closed and a small, blissfulsmile settles on her mouth. I watch it happen with a kind of awe I'll never get used to.
Her legs fall open wider, her body making room for me without being asked. I push into her in one firm stroke and watch her back lift off the bed. I hold still inside her, my breath hot on her cheek, her pulse fluttering under my lips when they press against her throat.
She feels like pure heaven, so I give her everything I have left. Her eyes open and find mine and I hand it all over in the light of an early morning, inside this woman who has my whole heart and doesn't know it.
When my name breaks on her lips again, I kiss her mouth, needing to breathe her inside my body. In giving her everything, I am letting her go.
34
LILY
The email comes while I'm elbow-deep in a bucket of tulips that Erin ordered too many of, which is how I've learned March works in a flower shop.
Nobody tells you that March is chaos. Nobody warns you that people lose their minds over spring arrangements and early Easter orders and the desperate need to put something alive and colorful in their homes after months of gray.
Now I'm sorting stems by height because Erin is particular about her window display, and getting it wrong means a very polite lecture that's somehow worse than getting yelled at.
My phone buzzes on the counter. I almost don't look because my hands are wet, there's pollen on my forearms, and I've got maybe forty minutes before Erin comes back from her supplier run and expects this bucket sorted and ready.
But my eyes drift to the screen anyway, the way theyalways do, and I see the word Chicago sitting there like it's been waiting for me.
Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago.
I wipe my hands on my apron and pick up the phone.
Dear Ms. Moreland, We are pleased to inform you...
I read the first line, then I set my phone face-down on the counter and stand very still.
There's an instant rush in my ears, and I’m almost lightheaded as I process what's happened. I take a breath. Then another. My hands are shaking slightly as I pick up the phone again and make myself read the whole thing.
Early acceptance. Full track. Fall start. Chicago said yes.
I stand there in the middle of the shop and try to feel what I'm supposed to feel. Joy. Relief. Validation. All the emotions that belong to a moment like this, the moment you've been working toward for years, the moment that proves every late night and every sacrifice and every choice was worth it.
And I do feel those things. I really do. But underneath them, threaded through like a dark vein in marble, is something else entirely.
Chicago is very far away. I think about the other applications still pending. Johns Hopkins and Stanford haven't responded yet, which at this point probably means no. But Chicago said yes. Chicago is real. Chicago is happening.
I also applied to Brown, one random night when the thought of leaving became too real. It was a last moment application, and I haven't told anyone.
Brown is less than an hour from Harbor Hill, close enough that I could commute, close enough that leavingwouldn't really be leaving. It's a school I never considered because of my parents' expectations and my need to feel loved. Wanted.
But I've been wondering lately, in the quiet hours when I can't sleep, whether choosing Brown would be choosing something for myself or choosing something out of fear. Whether staying close is wisdom or cowardice. Whether I'm even capable of knowing the difference anymore.
The bell above the door chimes and Erin comes in carrying a flat of peonies, her cheeks pink from the cold, her hair escaping its braid again.
