“Which do you think was bloodier: the foam party or your bachelorette party?”
I move the ice pack around on his ankle with great importance. “I think it’s a toss-up,” I say quickly, hoping to seal up all the hurt that threatens to spill out at the mention of that fight and the year of suffocating silence that followed.
His eyes don’t seem to register my inner turmoil. Instead, they find mine, giving me a look that turns my bones liquid. “Char,” he murmurs, his thumb drifting up my wrist bone, then sliding all the way back down to the tips of my fingers. I feel that touch everywhere. Little pinpricks all the way down my spine. My mind spins withwhat ifafterwhat ifand each of the resultingbut fors.
“Please stop overthinking this,” he pleads.
My eyes go to the ceiling. I feel his stare like the press of a hand. “Someone has to. You’reunderthinking this.”
He pushes the ice pack off his leg and looks at his ankle, hishand, the counter, everywhere but back at me. Disappointment tugs at my lungs, because, for a second, I think I’ve done it. I’ve infected him with my fear and apprehension. I’ve ruined this before I even got a chance toenjoyit.
But then he whips himself back around. “I promise you I’ve dedicated a lot of thought to this.”
His sentence hits me like a kick to the shin and words expel from my mouth. “I don’t want to lose you again.” The utter truth of it smacks us in the face like a swinging testicle. Still, the fear deep inside me beats like a drum.Don’t let yourself want something he can’t give, it says.
I know what this is and the bounds of what it can be. He’s a nomad, and I’m a workaholic who desperately needs to pay off her mortgage on a very immovable house. We are the two least compatible people on this planet. But even knowing that doesn’t feel like enough to keep me safe from the way this man could destroy me if he disappears again into a puff of smoke and an unsatisfying text message.
“You can’t lose me. It doesn’t matter what happens or doesn’t happen, you’ll never lose me. Do you get that? If this—what we’ve done—is enough for you, I can make it be enough for me. Ican’tpush you away again. I won’t.”
Something changes in his face, an unknown emotion covering his naturally emitting light like a solar eclipse. “I’m serious. I’ll take any shred of you you’ll give me. It wouldn’t have to mean anything, I swear.” He lifts his thumb to my cheek and swipes at a tear. “Just tell me what you want, Chuck. I can’t stand it anymore. Please, put me out of my misery.”
I hold his plea to my chest like a physical thing, pressing it against my breastbone. Emotion coils around my throat; I’moverwhelmed by the panic of knowing I’m in a pivotal moment and not knowing whether it’ll recast itself as a regret in real time.
“I want you,” I whisper, and he doesn’t make me say more. He inches his face closer and presses a hand into my hair, pinching his eyes shut like this small bit of contact is almost more than he can take. Every part of my body tightens. Every place we’re touching—his fingers behind my ear, my hand on his thigh, his breath on my lips—is the turn of a crank.
There’s no going back now.
He fingers the bottom of my shorts with his other hand, barely grazing the edge of skin near my inner thigh.
“Yeah?” The whisper of the single syllable cuts off the oxygen to my brain, and I’m not confident I’ll be able to remain upright if he keeps going like this.
“Please,” I whisper. We’re so close, breathing together. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”
It’s exactly what he needs to hear. He closes his eyes and gives in.
His lips meet mine, velvety soft but so firm. Controlled. He has me—I’m safe—and I can fall apart into him. I tip my head back to let his teeth skate across my jaw. It takes everything in me not to cry out at the way the sensation sends fireworks straight through my abdomen. Still, somehow he knows—he always knows. His smug smile presses up against my neck. “I’ve been watching you drag your finger across your face right there for ages. You think I didn’t notice?”
Did he catalog those tiny, seemingly insignificant parts of me? The same way I did with him?
“When you’re concentrating, you brush the tips of your fingers right there.” He draws on my jaw with his guitar-callusedfinger. “I’ve imagined reaching over and touching you right here hundreds of times. Thousands.” He replaces his finger with his mouth, dragging his lips along my chin and down my neck.
“Can you feel how fast my heart is beating?”
“Yeah.” His hot laugh vibrates against my skin as his hands grab at the bottom of my T-shirt. We break apart just long enough for me to pull it over my head and toss it onto the floor. In a moment, he’s back on me, groaning between my breasts, fingers skimming my stomach. We’re both so sweaty and hot, but it doesn’t matter. We feel too good like this to stop.
When I tug on his hair, he nearly collapses into my chest. He looks up at me with wild, blown-out pupils. “God, Charley. You know, I’ve literally dreamed of you doing that.”
“I’ve watched you mess with this ridiculous hair since you started growing it out,” I tell him. “You thinkIdidn’t notice?”
“You like it like this. Remember, like, seven years ago we were at that music festival in Missouri…” His hands slide along my ribs, down to my hips, until he pulls me onto his lap so that I’m wrapped around him like a present. Those tapered fingers trail up my thigh. My hips roll toward him without any direction from my brain, every move of our bodies a perfect call and response. “You told me you loved my hair,” he murmurs.
“I really do,” I say on a gasp.
There’s nothing inexperienced in the way he claims every bit of me, but I still feel like we’re a couple of teenagers. Like I honestly might die if he stops kissing me. As though I could explode into pieces like glass under pressure. I’m certain I could kiss like this for hours—days—and never need more. I need no life outside of this moment. Nothing but a bed, water, and PowerBars for sustenance. I think Igetthe van life now.
His fingers skate against my shorts, finding their way to my zipper. He sighs out a needy breath, as though my fly is some sort of great elemental discovery. The sounds he makes—the desperate breaths, the bitten-off moans—give me this heady pleasure I didn’t know was possible, and I nearly collapse at the mere sound of him losing his mind over me. Now that I’ve heard it, I’m becoming increasingly confident I could shatter at Ethan’s sexually frustrated sigh alone.
Even with Ethan’s sounds in my ears, his taste on my lips, his fingers traveling below my waistband, it’s not enough. I squirm on top of him, searching for more points of contact, more of him, until he hisses in pain.
