Thirty
Liam
Steam curls around our naked bodies while water fills the tub.
“Come here.” I steady her with my outstretched hand as she eases herself into the steaming water, her skin flushed pink from the heat and holding memory of our bodies tangled together in the grass.
The water ripples around her breasts and long brown hair as she settles, looking up at me with those almond dark eyes that still make my stomach drop even after what we just did. I step in behind her, careful not to slosh water over the edges, and pull her back against my chest.
“Is it too hot?” I ask, my lips against her damp hair.
“It's perfect,” she murmurs, her fingers tracing patterns on my thigh beneath the water.
We sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes, my arms encircling her, breathing together.
“It’s probably a little too late to ask you if you’re…” she says in a chuckle, but I sense she wants to run away from the conversation.
“Clean?” I say the word for her.
“Yeah...?”
“I am, I wouldn’t be protecting you the way I have been and be sexually unsafe to you.” I reassure her, gently twisting her long hair in my fist. “It was my first time… being bare. I guess we both experienced a first tonight.” I kiss her shoulder.
She looks back at me, surprised. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
Her back rising and falling against my chest, and the weight of her against me, trusting andall of her finally being mine, makes something possessive stir deep in my chest. My arms tighten around her instinctively, and I press my face into the curve of her neck, inhaling her scent. I'll never be able to let her go. Not now, not after everything. The thought spirals through me, that my breath catches.
“Liam?” She turns slightly.
“Yeah, I just...” My voice sounds strange even to my own ears. “I can't let you go,” I whisper, “I don't think I'll ever be able to. Don’t ever make me have to let you go.”
She shifts slightly, turning to look at me over her shoulder.
“You’ve fucked me up Sara.” My hand slides up to her waist, bracing her as I point to my temple with the other, “Up here. You’ve fucked me up to a point I didn’t think I could feel how I feel for another human. The thought of you with someone...”I trail off, my lips finding their way from her shoulder to the hollow of her neck.
Her eyebrows draw together, confusion clouding her eyes.
“There isn’t anyone…” she says, her voice soft but wary.
The question that's been burning in me finally slips out.
“Tyler. You let me believe he was your first.”
Her body tenses against mine, and I feel her pulse quicken under my palm where it rests against her collarbone. The water laps gently against the sides of the tub as she shifts.
“I never actually said that,” she says carefully.
“But you knew what I thought. You knew I believed it,” I retort.
“You were too busy hating me to ask, and I honestly didn’t care what you thought.” She turns to get a better look at me. “You just... assumed. And I didn't correct you because you never gave me the chance. You were so convinced I was some kind of— ” She stops herself, her eyes searching mine. “You were wrong about me.”
“So, what happened between the two of you then?” I ask, feeling some legitimacy in asking her this question knowing I have no right, and I’d accept her telling me to fuck off.
“I…I missed Joe, but I couldn’t give Tyler what he didn’t deserve. It would’ve been the equivalent of me letting myself drown, hoping for numbness.” Her gaze is so confident, stoic, but holds a deeper sorrow I know I’ll never fully heal for her.
My grip tightens around her breast, cupping her face in my other hand. Everything I thought I knew about her.
