Page 55 of Left of Forever

She huffs out a frustrated breath. “I guess… Like feeling the sun shining through a window. It’s sunshine and it’s there and it’s warm, but it’s not the same as feeling it on my skin.”

I reach out for the champagne, and she hands it my way. I let the bubbles fizz through me, that mild, refreshing sting. And then I kiss her.

I kiss her because there’s no glass or walls or miles between us right now. Just her and her glowing skin and her full lips that taste like sweet, bright grapes. I kiss her because she’s kind and clever and so pretty it takes my breath away. She’s mine and I’m hers, and all my life’s greatest happiness can be traced back to her, so I kiss her because I want to, and forget the rest.

It starts out frantic, licking wine and groans off each other’s tongues. The champagne bottle thumps against her thigh while I cup her face with my free hand. It quickly turns into somethinglanguid. Scratchy sighs and slow tugs. I become hyperaware of all five of my senses. I hear the noises that catch in her throat, hear birds chirping. I feel the softness of her skin and skate my thumb along her jaw. I taste her. Feel myself clench and flex where her hands press into my arms and back. When I pull away, I watch her eyes open, heavy and slow. See it when her pupils contract, irises like brandy here in the bright day. Her smile battles with one corner of her mouth first, before it sprawls out to the other. It’s like watching a sunrise lift across her whole face.

“Let’s go back to the shack,” she says dreamily.

I shake my head. “Picnic,” I say.

She lifts one dark eyebrow at me, and I let myself thumb it. “It’s my birthday,” she reminds me with a sassy tilt of her chin.

“I know it is. That’s why I want to get my hand up your skirt and play with you until you come,” I say. And then I step back and lay out the blanket. “I’ve never done that in a vineyard before.”

Her chest rises unevenly. “You can’t always get your way, you know,” she says, primly lowering herself onto the quilt. She stays propped up on her elbows, and her knees shift beneath her skirt, parting slightly.

“I know, Byrd,” I say, heart drumming hard in my chest. I stretch out beside her and lean onto a forearm, planting a kiss on her bare shoulder. “You said you wanted me mean.”

We both watch my hand slide up her shin, bunching the skirt up with it. I pause when her smooth, tanned kneecap is revealed, and I spot the two-inch scar beside it.

Shortly after she and Sam moved in with me and my siblings, she’d been down on her hands and knees helping Sage with a school project, using an X-Acto knife to cut through poster board for something I can’t even remember. She was cutting toward herself and got a little stuck, pulled too hard, and sliced into herown skin. There’s another faint scar in her hairline from when we were in third grade and I dared her to walk across the top of the monkey bars. There are two more scars on her stomach. One from a cesarean when they cut Sam from her, where I watched her split open and saw a whole life pulled out. Another vertical scar from an emergency laparotomy when she had a ruptured fallopian tube, terminology that was burned into my brain when I was stuck in a cold, clinical room waiting for her to be out of that surgery. So many of her scars are related to me. It’s a struggle to breathe around the emotions billowing in my lungs.

“If this is you being mean, I don’t think I’ll survive it when you’re nice,” Wren says. When our eyes lock, she frowns sharply. “What’s wrong?”

I fight to swallow and shake my head. “I’m just happy you came here with me,” I say, throat tight. Fingertips tracing over the scar on her knee. “I’m just happy I get to be with you again. Right now, I mean. I know it’s not… I know you haven’t decided anything. I just thought I never would.” I also plan to never drink wines again if they make my mood this unstable.

She wraps a hand around my neck and pulls me down to her lips. I let half my weight settle onto her, and I swallow her quiet groan. I go back to tracing patterns on her skin with my fingertips.

“So soft,” I say, then hiss when she palms me through my jeans.

“You’re not,” she says into my mouth.

I tease a path up her thigh, let my knuckles brush across her panties, blood surging through my veins at the heat of her. I slide my palm down her other thigh, massage my way back up and over in a circuit until she’s writhing and panting. Small, bitten-off sounds slip out of her against my chin.

“Please,” she says like a curse.

I think I make more noise than she does when I finally touch her. Blazing hot, and “So fucking wet.” Wet and lush and perfect. She curls a fist in my hair and tugs. It’s second nature, knowing what rhythm and pressure she likes.Like whisking, but with your finger, she’d once described it when we were younger. I smile against her neck at the memory. She chases my mouth with hers, and all of it, it’s all coming back to me. I know how she’ll start to circle a little and how she’ll get super quiet just before, like she senses it right in front of her and is concentrating on getting it. She’ll clench her eyes shut until she’s about to tip over, and thenthere, she opens them and looks right at me with a low hum that I’ll feel vibrate all the way through her.

“Get it, baby,” I say, watching her come apart in bliss. She does, another little anguished sound leaving her in a hot, breathy plea, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

She’s still pulsing against my fingertips when she reaches for my zipper, and I ache so badly I can’t think of any reason to say no. “We’re going to have to steal this blanket,” I say, panting before she’s even freed me from my jeans.

“Not if you come in my mouth,” she says, and I think I black out.

We’ve just wrestled my pants down my hips when the sound of feedback blares over a loudspeaker from somewhere. “We need Wren and Ellis Byrd up at the main house,” a voice says. “Wren and Ellis Byrd,” it says again, drawing out each syllable. It’s like the time we got called into the principal’s office senior year because we got caught by a teacher making out next to Wren’s locker. “Class starts in one minute.”

CHAPTER 28

ELLIS

Apparently, it wasn’t safe to assume we’d be left to our own devices if we didn’t show up for the cooking class.

We end up hoofing it to the manor house after they summon us through the sound system one more time, fixing clothes on the way and following the signs pointing to the cooking class and the thumping sounds of music blaring.

I’m about to tell Wren that I’ll cover us and let whoever the host is know that we won’t be participating, when a tiny woman comes flying around the corner in a cloud of white, gauzy material, her arms wide and her smile wider.

“They’re here!” she croons toward the room she’s just left, which makes the room erupt in a cheer. She turns back to us. “We’ve been waiting for you!” Her smile is as white as her slicked-back hair and her linen pants. She dances her way back into the room, gesturing for us to follow.