Page 48 of Wreckage and Rain

I take them off.

She watches me. The whole time. Without blinking. Like she is daring me to be the man she just had her mouth on and not the man who forgot her birthday.

I am that man. I am still that man. I have to be.

I get over her. She wraps her legs around me. I push into her in one slow stroke because I want to feel her stretch around me and I want her to feel me feel it. She lets out a long breath. Her hands come up to my face. She holds it there.

"Look at me."

"I am."

"Don't you fucking dare look away."

"I'm not. Look at me back."

We hold each other's eyes. I start to move. Slow at first. She is staring at me like she is reading a book. Her pupils are huge. The root beer brown of her eyes is a thin ring around the dark. She is trying to find me. I am trying to be findable.

"Faster."

I go faster. She arches up to meet me. Skin on skin. Her hands move from my face to my shoulders. Her nails go in. She wants the mark. I want to give it to her.

"Harder, Colt."

I give her harder. Her breath catches. She keeps her eyes on mine.

She doesn't ask me whose this is. That was the old game, the call and answer we used to trade in a bed that worked. Tonight she doesn't trade it. She holds my eyes and says nothing and lets the quiet stand, and the quiet asks a harder thing than the question ever did. I get a hand between us and put my thumb on her clit. She breaks again, harder than the first time, and she doesn't let go of my eyes. She comes looking right at me. Like she is daring me to see it.

I see it. I see her. I see all of her, and I am hers.

We fuck like we're angry. Both of us. Angry at each other. Angry at the distance. Angry at the fact that this, right here, skin on skin, is the only conversation we know how to have without screwing it up.

I bury my face in her neck and I bite down, not breaking the skin, but needing that primal contact with her. I let go and she is whispering something into my hair, the same thing, over and over.

Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me.

I can't tell if she is asking or commanding. I say it back into her skin.

"I'm with you."

She holds me. Tight. Too tight. Like she is afraid to let go.

***

Afterward, we lie in the dark. My arm around her. Her head on my chest. The ceiling fan turning slow circles. Everything feels suspended. Everything feels okay.

The dinner. The trying. The sex. How she held me after. That was the bridge. The crossing. We're on the other side now and I'm going to be more present and she's going to see I'm here and we're going to be fine.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand.

I don't look at it. I don't reach for it.

But my hand twitches. Toward the nightstand. An involuntary micro-movement. The muscle memory of eleven months of reaching for every notification.

I catch it. Pull my hand back. Tuck it under my head.

Summer is breathing evenly against my chest.

I close my eyes and fall asleep thinking we've turned a corner.