Page 67 of The One Who Saw Her: Boone

He pressed his face into her neck. "Christ, you feel so good."

She lifted her head and looked straight at him like he was one of the good ones—and something shifted. Real and fast and impossible to walk back.

Boone moved faster, deeper, more intentional with every thrust. He wanted to make this last, wanted to dismantle every doubt she'd ever had about the two of them. But then she clenched again, those magnificent breasts arching toward him, soft sounds escaping her lips that officially drove him past the point of no return.

The pressure built, hotter and higher and he held on until he felt her start to shake beneath him, felt her push down as he pressed up. And the sweetest sound he'd ever heard was his own name on Vivi's lips.

Which worked for him, because he was saying hers right back as he finally let go. Everything went dark and he dropped his head to her shoulder, pressed his face to her throat, and breathed her in while she collapsed against him.

Both of them lay there wrecked and breathing hard. Neither of them in any hurry to move.

A long time later, after the sun had nearly finished its slow descent behind the mountains and he'd tasted her peach twice, Boone lay on his back with Vivi tucked against his side.

He watched the clouds scatter across the dimming sky, a slow grin on his face he didn't bother trying to hide. They hadn't put their clothes back on, but Vivi had stolen most of the blanket. He wasn't complaining about either of those things.

Today had been, without question, the best day he'd had since before his parents died. For the first time in over a year he had clarity—that soul-deep, bone-certain conviction that there was something bright on the other side of grief. That it wasn't just something people said to get through funerals.

Vivi was that brightness.

The problem was he didn't know where her head was. He knew where her body stood. Her heart was a whole other territory—and that made him nervous in a way he hadn't expected. The kind of nervous that meant it mattered—that she mattered. More than he'd given himself permission to admit until right now, lying in a field with her hair across his shoulder and the last of the sunset going gold above them.

"I can practically hear you thinking," she whispered. "Want to talk about it?"

"I was thinking about how I solved the whole orgasm-with-someone-in-the-room problem," he said, deflecting on instinct.

She smacked his chest. "First. This was a group project. And second. We're not in a room."

"Which means next time we need to find one."

"That's a bit presumptuous," she said. "But that's not what you're thinking."

No, it wasn't.

What he was thinking was inside thoughts, the kind he kept locked down and didn't hand to anyone. But something about lying here with her, wrecked and warm and more settled than he'd felt in months, made him want to say them out loud.

"I was thinking about my mom," he said and the admission surprised even him.

She raised up on an elbow and met his gaze. "Tell me about her."

Her question settled in the air and he felt that unfamiliar pull—the urge to give her the real pieces, not just the surface version he handed to everyone else. The fact that he wanted to surprised him. He wasn't the type to let anyone in like this but with Vivi it didn't feel like a risk—it felt like it might mean something.

"When I was maybe five, I wanted to do everything on my own."

"Not you," she said, laughing.

"You want to hear it or not?"

"Go ahead."

"I got up early one Saturday to make her breakfast. Pulled out the cereal and bowls, grabbed the milk but it was too heavy and I spilled it all over the floor." A small smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "She came in before I could grab a towel but instead of scolding me, she laughed. Said, 'Well, the mess is already made, so let's have fun with it.' And then we turned the kitchen into a slip-and-slide for the rest of the morning."

He exhaled slowly, letting the memory settle between them like a low, warm light.

Vivi's expression softened in a way that made something thump in his chest.

"What an amazing mom," she said. "Mine would've cleaned it up before my dad even knew. What she gave you was something rare. It was love without perfection. Joy even when everything's messy."

Boone looked at her and the world felt quieter—somehow smaller. Like it had contracted down to just this—the blanket, the dark coming in at the edges, her voice, the warmth of her pressed against his side.