Page 95 of Ash Fall

Her spine goes stiff the second my boots hit the floor. She knows exactly who it is, but she doesn't turn or say anything. I sit down at the dinette behind her and let the quiet run. Waiting is something I can do until she’s ready. I'll sit here all night if that's what it takes. Sooner or later she'll either talk to me or throw something at me, and at this point I'd take either one.

The trouble with sitting behind her is every time she leans over or reaches up to put something away the hem of that dress rides up the back of her thighs. She's got a dozen of these dresses that she wears. Soft, loose, cut short, with little privacy shorts underneath. Every man in our house has a private fantasy about those dresses and not one of us has ever said it out loud. Mine has been running unsupervised through my head for years. There's a version of it where we're finally together and I've got her bent over the arm of a couch as I lift it up. That's a fantasy I've had more times than I’m willing to admit to. I drag my eyes off her legs and put them on the table.

"Gage?"

Her voice comes out quiet and small in a way I’ve never heard from her before.

"Do you think..." The pot stops moving in her hands. "Am I a whore?"

Every part of me stops at once. I sit there for a solid three seconds while that goes through me, because those are not her words. Luna doesn't talk about herself that way, not ever. Somebody put that in her head, and she’s carried it around all evening. Cooking the burgers that her dead mother left was her way of having something of her mom to cling to for support. I'm on my feet and reaching for her but my hand stops an inch off her shoulder as a horrible thought crosses my mind.

Was this me? Did I plant that thought…that word… inside her? I’m supposed to be the man she can always count on. Did I do this to her? My eyes squeeze shut for a beat. When they open, I put my hands on her shoulders and turn her around to face me, slowly, giving her every chance to stop me.

She's been crying this whole time. It's quiet crying, just tears running down her face while she tries to keep the pain inside, and the sight of it erases all the bullshit I’ve been stewing on.

"No. Look at me, sweetheart. No."

She looks up at me with the saddest eyes that tell me she doesn’t believe me. I take the pot out of her hands and set it on the counter and grab the dish towel to softly dry her hands as I tell her, "There's no version of that question where the answer is yes."

Her chin trembles and she drops her eyes to my shirt instead of my face and it all pours out of her.

"I love all of you." It comes out fast, the way things do when they've been held back tight for days. "That's how I feel. Not a little, and not the way you love a friend. I love Torrin and Reid and Jules, even fucking Mars, but I also love you. I have for years, and I’ve tried so hard not to feel this way. I lie awake telling myself it’s not right, but I can't stop." She wipes her face with the back of her wrist. "How am I supposed to choose? You've all been mine in so many ways for so long. If I pick one of you, then what happens to everybody else? Four people I love get hurt and our house, our family breaks into pieces. Everything we built after my family died comes apart! And I lose people that I love… again."

Her voice breaks as she gasps in a breath to keep going, to tell me what she’s been carrying.

"I pick one of you and everyone loses their family." She finally looks up. "So what does that make me? There's a word for a girl who wants five men, and apparently everybody knows it except me."

Her eyes are wet and so green, begging me for an answer that will fix this and all I can think is that she’s so beautiful and so broken standing there that it takes the air straight out of my lungs.

Everything Julian screamed at me at the cattle pen comes raging back all at once. It's not a competition. She loves all of us. The only way anybody wins is if she's happy. I stood there in the dark and called it fiction and walked away from him. Now here she is telling me the exact same thing in her own words while she cries about it.

Everything I’ve been stubbornly fighting drops away, and it isn't even hard. It was never hard to begin with. I just didn't want it to be true, because it meant sharing her, and I was too selfish to want to do that.

She says my name again, small and unsure, and that finishes me. Finally, I do what I should have done before. I kiss her as my answer. Five years of waiting, of standing one step back and watching and waiting ends the second my lips touch hers. She goes stiff in surprise for half a heartbeat. Then a soft gasp comes out of her against my lips, and her hands slide around my neck as she hauls herself up against me while my arms lock around her.

She tastes like salt from her tears and cherries from her lip balm addiction, and I want this taste for the rest of my life. My hand slides up her back and into her hair and tips her head where I want it. She opens for me and holds on with everything she has. Every fantasy I ever built around her can’t compare to her clinging to me this hard, this desperate for me. Lifting her takes nothing at all and I carry her down the length of the motorhome without taking my mouth off hers. The bedroom door gets kicked shut behind us.

I lay her down on the bed and stand over her, taking a mental picture of her laying there is something I'm going to keep until the day I die. Her hair has come loose and spills over the pillow and her dress is twisted up around her thighs. She's looking up at me with so much trust and need that I lay my heart at her feet.

"I love you." Saying it out loud turns out to be easier than I ever expected. "Five years, sweetheart. I've loved you for five years and I've never once said it. I'm done doing that. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner."

"Gage..."

"Let me touch you." My voice has a desperate edge to it as I beg. "Please, I need to feel you and I need your hands on me. If you want me to stop, tell me right now, because I won't be able to later."

Relief fills me when she nods as her hands are already reaching for me. My shirt comes off over my head one handed and ends up somewhere on the floor. When I come down over her, her palms go flat on my chest and slide up, small and warm and not quite steady. The buzz hits me the instant she touches my skin.

It runs down both arms and into the floor under us, the same hum I get when I move stone, except I'm not moving anything and I'm not trying to. Underneath me Luna starts to glow. Soft white light rises up through her skin, faint enough that it shouldn't light the room and somehow doing it anyway. She looks up at me with wonder all over her face as the bed shakes a little under us.

"Is that you or me?" she whispers.

"Don’t care. Not tonight."

I slam my mouth over hers and take what I’ve been wanting for so long. Our tongues tangle together until we both have to come up for air, but it isn’t enough. I need more, more of her. Without thinking I grab the hem of her babydoll dress and yank it up and over her head in one rough pull. I throw it somewhere behind me and the sight of her stops everything as I pull back to take her all in. The pale lace of her bra stretched over her perfect breasts, one strap already slipping down her shoulder and the soft light moving under her skin like she’s lit from the inside. I put my mouth on her light and follow it until I can taste her through the lace and her back arches clean off the bed. A broken little noise falls out of her throat. I need to hear that sound every way she’ll give it to me.

My tongue traces the edge where the band gives way to warm skin, following it slowly around her ribs. She’s squirming under me before I get halfway, hips rolling, thighs pressing together. Patience lasts about ninety more seconds then her hands come up, she reaches behind her back, yanks the whole thing off and throws it off the side of the bed.

"You’re too slow."