Page 83 of Not Home Alone

I do that. Over his jeans. While he kisses me and grabs my ass. He’s getting so hard, and the snow is really starting to come down now. Our breaths are heavy and they’re the loudest sound in all of Illinois, it seems. There’s an urgency that we didn’t have ten years ago, because that night we thought it was the beginning of something beautiful. Or I did, anyway. Tonight, it’s the end of something beautiful—the momentary hope we had that things would work out for us beyond Christmas.

I start to undo Grant’s jeans, and he exhales in relief.

But there’s a jingling of metal not too far away from us. A dog collar, a leash. I don’t have to look to know that the neighbor from across the street is out walking his basset hound before the snow gets too high for his little legs.

Grant rests his forehead against mine, and we take a moment to catch our breaths, and also to quietly unzip each other’s pants.

So daring—Grant reaches inside my panties, easily finding my wet, swollen clit.

“Baby…” he whispers.

It sounds so loud to me, but I don’t even care. Anyone who’s awake on this street is most likely in bed, streaming a Christmas movie on a device. I rock my hips up, pressing myself into his flat hand. He holds his hand steady and lets me control the pressure and the pace. I am so intensely turned on, I’m already coming on his fingers. Grant covers my mouth with his free hand so I can sigh and gasp into it. He holds everything still until I’m done riding it out.

Then he pushes his jeans down and quietly asks, “Ready?”

I nod and push my own jeans and panties down to my thighs.

I can’t spread my legs apart like this, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He bends his knees and notches himself at my entrance. “Jesus, you’re so tight, this is going to be quick.”

“Good, my ass is freezing,” I tell him. Even though I don’t really want this night to end.

I don’t think he even heard me. He pushes in and up, and it’s awkward but also so good. We both suck in our breaths and take a second to enjoy the sensation of him filling me up before he thrusts. His movements are slow and careful.

I loop my arms around his neck and say, “Don’t be gentle, Moody.” What I don’t say out loud is that I want some other part of me to hurt as much as my heart does tonight.

I don’t need to tell him twice. Grant thrusts hard and fast, still somehow able to keep this as contained and discreet as possible. He whispers that he loves me and then shudders and goes stiff, emptying himself into me.

Time stands still as we stand, pressed together, holding each other until I start to shiver.

We walk back to the Home Alone House, cleaning ourselves up separately once we’re inside. And then we meet in the upstairs hallway, wrapping our arms around each other.

“What if we do long-distance?” Grant strokes my back as he talks. “I know tons of people who have almost exclusively virtual relationships with partners who live on different coasts or continents. I could come back here once a month. You could go to New York once a month. People do it all the time.”

“I think that would be exciting for a few months, but it’s not sustainable. I’ve known people who have long-distance relationships like that too, and not one of them has said, ‘Why isn’t everyone doing this? This is so emotionally satisfying.’”

“True. We’d never be fully settled in either place, and traveling that much is expensive and exhausting. It’s not like it’s one direct flight from Holly Grove to JFK.”

After a long, dramatic sigh, I say, “Okay, but why New York?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why is your father so determined to base everything and everyone in New York, all of a sudden?”

“Aside from wanting to scale the business and New York is the financial capital of America?”

“Well, maybe a better question would be: Why does your dad want to leave Holly Grove so badly now?”

I can feel Grant’s body tensing up. “What do you mean?” He is always vaguely absent whenever he talks about his dad. It makes me sad. They’re so disconnected.

Pulling back so I can look at him, I say, “Well, this is where he’s from, right? This is where he built his life. Didn’t you tell me your mom and dad knew each other growing up?” He did. He totally told me that ten years ago, and I thought about it all the time. “He went to the same boarding school he sent you to in Chicago, but he met your mom when he was in town and they’d see each other during the summer and holidays?”

“Yeah. She married her high school sweetheart. He died four years later. By then, my dad had married Todd’s mother. Then my mom moved to Alaska for work for a few years, and when she came back to Holly Grove, he was married to Ava’s mother. After his second divorce, he and my mom reconnected.”

“I remember you said he didn’t really start expanding The Moody Group beyond the manufacturing business in Holly Grove until after he married your mom? Because she loved this town so much?”

“Yeah. But he really threw himself into work after she died.”

“So why is it so important to him to either move the company to New York or sell it to some jerk as soon as he retires?”