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"Why?"

He offers me a deliciously dirty grin. "I've got something I want to put in your mouth.”

"I'm warning you, Langstrom. I use my teeth."

"Christ, you've got a dirty mind, woman." He laughs. "And make sure you swallow everything."

"Right. I'm the one with the dirty mind."

He lifts the champagne high overhead. "Mouth wide," he warns.

"No, Brendan, it's going to go everywhere," I complain. "I can't swallow it all."

"That's what she said," he answers.

And then we're both laughing, and he tips the champagne so it seems to explode from the bottle—over my face, my shirt, my shorts—and I laugh even harder. This moment, like so many from the last few weeks, reminds me of biking downhill faster than I should. It feels thrilling and wild and reckless, the danger and the excitement weighted equally. When I compare this moment to the rest of my history, it feels as if I’ve been tethered to the ground my entire life. Right now I finally feel free.

I jump to my feet, still giggling. “Your pouring skills are legendary.”

He sets the champagne down and moves toward me, closer than he should. I can feel the warmth radiating from him. It makes me want to move closer too. His hand presses to my stomach, and I hold my breath.

“You need to change or you’re gonna freeze out here. You want me to go get you clothes?”

I shake my head. As much as I don’t want to be the voice of reason, and as much I want to remain out here with him, I have just enough common sense to know it’s the last thing I should do.

“We should probably head in. We’ve got to be up in four hours,” I tell him. “But I wish we had more time.” I wish this was a night we could stretch into a week’s worth of hours, or more.

His eyes are brighter right now than I’ve ever seen them. “I wish a lot of things were different, Erin.”

My heart goes triple time, and my breath stills somewhere between my lungs and my throat. The prospect of admitting even a tiny portion of the truth to him is terrifying. “I wish they were different too.”

His hands frame my face, sliding through my hair, and then his mouth is on mine, better even than I remembered. He tastes like champagne, and all of my resolution is forgotten under the force of this, after years of wanting this exact thing only from him.

This kiss reminds me of diving off the rocks yesterday, of the moment when I first plunged into the water—surrounded, disoriented, thrilled, and horrified all at once. In the space of that moment, only as long as it takes us both to swim to the surface and gasp for air, nothing makes sense and nothing else exists—only tangled limbs and warm skin and hearts that beat too fast. My mouth opens under his, and he groans, one hand sliding down around my hip, pulling me into him so that all of his heat is pressed against me, pulsing and ready.

“I’ve wanted this for so fucking long,” he says, his mouth moving to my neck, his hands sliding to the hem of my shirt, grazing my skin.

There are a million reasons why this is a terrible idea, and I don’t care about any of them. I love his calloused fingers. I love his insistent mouth. I love the fact that he’s not gentle with me, that he doesn’t treat me like something too fragile to touch but something he wants to destroy and put back together. There’s so much of him, and I want all of it. I want that smooth skin and those arms and the trail of hair that dips below his belly button. His mouth and the smell of his neck and the feel of him pressing into my abdomen.

His fingers slide beneath the seam of my shorts. “Fuck,” he groans. “I knew you’d be soaked. All day I thought about doing this, about sliding my fingers inside you and how you’d feel tight and ready, just like this.”

I wrench his zipper down, slide my hand into his boxers to free him. His cock flies forward like something that’s been caged, desperate for release, so thick I can barely get my hand around it. I don’t want discussion or foreplay. I want him to do this before I can remember all the reasons he shouldn’t.

He doesn’t bother removing my shorts. He simply holds them to the side so I can feel him against me, both of us slick and ready. He slides over me once, twice, making me moan, and when I dig my nails into his skin he finally lines himself up to push inside me. I hold my breath, waiting.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about this,” he says.

And then… a sound neither of us has made. It’s the squeak of a screen door flying open.

Matthew. Standing there in his little jammies with the turtles all over them, his bear clutched in one hand, his thumb in his mouth, staring at the two of us like we’re some kind of performance art he can’t quite understand.

Brendan sets me on my feet, pressing close to me so one very prominent piece of his anatomy isn’t flying free.

“What are you doing, Bwendan?” Matthew asks.

He looks so much like Olivia, but at this moment, oddly, he reminds me more of Will. There’s something calm and self-possessed about him, as if he’s older than both of us. As if he already knows the answer to the question and is waiting for us to discover it ourselves.

Brendan glances at me. A look that says what the fuck am I supposed to say? And I have no idea so I just stare back, my eyes wide.