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“Simon,” I whimper his name and he locks our mouths in a kiss.
That’s when I come, even though I wasn’t looking for it. But Simon’s kisses are orgasmic. They push me over the edge every time.
And while I’m clenching around him, he withdraws, takes off his condom and comes on my pussy and my wild curls, branding me like that first time.
Despite the waves of orgasm flashing through both of us, he pulls me to my feet. With glittering eyes, he puts his hands under my ass and heaves me up, taking me in his arms.
In his usual fashion, he walks me to the washroom and sits me down on the counter. The marble is so cold against my naked butt.
Then, he goes back out and gets my clothes. Wetting a tissue and cleaning me up, he puts me back into my clothes like I’m a child. I let him do it because I know it makes him happy, smoothing down my hair, taking care of me.
But I can’t bear the silence any longer. “Simon –”
He looks up, his eyes cracked open in a way I can’t put my finger on. “Willow, I…”
Even though he trails off, my breathing escalates. My heart races. It pounds, and goose bumps come alive on my skin.
Because for some reason I think… I think he’s going to say it. He’s going to say what I’ve been waiting for.
His chest is moving up and down, just like mine. We’re breathing as one. Me and him. I bet the looks in our eyes match too because I’m cracked open in the way he is, as well.
It makes me realize what it is I’m seeing in his expression. It’s vulnerability. We’re both vulnerable. Flayed. Bare. Naked.
And we’re both broken, in this moment. Broken and melted.
My ice king is going to say it.
He’s going to say he loves me.
“I… I –”
His words get swallowed up by the ringing of the phone and I could scream with how cliché this is. How fucking cliché and unfortunate.
A cruel joke.
“Simon, don’t. Please.” I grip his bicep, but he shakes his head and leaves me there.
Although, he can’t get to his phone on time, and I hear a man’s voice when the machine picks up the call – Seriously, what era is this? Every fucking thing in this Victorian mansion is old-fashioned:
“Hey, man. Pick up your fucking cell phone. We need to talk about Claire. Two weeks are up.”
I come out of the bathroom and I wouldn’t have thought anything of it or the name Claire, if I hadn’t seen Simon transform right in front of me.
Going all tight and icy, standing by the desk, staring at the phone. It’s so startling, his change. So abrupt and so shocking, after seeing him unravel a thousand times.
My heart’s racing but for a very different reason now and something like dread makes a home in my stomach. “Simon –”
He whirls to face me. “Get out.”
“What?”
“Get. Out.”
“But –”
“Leave, Willow.”
I don’t.
How can I? After everything. After what he told me and what he was going to tell me.
His fury rises, rises and rises, until it spills over and he lashes out, “Willow, for once in your goddamn life, will you do as I say?”
I flinch at his voice. I’ve never seen him like this. So cold and so heated at the same time. All the lines on his body and face set in stone. It cracks my heart, right in the middle. Crushes it, beats it into a pulp.
As soon as I feel my eyes watering, I do as he says.
I leave, realizing that he never asked me his usual question: how many days.
One day.
Before The Goodbye.
And the man I’m in love with isn’t even looking at me.
It’s like the way he looked at me yesterday when I thought he was finally going to say something, acknowledge this thing between us, was it. He has used up all his intensity, all his passion, his heat in that one look and he doesn’t have anything left now.
He’s ice cold.
Or maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe he wasn’t even going to say anything. Maybe he never intended to say it, and whatever I’ve been feeling for the past few days is nothing but a delusion.
I’m delirious. In schizophrenic love.
With the man standing across the room. He’s the tallest man at my party – my going away party. He’s also the most aloof, tucked away in a corner. He’s not even eating cake.
Renn and the girls ordered a lime cake for me, specifically. And we’re all assembled in the rec room – patients, techs, nurses, therapists.
How ironic is it that it all started with a party? My eighteenth birthday party. We had a chocolate cake with fresh raspberries in the filling. The number of people who attended was bigger, but I didn’t know more than half of them, and they didn’t know me. They came because my family invited them, and maybe because they wanted free booze and cake.
