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Just the sound of her name on his lips. The weight of his palm on her back, his other hand on her shoulder, thumb at her collarbone. Drawing her closer by inches. He inhaled deeply, and she felt as if he were breathing her in, consuming her.
God, how she wanted to be consumed.
“Your hair’s c-coming down,” he said, his voice a low vibration that struck a tuning fork in her stomach and moved under her skin and everywhere.
“It’s impossible to make it stay up.”
“I love your hair.” He dropped his head and moved closer as she breathed and wondered and hoped. When his lips met the space behind her ear, she shuddered. “I love this ssspot right here, t-too. Your shivery spot.”
“Don’t do that here,” she said.
“Can I d-do it somewhere else?”
“No.” But she was smiling like a fool.
“I love your smile.” He kissed the corner of her mouth.
“You’re making me blush.”
“I love it wuh-when you blush.”
The band began to play “No Woman, No Cry.”
“They must play this song, like, a million times a year.”
“I like this sssong.”
“Everybody likes this song.”
She slid her hands to his chest and pulled away a few inches to study his face. In a moment out of time, she memorized him for the hundredth time. The arch of his eyebrows. The cleft above his lip. The faint lines at the corners of his eyes that deepened when he laughed.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be stern and stubborn and inflexible, and she was supposed to be on that walkway toward the future, moving away from him. Leaving him behind.
But here he was. The reality of Sean, the sheer physical realness of him, wasn’t something she could deny. He frustrated her, he’d hurt her, and she loved him. All of it was true at the same time. No single fact seemed capable of taking precedence over the others.
He cupped her head in his hands, smoothed his thumbs along her cheekbones, and told her, “I love your face.”
When he lowered his head to kiss her, she held still and closed her eyes, savoring the curtain of sensation that slipped over her.
“I love your m-mouth,” he whispered.
She shivered and smoothed her hands over his shoulders and down his arms.
“You trying to tell me something, Sean?”
Her tone was off. She’d been aiming for teasing, but confusion and alarm came through loud and clear.
This was the moment he would back away. He would dance around the subject of what exactly she meant to him, just as they’d always danced around any discussion of what their relationship meant or didn’t mean, of how long it would last or how they felt about one another.
He stayed right where he was. “I am,” he said. “I’m trying to t-tell you I’m in love with you, K-katie.”
She dropped her face against his neck and closed her eyes.
Run, run, run, she thought. But she couldn’t move.
She rubbed her cheek against the scratchy underside of his jaw.
When he left, she’d ached as though someone had broken her secret bones with a mallet. As though every part of her still worked, disgustingly healthy and capable, but all these other, vital, necessary parts she’d never known about had been annihilated.
