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“I left him there, slumped on the stoop. I didn’t help him up. I didn’t even check to see if he was okay once I saw he was still breathing. I just… left. It’s the one thing he passed down that stuck, I guess. Leaving.”
“What kind of person does that?” I tip my head down; close my eyes. “I don’t know how to love properly, Cora. Not at all. Sam was like a brother to me.” My voice cracks as I look at her, her eyes wide; mouth a pinched line. “And you… you’rewho I think of when I’m cramped up and hiding behind a wall, shells firing all around me, wondering if that night will be the last and I died for some fucking photos. I left both of you behind. Because all I know how to do is leave.”
A tear runs down Cora’s cheek, dropping on the top of her dress.
“No,” I whisper, my voice thick. “Don’t cry.”
“You’re leaving again,” she said. “Aren’t you? Sooner than you said.”
She knows.
“I saw you looking at your phone in the room, doing that hand in your hair thing.”
When I open my mouth to speak, she shakes her head. “It’s fine, Tristan.”
Cora sticks her shoulders back, letting a beat pass. Then she says, “You asked me if I regretted kissing you—the answer’s no. I always knew you weren’t for keeps.”
Somehow, after everything I’ve said to her, after what she’s said to me, that’s the thing that brings me to my knees.
I pull her onto me, my own eyes wet. I press my head to her chest. “I’m sorry, Cora.”
But Cora grasps my hair, tipping my face back up, and her lips are on mine before I can say more. She kisses me softly at first, sliding her hands deeper into my hair.
Even now, my dick jumps.
She feels it. She pulls back, looking me in the eye. “Did you bring a condom?”
I nod.
“Then take me here, Tristan. Remember me here.”
My cock swells so fast it hurts as it presses against my zipper. “Are you sure?” My voice is rough with sudden need for her.
“Ask me later,” she says, as fresh tears fall.
It only takes me a moment to fish the condom out of my wallet. To get my pants down enough to free my cock, which is ready for her; desperate for her, slick at the top. I get the condom on while on my knees and pull her back onto me. She flips her skirt up—no panties—and I groan. My sheathed cock throbs in time to the need pulsing through me. She’s so fucking beautiful—every last part of her.
In the next breath, she’s on me, her warmth engulfing me. She sinks all the way down until we’re locked together, my forehead against her breastbone, my arms wrapped tight around her waist.
Cora guides us, rocking herself against me, laying soft kisses on my forehead and eyebrows and pressing her damp face against mine.
I grit my teeth, fighting the urge to press up harder, to take over as the base part inside of me demands.
But it’s then that Cora grasps my chin. “I love you, Tristan Galloway,” she whispers as she rocks against me. “I’ve always loved you.”
My breath catches, my chest so tight I couldn’t bring in air if I tried.
My mouth forms the words, but I can’t make them come. All I can do is make her feel as good as I know how. I slip my hand under her dress, and press her slick clit with my thumb. I circle it, making her speed up and clench my cock. A moment later we’re both shuddering, writhing, gasping for air.
I kiss her then, and I kiss her again when I pull up to her apartment building a half hour later, where she said she wanted to be tonight. “If I wake up alone, I want to go to bed alone.”
I get her email and tell her I’ll send her some of the photos I took today, a lifetime ago, in the east wing of the Rolling Hills. We both know I won’t do more.
“Thank you, Tristan Galloway,” she says as we hold hands in the front seat of my truck. My engine’s still running, running away like me.
“There’s nothing to thank me for.”
“Yes there is. That day, all those years ago, you saw me, and you didn’t run away like everyone else.” She smiles, looking over at me finally. “You showed me I wasn’t too much. I just didn’t know it then. But I know it now.”
