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I swallow, wondering what's eating him so bad that he's struggling to get the words out.
“It's okay,” I reassure him. “Whatever it is, it's okay.”
“Last night, watching you up there on that stage, saying all those fucking incredible things… God, Thea, you were so damn brave. You know that? I could never do something like that. And I had this couple sitting next to me...” He breaks off, reconfiguring his thoughts. “I’ve never seen a couple as in love as they were. The way they looked at each other was like they were the only two people in the world. He couldn't stop touchin’ her, playin’ with her hair and her face and her hands and she would just watch him with this, like, loved-up look in her eyes.”
He pauses, lifting a finger to run it down the bridge of my nose. “Baby, all I could think about that whole time was how my eyes must look that way whenever I look at you.”
I gasp, wondering if he's saying what I think he's saying.
“I know you already know how I feel. It's clear as the damn day—always has been. But you deserve to hear it, for me to look you in the eye and tell you the truth I've always known. No woman has ever stood a chance when you've owned every piece of my heart since we were kids. I love you, Thea. I love you so fucking much.”
My breath catches.
Brushing the hair away from his face, I gaze up at him in the golden, glittering light of the morning. With my hands on his cheeks and my legs wrapped around his naked waist, I smile.
“I love you too.”
He grins, bright as the dawn. It's magnificent in all its happiness, pure joy radiating from him and warming us both. From the ache in my cheeks, I know my expression must be the very same.
Lowering his mouth to mine again, he sweeps me away in a kiss that curls my toes and capsizes my heart. We moan into each other's mouths as our centers search for each other beneath the bed sheets. Without interference or the assistance of our hands, our bodies join together as he slips into me.
“Goddamn, Thea,” Cole groans into my open mouth. “It doesn't matter how many times I fuck you, I’m never gonna get used to how it feels to be inside you.”
My fingernails drag down his back as he rolls his hips, slow and languid. It's so unlike how he usually takes me, rough and desperate, both of us driven mad with lust. This, though? This is different.
This is gentle and controlled. Soft and unhurried. Patient and tender.
This is making love.
We're rippling waves as we move as one, our bodies as close as they can possibly be, lips touching, tongues tangling together. There isn't a part of ourselves that we're not sharing with the other. He holds my stare as he pulses his hips, golden-brown irises locked onto my green ones.
“Cole,” I gasp as something ignites deep inside of me, glowing and making my legs shake. “I love you. Oh god, Cole, I love you so much.”
He flexes his hips, pushing deeper. On a long groan, he drops his head to rest in the crook of my neck and peppers adoring kisses up my throat. “Not as much as I fucking love you.”
Gripping his head, I pull his lips back to mine and kiss him like this is our last night together before the world ends. My hands splay out on his back, stroking over his rippling muscles and curling over his shoulders. Bathing in the dust of the morning light, we find our ends together. Clutching and cursing, sighing and shuddering, we come together like stars aligning.
And all I can think about is how this man is my ending.
He is the period to my sentence. And the epilogue to my story.
It's been lessthan twenty-four hours since I flew back to Oklahoma and still, I feel the absence of Thea like an amputated limb.
Without her at my side, everything is worse.
The nights are darker, black and starless. The wind blows harsher and my bed feels colder. Even the air is somehow harder to breathe, scratching my throat with every inhale.
I'm being dramatic as fuck, but it's true.
Life just ain't the same without her next to me.
Sitting on an old concrete stump outside the car shop, I light a cigarette for the first time in weeks.
“Damn, boss, thought you'd kicked that shitty habit.” The gruff voice of Brody, one of the boys who works for me, pulls me from the haziness of my despondency.
“Fuck off.”
Brody smirks, leaning against the wall of the shop and pulling his own smoke out of the pocket of his cargo pants. “You're crankier than usual today.”
