AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I keep telling myself not to focus on that, to enjoy every minute I still have left here, but that’s just well-intentioned bullshit.”
“But it’s the only thing we can do. I don’t want to spend the next couple of days crying over the fact that you’re leaving. I’ll have plenty of time for crying after you’re gone.” I turn his chin so he’s looking right at me. “As of tomorrow we have five days left. Let’s make the most of them.”
He eases me back onto the bed, runs his hands over me, soft and gentle, then situates me so that I’m lying on top of him. “Can I stay the night?”
“Yeah, always.”
He’ll be gone when I wake in the middle of the night, but that’s all right. I know he has other people counting on him besides me, so I’ll take what I can when I can get it.
I undress for him, strip him out of the clothes he’s wearing, start at his toes and kiss all the way up his body. I take him inside of me and try my best to commit every move he makes and every word he says to memory.
I wake to a note on my nightstand:Lunch after class today?And I smile when I roll back over and feel the sheet brush against my bare skin. I’m still naked from the night before and the sensation brings me back.
Yes, I should have been in the shower fifteen minutes ago, but I close my eyes and try to go back there again instead. My hand slips beneath the sheet, and I grip the flesh of my hip the way he would. One hand on my hip and the other touching one breast and then the other. He truly likes my curves, loves my body and loves the way I react to him. I imagine him whispering to me, telling me I’mso fucking hotthe way he did last night. I slide down the bed a bit, arch my back and imagine as I’m rubbing myself that it’s him touching me and then pushing inside.Fuck me,I beg him, and he doesn’t disappoint.
I float back down to earth when I hear Frannie and Reese laughing in the living room. Reese calls out, “I guess Damien is giving her a ride to campus this morning.” To which Frannie adds, “He’s giving her the ride of her life!”
Guess I wasn’t being so quiet about it after all.
Chapter Fifteen
Damien
When I see the number on my phone, my body goes cold. I let it ring, once then twice then three times.
“Everything all right?” Eli asks.
I nod and hold my palm up as I answer. I don’t say much, nothing but aYes, sirhere and there, and the call is over within a minute.
“What’s up?”
“I have to report tomorrow.”
“That’s three days early.”
“I know that.”
He gets up and goes to the kitchen. I can hear him opening the cabinet and taking down the shot glasses. I should tell him to stop—I sat him down and told him he needs to quit drinking just yesterday—but I need something to quell what’s raging inside of me so desperately right now.
I knock the shot back just as Mr. Oliveri comes walking into the living room. He looks between me and his son. “What’s going on?”
Eli goes to the kitchen to grab another glass and then pours three shots. “Our boy has to report tomorrow morning at what, oh-six hundred?”
My voice sounds robotic when I answer, “Eight o’clock.”
Mr. Oliveri’s face falls. “Tomorrow morning?”
Maybe I nod, maybe I don’t. Just know that I can’t manage the effort it takes to speak in this state I’m currently in. I feel numb, I feel cheated, I feel fucked over.
And I feel trapped.
I want to hop on my bike and speed to Grace right now. I want to hold onto her for every moment that I have left. But one look at Eli as he pours himself another shot, and I know I can’t go to her just yet.
I push the third shot he poured for me back across the table. “This isn’t going to help.”
Eli is annoyed, he wants me to join in and give him the excuse he needs to numb himself like he’s done just about every day since we got back, but I won’t do it. He goes to pick up my shot glass and drain it when his father grabs his wrist.
“This ends now, son. You hear me?”
