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“I got over it. And then you happened. Brought it all back.”
“I’m sorry.” Did he hear? It was a terrible stillborn whisper and it barely made it across her lips.
“Made me want to ride the wildest roller coaster. Hold on to you, feel the terror and laugh at it.” He took a step forward, put both hands to her hips, fingers spread to tilt her pelvis. “You are my roller coaster.”
Her shoulders were against the glass, her hips in Tom’s hands, her heart hung up on anticipation and the raw, hard look on his face. He bent his head and brushed his nose over her cheek, his mouth looking for hers, his hands traveling up her body, snagging at the silk as they moved.
He kissed her as he curled his fingers under the edge of slip and ripped it away from her body. She knew it would happen and still she gasped aloud, jerked into his hands. He stepped back, and the silk fell at her feet, a tactic well used, a pretty casualty of their ugly game.
Tom made love to her against the glass, holding her legs around his hips, pressing her back into the wall, both of them selfishly chasing the pleasure high. Sharp kisses that caught and held and went soft. Firm grasps that would bruise Flick, slides of her nails that scored him. Lovely trophies of this final skirmish, long enough avoided. The crash of expectations, the climax of ambition, the tears and sighs and cries of love they’d practiced on each other and knew well how to use to wound and heal.
It wouldn’t be the last time they fucked, but it was the first time they did it with a shared sense of the end. There was no open-ended question now. She would leave like she’d planned. He would stay like he’d always intended.
That was the thing about love and life—there were never any guarantees. You took what you were given. You worked out the best deal you could, and if you looked over your shoulder hoping for something better, you screwed with the value of what you already had.
Tom held her in his arms till his legs shook. She clung to him until her arms gave out. They came apart with the care and tenderness Flick had feared but now, after the storm had passed, revered for the way it comforted her.
It wasn’t till much later when she woke in bed in Tom’s arms that she realized they hadn’t eaten, but she had no intention of letting hunger drive her from the bed. There’d be time for dark wanderings and bad-habit snacking and not being able to stay asleep.
Their second-to-last day unfurled slowly and with unexpected ease. Breakfast on the balcony and a grocery run, hand in hand, both of them doing professional-level “we’re fine” acts.
Tom repacked her two suitcases, taking everything out and putting it all back in again, and made everything fit, and Flick managed not to find it sad but helpful and invaluable and quintessentially Tom that she didn’t have to sit on her cases to close them.
It wasn’t till she got an unexpected text—not from Jeannie, who’d kept her in touch, but from Drew—that her emotions got the better of her.
I keep shocking everyone by staying alive. Who knew I’d have such great sticking power? Must’ve learned it from you. Might even be rocking hair for the Christmas newsletter. Go surprise the world, Flicker. You make it happen. Be happy. I love you.
Tom was there to hold her together when the universe tilted again and she felt like she might fall off. He planned hours of good, distracting TV and evil, excellent snacks, and a second-to-last coupon of afternoon delight that was slow and careful and blissfully satisfying.
Wearing his shirt and lying across him, she played the final coupon through her fingers, getting glitter in the hair on his chest. At the beginning of the month, she’d written Activity of Your Choice on it in bright blue marker. She remembered writing it, at the kitchen counter, half drunk on the big idea and having fun with the glue and glitter. Very nearly threw this one out because it was so vague, and the Tom of a month ago had needed firm direction. Now she was pleased she’d kept it because she trusted he’d make good use of it.
“What is the activity of your choice on your thirty-first birthday, Mr. O’Connell?”
“A Gravitron ride with you.”
“A what?”
He tugged on a strand of her hair. “Spending the day with you.”
He made it sound simple.
He made it amazing. Waffles he brought her in bed, an easy hike in a lovely shady park, a bubble bath they soaked in till the water turned cool, followed by a candlelit dinner he cooked. Fried chicken and peach pie. The very first meal he’d made for her. The fact that he was a sentimental goof caught her completely by surprise.
“What? It’s good birthday food,” he said.
He knew what.
Good food, cooked by a good man. A worthy man. Her good man, her one, who she wouldn’t get to keep.
Try as she might, not everything happened because she said so.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tom planned to take Flick out for breakfast. She didn’t need to be at the airport until midday. They’d eat, he’d walk her back to the condo, he’d kiss her goodbye as fiercely as he knew how without wrecking her, without tearing his own insides out. He’d bring her bags down to the foyer, book her a cab and leave her to wait upstairs while he went to work, where the staff would be assembled and the announcement of his promotion would take place. There’d be birthday cake to add to the occasion.
It would take the international Rendel network about fifteen minutes to hear the news. He’d get a call from Josh in sixteen. He’d make his own announcement of Wren’s promotion into his old role before lunch. And hopefully that’d distract her enough not to ask about Flick.
And Flick would be in Washington in her extended-stay apartment before the end of the day.
