AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was rough and hard, this coupling. And she loved it. She loved him.
She dug her fingers into the flesh of his shoulders, wrapped her legs around his waist. He said her name. Over and over again. Like a prayer or a curse, she didn’t know, but she would take it all. Just as she would take all of him. And that was what he gave.
It was like a storm. The heat generated between them so bright and intense she thought she might be dying of it. And yet at the same time, it wasn’t enough. She wondered if it would ever be enough.
She could feel him begin to tremble, shake. Could feel the edge of his control beginning to reach its end.
And when he found his release, it was on a growl and a shout, and she followed after him, squeezing him tight as he poured into her.
And then she kissed his mouth, his face. Said his name over and over again, because it was all she could think to say. Because he felt like the only thing. This moment felt like the only thing.
But then right at the same time, she looked to the future. To a bright, golden future shining with light, and butterflies. And she wanted that. Hoped for it. Reached for it.
And she knew—she knew that it was time. She knew that she had to say it.
“I love you, Jace.”
He felt like he was dying. Really, like someone had ripped his lungs out. Like something in him had been broken, irrevocably. Irreparably.
I love you.
Of course she did. She was his best friend. He loved her too. It wasn’t anything revolutionary. But it felt revolutionary, with him lying on top of her on the couch, still buried inside of her. Breathing hard. His mind flown from what had just passed between them, because it was more than pleasure. It always had been.
It was more than sex or release. More than orgasms.
It was something bigger. It was something that had changed them fundamentally. He had that feeling, when he’d seen her walking toward him tonight in that summer dress that he just stripped right off, he had that feeling.
He had this strange, crushing feeling all through the whole night. And he knew himself well enough to know it was when he wasn’t acting with integrity. When he wasn’t being honest about the things that were going on inside of himself. When his actions weren’t matching up with what he knew to be important.
Yeah. That was when he felt these things. When he’d been hesitating to make his move in Lone Rock, to make his move with Cara. Not because he didn’t know what to do, but because he hadn’t wanted to do it.
And this was another reckoning. Like a gong going off inside of him.
And he didn’t know why it felt so different. It was just that it did.
“That was amazing,” he said.
And he wanted to cut his own tongue out.
“Yeah. But I said that I love you.”
“I know,” he said.
She drew away from him, but not all the way. She just sort of wiggled and scooted to the side. “Can you tell me about Sophia? A little bit more.”
He nodded slowly. And it wasn’t a weird change of subject. Not for him. Not for them.
“She loved butterflies,” he said. “Everything had butterflies on it. The canopy on her bed, special hospital gown my parents bought her. Everything.” He cleared his throat. “When I saw you that time...with your pink binder thing and it had those butterflies, I... It was like you were supposed to be there.”
He heard himself. Heard himself saying all this stuff he wasn’t supposed to believe. But he could remember that moment. Like he’d felt led to her. To this other girl who had butterflies.
It hurt to talk about it. It hurt to look back, because there was no good way to look forward. And he didn’t like it. But the problem with putting down roots was it demanded a certain level of projecting. And maybe that was all part of the problem. Part of the shift. And maybe it was just that creating the heaviness in his chest.
“Little kids aren’t supposed to get cancer,” he said, his voice rough. “And a little boy isn’t supposed to have to watch his sister die. A mother isn’t supposed to have to watch her child die. Just not supposed to happen.” And he knew there was no point to this. No point to raging against any of it. There never was. And so he never had. He had just turned everything off. Everything.
But now he felt like raging, for some reason. At what? There was nothing there.
But he wanted to do it all the same.
