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He’s in control now; holding me as I shatter, using my mouth as I fall. The tremors are still pulsing when Conner releases with a deep rumble of a groan, our tongues still carrying on their war. He empties himself in hot waves as I greedily cling to him; sweaty and spent and still shaking.
I want to complain when he leaves my body and our kiss ends but I’m still dazed. My head drops to his shoulder. There’s a rip when Conner jerks his hands apart and I dimly wonder where I’ll find another belt robe. Then he cradles me closer and I lose the ability to wonder about anything else for a minute.
One hand pushes my hair aside and slides up to the nape of my neck. I have no idea how long we stay like that, holding each other in silence. Probably not more than a few minutes. It only feels infinite because it feels right.
The spell is broken when Conner lifts me with one hand, pulls back the down comforter with the other, and deposits me in a nest of cool sheets. He tucks the blanket around me with care and I’m embarrassed to be worried that he’s about to leave.
Ireallydon’t want him to leave.
Curling the comforter under my chin and stubbornly refusing to say a word, I watch as he hunts down his pants and pulls his phone from the back pocket. Seems like a weird time to check his damn texts, but it turns out that’s not what he’s doing at all.
The sound of the beach fills the silence, the same sound that lulled me to sleep in his lap hours earlier. Conner raises the volume and sets the phone down on my nightstand. Then he switches off the light and climbs into bed beside me.
There’s a rough, possessive quality to the way he curls his arms around my body, locking me in a cocoon of his creation, as effective as if he’s yelled the word ‘MINE!’
He nuzzles my neck. “You need to get some rest.”
I’m not even tired. “What for?”
“Because I’ll be demanding a lot more of that from you real soon.”
“Demanding. Just try.” I try to elbow his chest but he tightens his grip.
Conner chuckles over my struggle and kisses my shoulder. “When is your birthday, angry girl?”
The question is a jolt, a slice of echoes from the past. A conversation between two children and I’m the only one on earth who knows it happened. The only one who knows the reason why he wears a certain number.
Words get stuck on my tongue.
I’m suddenly protective of him, keenly aware of all he’s lost and unwilling to let him know he’s lost even more. If I tell him of those vanished days in the green paradise of a West Emerald summer it would be more for my sake than his.
He allows me to wiggle out of his grasp and change positions to face him in the darkness. The only sounds in the room are waves colliding with an unseen shoreline and I lay my head on his chest. He kisses the top of my head and cradles me close.
“Next month,” I tell him. “June twenty-ninth.”
“The twenty-ninth.” He’s starting to sound somewhat sleepy himself. “I definitely won’t forget that.”
He has no clue that the words are a spike of regret through my heart.
It isn’t Conner’s fault that a piece of me remains back in West Emerald.
Where my sister is a hopeful child. Where Conner Wiseman became my friend.
He tightens his arms around me, on his way to slipping into his dreams. The seagulls wail in their endless sound loop. And I listen to the steady thud of his beating heart.
He’d be shocked to hear the truth whispering through my mind, an inner voice that insists all of this was inevitable.
Because I’m already his.
I always have been.
Chapter15
Haven, Age 10
Last Saturday he promised he’d be there waiting at our spot this afternoon and he doesn’t lie. If Conner says he’ll be there then he will be, especially because tomorrow is my birthday. He said after we practice shooting hoops we’ll go get ice cream to celebrate.
I wasn’t going to mention my birthday but last week as he walked me home he asked about it. And when I told him the date was coming up on June twenty-ninth he said, “I’ll definitely remember that. In fact, someday when I make varsity it’ll be my jersey number. For real. I swear it.”
