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Blair
I left Noah’s bed hours ago, but I’ve kept to the apartment in case he needs me. The moon is high and the stars look like puncture wounds in the sky. I have the curtain pulled back as I rest my cheek on the back of the couch, watching out at the vast nothingness above.
The nighttime rain came and went sometime between midnight and three in the morning, at which point I turned off my phone and stuffed it in my bedside table, not having the courage to send the message I should have sent hours ago, and not having the heart to hear Atlas’ voice and keep to my resolve.
It’s been a few hours since then, and I’m becoming more numb to the idea of ending things with Atlas. He’ll always be a part of my life because he’s in Shiloh’s, but I’ve spent twenty-three years without someone else to hold me together, I don’t need anyone to do it now.
It’s remembering the electric feel of every casual touch of his hands on my body that has the regret and dread rising. So I head to the shower and try to scrub the memory away.
But then all I can think of is Atlas behind me, his hands a gentle pressure as he lathers me with soap and opens up about a part of himself that I know he’s agonized over.
My skin tingles with loneliness, knowing that all it would take is one phone call and Atlas would come. He’d bring my body to life with his touch and shut off this horrid apocalypse in my head.
But if I’m going to give him up, I have to stop relying on him to make me better.
It’s too bad the coping mechanisms I have are all self destructive.
Better me than someone else, at least.
I step out into the living room with a towel around my waist just as someone knocks on the door. The sky outside is lightening the slightest shade, so it has to be going on seven. Goosebumps crawl up my arms, that prickle of loneliness expanding with the innate hope of the one person who would be so persistent as to show up at the crack of dawn.
I should ignore it. Should sit on the couch and watch the sunrise, listen to the retreating footsteps and the splintering of my already stitched together heart. But every fractured piece of me calls out to his sunshine that fills in my cracks.
That’s how I’m standing here in the doorway—skin still damp and slightly chilled from the hall air—staring into hazel eyes wide with concern.
“Hey,” he says on a soft exhale. “I was worried. You never showed, and I couldn’t get a hold of you. Are you okay?”
No. Nothing about me is okay.
Warm fingers interlace behind my neck, and I’m dragged forward into Atlas’ embrace. His lips find mine with gentle pressure and a relieved sigh, and any fight I may have been able to muster evaporates. I anchor my hands to his biceps, guiding him into the apartment to kick the door closed and press him against it.
Everything quiets. Nothing exists except for Atlas: his hands, his mouth, and the ache in my heart at losing out on the beautiful love I know this man can give takes a backseat to the desire building stronger in my gut.
I scratch my nails down his arms and grip his waist, thrusting our bodies together in a wave of heat and passion that he readily reciprocates. He tangles a hand in my hair and drops the other to my hip, tracing the edge of the towel with his thumb.
“Blair…”
My hands dip under his shirt and explore the rough feel of his skin, the tight muscles running up his back to the corded ones in his neck. The hand in my hair tightens fractionally, and I drop my lips to his throat. He can speak all he wants, but I need my mouth otherwise occupied lest the storm raging inside find its way out.
“Shit. Did something happen?” He barely gets the words out before a moan breaks through, and I nip the skin of his collarbone with a satisfied grin. “Fuck, Blair. You’ll make me hard.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” I ask with a slow roll of my hips drawing another panted moan from him. “I turn you on.”
“You do.” He guides my lips back to his where we trade lazy kisses, his grip in my hair holding me still so he can lick my whimpering mouth. “But we need to talk.”
I shake my head. “Not now. After.”
“After what?”
I don’t know. But I’m not ready for this to be over. I’m not ready to have to say goodbye to one of the most important people in my life. To shut off the budding feelings that bloomed so brightly in my chest only to be suffocated by life’s growing obligations.
I need to feel what he made me feel that night, what he made me feel yesterday; I need to feel it one more time before I shut everything down.
“I can’t give you what you need if you don’t tell me.”
How do I tell him that I need him to consume me? To cover me with every ounce of light in his soul to give me a moment’s reprieve from my darkness.
He wraps soft but stern fingers around my wandering wrists and shuffles them both into one of his hands, holding them loosely in the air above my head. Then, he walks me back until the backs of my knees hit the arm of the couch, and he pushes my ass down on it.
