And They Had a Great Fall

Chapter Eighteen

chapter eighteen

J ake awoke to the ping of rain on the skylight. He rolled over and slid his arm around Kat, drawing her back to the embrace they’d been in before falling asleep. When they’d finally made it back to the apartment, they’d been wet and exhausted. Kat seemed so drained she barely spoke to him. They did nothing more than shed their wet clothes and lie down in the safe cocoon of his bedroom. They held on to each other as though one of them might float away into the night. The light of the moon shone brightly through the window above, but he could feel morning approaching.

He propped himself up on one elbow and pressed his lips to each one of her closed eyes. She looked peaceful, bathed in the moonlight of the impending morning. He brushed her hair away from her face, his hand lingering on her cheek. Kat opened her eyes, lifted her face to his, and mirrored him, her lips softly brushing each of his eyes. He kept them closed, then kissed her as if they were merging into one being. The power of the moment rendered him speechless. They lingered delightfully as they re-mapped each other’s bodies with tongues, fingers, and lips until the near twilight of morning. Jake kissed her as if he could command time.

Once his lips had touched the entire surface of her body, he needed to be inside her. He took control and moved his body on top of hers. He reached over to the bedside drawer for a condom, and Kat pulled his arm back, as if refusing to separate from him for even a minute.

“Jake, no,” she said, breathless. “I want nothing between us.”

His heart lurched and he searched her face. “Are you sure? Kat, is that okay?”

“Yes, yes it’s … safe,” she said, answering his unspoken question.

Of course it would be , Jake thought, Kat doesn’t take risks . He realized that she was offering her whole self to him in the most intimate way possible. After all the times she’d pushed him away, she was bringing them together without barriers between them, emotional or physical. He dropped his head and sucked in his breath, his throat tight. She ran her fingers through his hair, tilted his head toward her, and he felt her lips meet his. Their faces were wet, and Jake couldn’t discern which tears were whose.

Kat rolled her hips slightly to better align their bodies and Jake pushed into her. Electricity seemed to flow through his body as he felt a virginal reawakening. A guttural moan escaped his lips. He stilled himself inside her—he wanted to stay in the moment. He didn’t want to escape, no longer chasing a quick release.

Jake pulled his lips from hers and pushed up on his elbows locking their eyes together. He moved in a slow rhythm allowing him to feel every second, imprinting this moment into his brain. He’d never felt this connected to another human and every movement pulled him further out of his own murky water. He came inside her and was overwhelmed by the realization that a physical part of him had joined her body. Despite human evolution, his primal response was to physically claim her as his. She was giving it all to him, and he wanted to be enough.

He slowed his breathing while they rested, still intertwined, unable to be in the same space and not physically connect.

She spoke, saying the words he was longing to hear: “Jake, I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

I n the empty café, barely open for the day, Kat fixed her eyes on Jake as gray light began to peek through the front window. She unequivocally loved this man. She loved all parts of him—the way he looked at the world with emotion and intellect intertwined, the way his desire for brilliance overwhelmed him but did not deter him, even the way he was drinking his coffee like it was the finest champagne. The last observation made her laugh. Jake didn’t just live life. He attacked life, felt it with his whole being, and was uncompromising in his passion to never waste a second. All at once, she was feeling understood by him and changed by him.

He looked up at her and cocked his head. “What?” he asked, a tiny smile forming on his lips, showing his awareness that she’d been watching him.

Kat took a sip of her coffee and said, “I’m just happy, that’s all.” She couldn’t stop smiling. In that moment, she wasn’t thinking ahead to all the things that could go wrong. She wasn’t fast-forwarding to the day she would leave, mapping the challenges they would face in navigating a life together. She wanted to figure it all out for a chance to have a life with Jake, even with its complications.

He leaned forward, reached for her hand, laced his fingers through hers, and rested his chin on their intertwined hands. In her burgeoning fluency of his physical language, she understood this meant more than any words could say. Kat could feel his love radiating off him. Gone were his manic vibrations, now replaced with a kinetic affection. He kissed her hand before setting it down, and she reflexively looked around.

“It’s 5:37 in the morning Kat, the city is barely awake,” he said, gesturing to the empty café in front of them and waterfront out the window. “You don’t need to worry.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “Is it bad that I just want to walk back to your apartment where I can kiss you whenever I want?” She didn’t want to worry about every touch, every glance, every kiss. Her emotions were unsteady as they crashed down around her. She felt exposed and jittery and needed to retreat with him to a place where she felt protected. It was her idea to walk to the café, but she realized now it was her way to retreat from the intimacy of the morning. Now she wanted nothing more than to go back.

He jumped up and went to the counter and grabbed a takeaway bag for the pastries they had ordered. She giggled at his haste to leave. Without sitting down, he bagged them up and offered his hand to Kat.

She relaxed into him as they walked along the canal. An overcast, misty day greeted them once again. Yesterday, the weather had cast a somber tone, but today, it felt like shelter, allowing them to slip into the fog, seen only by each other. To Kat it seemed like they were the only two people in the entire city.

Jake’s curls glistened from the light mist, and she reached up to tousle his hair, causing tiny water droplets to fly everywhere. He shook his head, laughed, and pulled her to him under a store awning. For the first time, Kat did not look around as their lips met. She pulled back only to look at his beautiful face. She felt his hand on the side of hers, thumb caressing her jaw, but she could feel his hesitation, too.

“Talk to me, Jake.”

“We are going to do this, right? Like, we’re going to try?” he asked, his eyes earnest and hopeful.

“Yes,” she said, bringing her hand up to his face, mirroring his gesture to show that they were in this together. She wanted him to know that she was all in. She’d had a list of reasons why they shouldn’t be together, but now, none of them mattered.

“No more running?” he asked, more a statement than a question.

“No more running,” she said. She didn’t know what the future held for them, but she didn’t want to run from him any longer.

And with that, they embraced, Kat’s heart beating fast.

Walking back, she allowed herself the joy of just being two lovers, nothing more, enjoying the romance and beauty of the city. They were not Jake and Kat—two people with vastly different lives, stepping into something with more difficulties than they could yet imagine—they were Jake and Kat, two broken people who, in finding each other, had mended their broken pieces to become whole again.