Chapter 35
35
Preston
I ’m wrecked.
I lift my head slowly to find Natalie watching me with an amused expression on her face.
“That was—” I attempt. My voice sounds like sandpaper.
That makes her grin even bigger. “It was pretty good.”
“Pretty good?!”
I can barely move, but I can still manufacture outrage.
“All right,” she admits. “It was fucking amazing.”
It’s my turn to grin. Summoning all my resources, I manage to withdraw from the clutch of her arms and the heat of her core, condom safely secured, and get myself to the bathroom to toss it. I come back with a warm washcloth. I gently stroke it between her legs, and she closes her eyes and hums with pleasure. I clean us both up, then settle back into bed next to her.
We lie on our sides, facing each other. “I wish you didn’t live in New York,” she says.
Startled, I meet her eyes. “I wish I didn’t, too.”
It stays between us for a moment before she looks away, giving a short, dark laugh. “No, you don’t,” she says. “Not really. You definitely couldn’t do finance in Rush Creek.”
I want to argue with her, but we both know that at some fundamental level, she’s right.
“Then I wish you lived in New York City.”
She winces.
“What?” I ask.
“I mean…”
“Not a fan of New York?”
“I visited with my sister. That same trip when we ate the pastries. And—no. Not a fan.”
“It’s a terrible place to visit, but you might like to live there.”
The corner of her mouth turns up. “Said no one, ever.” She sighs, the almost smile vanishing. “I don’t think you really wish I lived in New York, either. We have—very different lives.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I work seventy-hour weeks and never have any fun, and you?—”
She laughs. “Work seventy-hour weeks that are all fun, all the time.”
“You wouldn’t want to leave this job.”
“I wouldn’t,” she says. “Not now that I know it’s what I really want to do.”
I brush her hair off her face, stroke a hand over the soft, sweet roundness of her cheek. “Besides. We’d never see each other. And you’d hate me after a while, for putting work first.”
Her eyes move over my face. “Kali did?”
“Kali did,” I affirm.
She thinks about it a second. “And you’d get bored of me.”
“I wouldn’t,” I insist.
“You say that now, but…” She frowns.
It’s my turn to read her unhappy history on her face. “Lloyd did,” I fill in.
“Lloyd did.” She sighs. “It’s okay. Some things are just meant to be—what they are. I think this is one of those things.”
“I could fly out sometimes. I have a jet.”
She rolls her eyes. “You have a fucking jet,” she says. “See, that right there? That’s why this couldn’t work. I mean, what would that be? You’d be my sugar daddy and I’d be your booty call, and?—”
“You deserve better?” I hazard.
Her face softens.
“You do, too,” she says.
We’re quiet again, taking each other in. Her hand reaches for mine between us and clutches, surprisingly tight.
“I don’t do this, you know,” she says.
“What?” I ask.
“Lloyd was…well, he was sort of right about me.”
“Lloyd was full of shit,” I say roughly.
“He was right about the fact that I don’t really do…serious.”
I think about what I know of her. All the people she touches, all the joy she brings.
“You’re good at being the life of the party,” I say because all of a sudden I can see what’s been right in front of my eyes all this time. “But it’s never your party. You have friends, but you don’t have?—”
“I don’t have people ,” she says.
You have me, I want to say. I can feel the words on my tongue, their exact weight and heft and…consequence.
But she doesn’t, does she? We just talked through all the perfectly rational reasons I can’t stay here and she can’t come to New York. And at the bottom, there’s this fact: I can’t put my whole life in another person’s hands again.
So I say, “I’m here now”—as much for myself as for her—and then I cup her face and make her look at me until her gaze softens again. Until we fall toward each other and we’re kissing again. Until I am just hands and skin and a mouth.
I lose track of everything except the idea of making her feel good.