Chapter 17 A Little Ceremonial Exhibitionism #2
“Ah, ah, ah.” Ethan winces in pain at the temperature of the ice pack, at the firmness of the pillow under his foot, at absolutely everything I intend to ease said pain.
His van is surprisingly well equipped. Although it should probably stop surprising me at some point how lovely a life this man has built.
“You’re the worst patient,” I admonish him.
“You’re worse,” he argues.
“I’m a perfect patient. I want to be left alone.
I’m like a dog that hides under the porch and waits to die.
” I pat the swollen skin with my ring finger, and you would think I dropped a brick on him.
“This is astounding. We’re approaching foam-party-foot-injury levels, Powell.
I was hoping I’d never see that disastrous human again. ”
“There was so much blood, Beekman. I was very high and thought I was going to bleed out on the sidewalk.”
“Oh, I remember. You ruined my favorite jeans and made me promise to ‘Liam Neeson’ you, regardless of the coroner’s ‘confirmed cause of death.’?”
His cheeks hollow out, like he’s biting on them to keep from cracking up. “I won’t be held responsible for anything I said on Benson’s mushrooms. Those were basically lethal.”
I grab his hand. “You kept yelling ‘Confirmed cause of death! Confirmed cause of death!’ like there would be an un confirmed cause I ought to seek vengeance for.”
“Which do you think was bloodier: the foam party or your bachelorette party?”
I move the ice pack around on his ankle with great importance. “I think it’s a toss-up,” I say quickly, hoping to seal up all the hurt that threatens to spill out at the mention of that fight and the year of suffocating silence that followed.
His eyes don’t seem to register my inner turmoil.
Instead, they find mine, giving me a look that turns my bones liquid.
“Char,” he murmurs, his thumb drifting up my wrist bone, then sliding all the way back down to the tips of my fingers.
I feel that touch everywhere. Little pinpricks all the way down my spine.
My mind spins with what if after what if and each of the resulting but for s.
“Please stop overthinking this,” he pleads.
My eyes go to the ceiling. I feel his stare like the press of a hand. “Someone has to. You’re under thinking this.”
He pushes the ice pack off his leg and looks at his ankle, his hand, the counter, everywhere but back at me. Disappointment tugs at my lungs, because, for a second, I think I’ve done it. I’ve infected him with my fear and apprehension. I’ve ruined this before I even got a chance to enjoy it.
But then he whips himself back around. “I promise you I’ve dedicated a lot of thought to this.”
His sentence hits me like a kick to the shin and words expel from my mouth. “I don’t want to lose you again.” The utter truth of it smacks us in the face like a swinging testicle. Still, the fear deep inside me beats like a drum. Don’t let yourself want something he can’t give , it says.
I know what this is and the bounds of what it can be.
He’s a nomad, and I’m a workaholic who desperately needs to pay off her mortgage on a very immovable house.
We are the two least compatible people on this planet.
But even knowing that doesn’t feel like enough to keep me safe from the way this man could destroy me if he disappears again into a puff of smoke and an unsatisfying text message.
“You can’t lose me. It doesn’t matter what happens or doesn’t happen, you’ll never lose me. Do you get that? If this—what we’ve done—is enough for you, I can make it be enough for me. I can’t push you away again. I won’t.”
Something changes in his face, an unknown emotion covering his naturally emitting light like a solar eclipse.
“I’m serious. I’ll take any shred of you you’ll give me.
It wouldn’t have to mean anything, I swear.
” He lifts his thumb to my cheek and swipes at a tear.
“Just tell me what you want, Chuck. I can’t stand it anymore. Please, put me out of my misery.”
I hold his plea to my chest like a physical thing, pressing it against my breastbone. Emotion coils around my throat; I’m overwhelmed by the panic of knowing I’m in a pivotal moment and not knowing whether it’ll recast itself as a regret in real time.
“I want you,” I whisper, and he doesn’t make me say more.
He inches his face closer and presses a hand into my hair, pinching his eyes shut like this small bit of contact is almost more than he can take.
Every part of my body tightens. Every place we’re touching—his fingers behind my ear, my hand on his thigh, his breath on my lips—is the turn of a crank.
There’s no going back now.
He fingers the bottom of my shorts with his other hand, barely grazing the edge of skin near my inner thigh.
“Yeah?” The whisper of the single syllable cuts off the oxygen to my brain, and I’m not confident I’ll be able to remain upright if he keeps going like this.
“Please,” I whisper. We’re so close, breathing together. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”
It’s exactly what he needs to hear. He closes his eyes and gives in.
His lips meet mine, velvety soft but so firm.
Controlled. He has me—I’m safe—and I can fall apart into him.
I tip my head back to let his teeth skate across my jaw.
It takes everything in me not to cry out at the way the sensation sends fireworks straight through my abdomen.
Still, somehow he knows—he always knows.
His smug smile presses up against my neck.
“I’ve been watching you drag your finger across your face right there for ages. You think I didn’t notice?”
Did he catalog those tiny, seemingly insignificant parts of me? The same way I did with him?
“When you’re concentrating, you brush the tips of your fingers right there.
” He draws on my jaw with his guitar-callused finger.
“I’ve imagined reaching over and touching you right here hundreds of times.
Thousands.” He replaces his finger with his mouth, dragging his lips along my chin and down my neck.
“Can you feel how fast my heart is beating?”
“Yeah.” His hot laugh vibrates against my skin as his hands grab at the bottom of my T-shirt.
We break apart just long enough for me to pull it over my head and toss it onto the floor.
In a moment, he’s back on me, groaning between my breasts, fingers skimming my stomach.
We’re both so sweaty and hot, but it doesn’t matter. We feel too good like this to stop.
When I tug on his hair, he nearly collapses into my chest. He looks up at me with wild, blown-out pupils. “God, Charley. You know, I’ve literally dreamed of you doing that.”
“I’ve watched you mess with this ridiculous hair since you started growing it out,” I tell him. “You think I didn’t notice?”
“You like it like this. Remember, like, seven years ago we were at that music festival in Missouri…” His hands slide along my ribs, down to my hips, until he pulls me onto his lap so that I’m wrapped around him like a present.
Those tapered fingers trail up my thigh.
My hips roll toward him without any direction from my brain, every move of our bodies a perfect call and response.
“You told me you loved my hair,” he murmurs.
“I really do,” I say on a gasp.
There’s nothing inexperienced in the way he claims every bit of me, but I still feel like we’re a couple of teenagers.
Like I honestly might die if he stops kissing me.
As though I could explode into pieces like glass under pressure.
I’m certain I could kiss like this for hours—days—and never need more.
I need no life outside of this moment. Nothing but a bed, water, and PowerBars for sustenance. I think I get the van life now.
His fingers skate against my shorts, finding their way to my zipper.
He sighs out a needy breath, as though my fly is some sort of great elemental discovery.
The sounds he makes—the desperate breaths, the bitten-off moans—give me this heady pleasure I didn’t know was possible, and I nearly collapse at the mere sound of him losing his mind over me.
Now that I’ve heard it, I’m becoming increasingly confident I could shatter at Ethan’s sexually frustrated sigh alone.
Even with Ethan’s sounds in my ears, his taste on my lips, his fingers traveling below my waistband, it’s not enough. I squirm on top of him, searching for more points of contact, more of him, until he hisses in pain.
“Shit.” I pull away. “I forgot about your ankle.” I remove myself from his lap so that we’re side by side again. Even though as I speak, my chest is still heaving hot, eager breaths, and he’s essentially panting.
“So did I,” he grits out, straightening his leg with a wince. “As incredible as this is, it still isn’t how I imagined our first time together.”
“It’s so weird to me that you’ve thought about this before.” I can hardly believe this is happening, let alone that Ethan’s pictured it.
With a firm hand, he grabs the back of my neck and presses his forehead to mine. Something tender tugs beneath my ribs. “I would’ve gladly done this ages ago, but I was positive you’d immediately get all panicked.”
I laugh into his cheek, because he’s right about the panic part. Any other time in our friendship, a hookup with him would’ve sent me into a mental spiral of unending But what does it mean? s.
He pulls me into him again by the waist, apparently prepared to risk life and limb for sex with me.
I play with the ends of his hair as his mouth peruses my body, placing little kisses down my neck, between my breasts, and onto my stomach. “I’m not sure I’m your usual type,” I whisper. Ethan’s the king of friends with benefits, but I never would’ve imagined he saw me in that way.
“My type is you.” He growls it against my rib cage, his words sliding smooth across my skin. “Last night was unbearable for me. You get that, right? I was so close to saying something, but you fell asleep.”
“You can wake a girl up for something like that.” I nudge him back but he doesn’t let me go, looking up my expanse to level me with those stormy eyes.
“You’re so beautiful, Charley. You’re so fucking beautiful.
” He says it again and again like a prayer as he pulls down my shorts and presses his lips to my hip and then the inside of my thigh, allowing me to disappear into the feeling of being cared for and known in a way I’m not sure I ever have been before.
Sure, it’ll end, but I push the fear of how it will end to the edges of my mind and commit to enjoying this while it lasts.
I revel in it all. The way his hair brushes against my neck. How he practically falls apart when I grab his face. That look when he’s on top of me. As though it’s always been this way, and it always will be.
Like he never wants to leave.