Chapter 13
JULES
“You’re worse at eating than a five-year-old!” Rowan says with a chuckle.
“It’s not my fault. You chose messy foods!”
“I did, yet I managed to not miss my mouth once.”
“Touché.”
“Conceding my point. Good girl.”
She didn’t say it in a remotely sexy way, but my body doesn’t understand that. It’s activated. I’m too easy. And she’s too attractive. She has that beach hair thing happening, loose black ringlets cascading down her shoulders. And the flames are reflecting in her eyes, making them look yellow-green like peridot. And the top two buttons of her shirt are undone, so her impeccable cleavage is peeking out. And…
She reaches out to wipe a gooey glob of chocolate from the corner of my mouth. When she’s done, I catch the tip of her thumb between my teeth, then take the whole of it into my mouth and suck. Her breath hitches as I release her. She trails her wet digit down my throat, then wraps her hand around it. The hint of a chokehold has me soaking.
She releases me. “I don’t think I’ll be any good tonight,” she says, dejected. This is not the time to want her. We’re both fragile in our grief. The world is off kilter. But the wretchedness radiating off of her…
I need to show her how loved she is, how deserving of love she is. “You don’t have to be.” I brush my lips against hers. Once, twice. By the third time, her lips are trembling. I pull back to see her fighting against tears. “Let me make love to you.”
Nothing about her is submissive. She doesn’t relinquish control. Even when following orders, she does it her own way. Rowan Monaghan takes everything and makes it hers entirely, me included. But she inhales the deepest lungful of air, and nods. I take her by the hand and lead her to the tent.
I undress her slowly. Sheer-white shirt. Black tank. Board shorts. She’s fully nude before she reaches for the shoulder straps of my dress. I read her mien. She’s pleading with me: I need to feel your skin to be reminded I’m still alive. I let her slip off my dress, my bathing suit. She touches me everywhere as she does, doesn’t miss an inch.
She allows me to lay her down on the mattress. I lie on top of her. Then her fingers are tangling in my hair and I’m kissing her, tenderly, as if her lips are bruised. She accepts my tongue into her mouth. She tastes like marshmallows and remorse. I move my kisses to her neck, trace the hollow of her throat with my tongue. I massage her breasts, feel her nipples harden beneath my palms. Any other night, I’d pinch. Tonight, she’ll be caressed.
She’s starting to breathe heavily. I run my hand down her stomach, her pelvis. My fingers find her slit, wet and ready. She guides me to her clit instead. “Please,” she mumbles. It’s desperate, needy. Vulnerable.
“Okay, sweetheart.” I use her wetness to tease her, soft and slow until she swells, then add more pressure and pick up speed. Now I know that she likes fast, firm circles right on the bud. I find the tempo that has her throbbing. It isn’t long before her orgasm crests. She closes her eyes, starts bucking against my fingers and tugging my hair. Her abs go taut, and her thighs begin to quiver. Sweet little moans leach from her lips. I could gobble up that sound. I kiss her again, more fervently. She sucks on my tongue. Her screams of pleasure resonate in my mouth as she comes. I shift my weight off of her, let her breathe—I know she needs to.
She’s like a different person when she opens her eyes again. They’re fiery, not forlorn. “I want you to fuck me as hard as you can.”
“What?” If we live a thousand years, those are not words I’d expect to hear from her.
“I need you to hurt me, Juliet.”
“No.”
“No?”
“If you want to fuck hard for fun, we can. But I’m not going to hurt you because you think you should be punished, Rowan.”
Countless different emotions flash across her face in an instant. She wrenches me to her and, without warning, she’s crying more fiercely than I fathomed a person could, her face buried in my chest, hot tears assaulting us both. She’s shaking. I’m shaking. The mattress is shaking. I drape myself around her, like body armor made of flesh and bone. “I’ve got you,” I whisper into her ear. I’ll never let go.
Seagulls. Two of them at least, cawing at each other. Rays of sunlight stream into the tent. I’m holding Rowan. Her head is in the crook of my shoulder, her arm is slung across my stomach, and our legs are intertwined. I don’t remember falling asleep. We must have crashed instead of drifting into it. Wakefulness slowly seeps into me, and I marvel at the fact that I’m holding her. I doubt she’s let anyone do that before. Always the top, always in charge. I smooth her dark, bedraggled tresses. You’ve met your match in me, darling.
I get a few more quiet moments of playing with her hair before she wakes. She yawns, covering her mouth with her forearm. “I passed out.”
“Me too.”
She scoots away from me, plumps a pillow under her head. “Sorry for being such a mess last night.”
At second glance, I see that the whites of her eyes are inflamed. I cup the back of her neck and rest my forehead against hers. “You don’t have to apologize for having feelings and showing them.”
“Not that. I’m sorry for asking you to do something I knew you wouldn’t be comfortable doing.”
“I don’t mind getting rough once in a while; sex like that can be amazing. But not if either of us is in a bad place emotionally.”
She kisses me, then turns her head. “Shit, I have lobster breath, don’t I?”
“Don’t worry about it. If you do, I do, too.”
“Fair. Get over here and let me hold you for a while.”
“Why, Ms. Monaghan, you downlow cuddlebug.”
She sniggers as I curl into her. Once I’m settled, she trails her fingers up and down my spine so wispily I’d swear they were feathers. “What do you wanna do today?” she asks.
“Is this not an option?”
“It is, but there are others. We could go on a hike or a whale watching tour.”
“Ooh, whale watching. I’ve never done that. There are seals here! I love seals. They’re adorable.”
“Seals attract sharks. I like sharks.”
“Yep, that makes sense.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t like seals. They are adorable. Adorable food for great whites.”
“I loathe you,” I guffaw.
“No, you don’t. You love me.”
“I do,” I reply.
She’s austere all of a sudden. Something serious has popped into her mind.
I tap her temple. “What’s happening in there?”
“You should catch the first flight back to Spokane. Get your mom to go with you if you can.”
“Do we have to talk about that right now? Can’t we just be naked together?”
“My dad is gonna find a way to bury your dad. And probably Teague. And whoever else is a minor inconvenience to him. I wouldn’t be shocked if that means anyone who shares your last name. I thought about taking him out. Or paying someone else to do it. That’d be the easiest way to end this, save everyone. I can’t, though. I hate his fucking guts, but he’s still my dad.”
“I know he is.” I sigh. “I don’t want to go back to school.”
“You have to. It’s the safest place for you. Anyway, it’s your last year, right? You can’t let all the hard work you’ve done amount to nothing. Besides, I wanna watch you saunter your gorgeous self across the stage to collect your diploma.”
“It’s not my last year, it’s my last semester.” The finish line is in sight. Four and half years, hours and hours poring over books, so many economic theories and mathematical models memorized. She’s right, I can’t quit. It would be a waste. “How could you come to my graduation? Assuming they’re all still living, my dad, Mom, Teague, his parents, they’ll all be there.”
“I’ll show up incognito in a hideous polka-dot dress with the ugliest permed ginger wig money can buy. God himself won’t recognize me.”
Ha! Even when Rowan’s serious, she’s funny. “I’d pay to see that.”
“I could go with you. I’ll get some plaid shirts, a few beanie caps, lean into that whole lumberjack lesbian vibe and fit right in.”
I smirk at the mental image of her trading tailored button-ups and leather jackets for flannels. “As much as I love the idea of you being there with me, you can’t give up your life to follow me to the other side of the country.”
“What life? I don’t have one anymore. I didn’t have one in the first place. You and I both know that Teague is as bad as my dad. He’ll try to kill me if I go back to Boston. I don’t want him dead, but I’m not about to let him put me down, either. If we cross paths again one of us is leaving in a body bag.”
The resignation in her voice is too absolute to argue. “You’re right.”
“I know I am.”
“It’s not as simple as you hopping on a plane to Washington with me. Do you actually believe your father will let you go? Or that mine will let me go? We are who we are; they’ll always have their hooks in us.”
Her forehead crinkles. She’s getting irritated, searching for a solution to an unsolvable problem. “Then let’s fucking change who we are! I’ll give up my name; it doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“We could both change our names. Petition the court, pay whatever fees. But there would always be a paper trail. Social security numbers, bank accounts.”
“You’re talking about doing things the legal way, Jules. I’m not.”
Of course, she’s thinking outside the law. That’s what comes naturally to her. She has a mind that functions on the periphery of societal norms. It’s brilliant, the balanced footing she keeps between right and wrong, moral and immoral, light and dark.
“False identities?” I ask. “Do you know how or where we could get them?”
“Not yet. But with some time and enough cash, I could square it.”
“That’s the other thing. Money. Something like that wouldn’t come cheap, would it? I don’t have any money of my own. I don’t even think my mom has her own; Dad controls every cent.”
“I have money. There’s a hundred grand in my bag right now, another twenty in a lock box at a bank that my dad doesn’t know shit about. It’s not enough to keep you stocked in Prada, but it might be enough to give us a fresh start.” That last part she says with a grin; she knows I have expensive tastes, but don’t need labels or fancy cars or a mansion to live in.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but that duffle bag of yours is Balenciaga, no?”
“Yeah, and I’d toss it into the harbor like English tea if it meant I got to be with you.” She squeezes me tighter to her side. “This is the wildest conversation I’ve ever had naked.”
We both fall to pieces laughing. About how unbelievable our lives are; about how unlikely a romance like ours is to exist, much less thrive; about the unfettered audacity we both have to want it so badly that we’d do anything, give up everything, just to keep it.
“Jesus Christ, we’re fucked,” Rowan says once she’s composed herself.
“Thoroughly.”
“I’d like to stop thinking and just… go see some goddamn whales.”
“That’s the best idea ever. I’m one thousand percent on board.”
“Good.” She kisses me hard, grimacing as she pulls away. “For real, we need to brush our teeth.”
And then, like two little girls playing in a park, we’re laughing uncontrollably again.