22. Emily
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Emily
We stand in the foyer a long time, just holding on, the book still trapped between us, and I don’t want to be the first to let go so I don’t.
“Tara talked some sense into me,” I say into his shirt. “Well. Yelled it. Hard to tell the difference with Tara.”
“What’d she say?”
“That I keep waiting for you to turn into him. Henry. Like any day now you’re going to get bored or mean or start checking where I am, so I might as well brace for it.
” I pull back enough to see his face. “She said I’ve been so busy bracing that I never let myself just have the good part.
And that you’re not him, and I have to actually believe that at some point instead of flinching every time you’re nice to me. ”
“She’s not wrong.”
“She’s never wrong. It’s so annoying.” I make myself say the next part, the thing I drove back here to say.
“I don’t want to do the running thing anymore, Richard.
The bolting the second it gets good. Even before all this, even when I let myself want you, there was always a piece I kept back.
Locked up. Just in case. So if you ever turned on me there’d be something left you never got to wreck.
I don’t want to do that anymore either.”
He’s quiet a second. I brace for it to hurt him.
“Yeah,” he says. “That makes sense.”
“It does?”
“You spent two years with a guy who’d take anything you gave him and use it against you.
Course you kept something back. I’d be more worried if you hadn’t.
” He gets both hands on my face, warm. “I’m not asking you to hand me the locked-up part right now.
I just want to be the one person you eventually stop bracing around. No rush. We’ve got time.”
And the no rush, the same patience that had me ready to scream three days ago, lands completely different now that I came back on my own to hear it. I lean my face into his hand. And before I can talk myself out of it, the most embarrassing thing I’ve got comes out.
“I used to dream about you.” My face goes hot saying it.
“After high school. For years, Richard. Dumb little dreams, nothing even good, just you around, in my kitchen, on the couch, like you’d always been there.
And I’d wake up happy for about four seconds and then remember it wasn’t real, that you were just some guy from school who had no idea I existed, and then the whole day would feel like crap.
” I shrug, miserable. “Never told anyone that. It’s humiliating.
I pined over a guy I talked to maybe forty times. For years. Like a lunatic.”
His breath catches. He goes still.
“I dreamed about you too,” he says, low. “Still do, honestly. Difference is now I get to wake up and you’re actually there.” His thumb moves over my cheek. “No more waking up to nothing. You’re just there.”
And I can’t stand it for one more second, the wanting, three days of standing in cold empty rooms picturing exactly this, so I grab a fistful of his shirt and pull him down and kiss him like I’ve been starving for it, because I have.
He makes a sound against my mouth, low and undone, his hands in my hair, on my back, pulling me up into him. The book finally drops out from between us and hits the floor. Neither of us looks at it.
“Upstairs,” I manage.
“Your room or mine?” he says against my jaw, already moving us toward the stairs. It’s the question we’ve asked every night for two months, the knock rule, whose door, whose turn.
“Yours. And I’m not knocking. And I’m not leaving after.”
He stops. Pulls back enough to look at me, and his face does something soft and stunned. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I hold his eyes. I don’t say anything else. I don’t have to.
We go up.
I trail Richard into the bedroom, pulse kicking up because tonight’s not another quick grab under the old rules.
He shuts the door and spins me around, mouth crashing into mine right away with zero pause.
Our tongues slide hot and messy while his hands yank my shirt open, buttons popping loose.
He shoves the fabric down my arms, then rips my bra off so he can palm my tits hard, thumbs rubbing circles until my nipples stiffen and ache.
“Fuck, these feel perfect,” he growls low, squeezing and rolling them between his fingers before dipping his head to suck one deep into his mouth.
Teeth scrape just right, tongue flicking fast, and I moan, arching into him.
My fingers tangle in his hair, pulling him closer as he switches to the other nipple, sucking until it’s swollen and wet.
I tug at his shirt. “Get this off, now. I want skin.”
He strips it away fast, then drops to his knees, yanking my jeans and panties down in one rough pull.
His mouth finds my pussy without warning, tongue dragging flat and slow up my slit before circling my clit in tight, wet strokes.
Two thick fingers push inside, curling and pumping while he licks harder, building that heat fast. My hips rock against his face, thighs shaking as he adds a third finger and sucks my clit between his lips.
The stretch burns sweet, and I come hard, walls clamping down, a sharp cry ripping out as I grind on his tongue.
Richard stands, kissing me again deep and filthy so I taste myself on him.
He walks me backward to the bed, hands never leaving my tits, pinching and tugging until I’m gasping into his mouth.
I shove his pants down, wrap my hand around his cock, and stroke him slow, feeling it throb heavy in my grip.
He groans, then flips me onto the mattress, spreading my legs wide.
His mouth returns to my chest, biting and sucking marks across my tits while his fingers slide back inside me, scissoring open.
He lines up and sinks in with one long thrust, stretching me full around his thick length.
No slow tease this time, just deep and steady from the start, hips snapping as he fills me over and over.
I wrap my legs around him, pulling him closer, our bodies slapping wet and loud.
“Harder,” I pant. “Don’t hold back.” He grunts, pounding faster, one hand pinning my wrists above my head while the other keeps working my nipples, twisting and pulling until sparks shoot straight to my core.
“You’re so fucking wet for me,” he says against my ear, voice rough.
“Tell me you’re not going anywhere.” “I’m not,” I answer, meeting every thrust, pussy clenching tight.
He kisses me again, all teeth and tongue, then pulls out just long enough to flip me onto my stomach.
He yanks my hips up and drives back in from behind, angle hitting deeper, his balls slapping my ass with each slam.
Fingers reach around to rub my clit in quick circles while he fucks me raw, sweat slicking our skin.
Pleasure coils tight again and I come with a shout, body shaking as he keeps going, chasing his own release.
He pulls out at the last second, stroking himself over my lower back, hot cum painting my skin in thick ropes.
We collapse side by side, breathing ragged.
He pulls me against his chest, lips brushing my temple.
“No more separate spaces. You’re here with me from now on. ”
“Yeah,” I murmur, tracing a finger over his abs. “All in.”
I feel him go still around me like he’s letting it settle, like he’s been bracing for two months to hear it and didn’t fully believe it would come.
His arm is heavy across me. His heart is slowing under my hand.
For once there’s no part of me standing off to the side keeping score, no piece held back, nothing watching the exits.
I’m just here, in this bed that’s apparently mine now too, saying yes and meaning it.
His smile is slow and stunned, like I’ve handed him something he stopped letting himself want a long time ago. He pulls me in tighter. We don’t say anything else for a while, and I fall asleep in Richard Reed’s bed, on purpose, all of me here for once.
***
I wake up before he does.
There’s an arm around me, heavy, and his chest against my back going slow with sleep. For one fuzzy second I brace out of pure old habit for the cold side of the bed. Then I remember. His room. He’s still in it.
I don’t move. I just lie there and let it sink in, because the first weeks in this house went the same way every morning.
We’d fall asleep tangled up, he’d slip out before dawn so careful I never felt it, and I’d wake up to a cold bed and a note on the pillow.
Five words. Didn’t want to wake you. He quit doing it a while back and stayed every morning since, and three days on Tara’s couch still taught my body to brace for the old version all over again.
This time he’s still here. That’s it. That’s the whole thing, and it’s almost too big to sit with.
I don’t cry. But it’s close.
“You’re awake,” he mumbles, rough with sleep, his arm tightening. “I can hear you thinking. It’s loud.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. What’s going on?”
“It’s stupid.” I roll over to face him. His hair’s a mess, there’s a pillow crease on his cheek, and he’s looking at me like he’s got nowhere else he’d rather be.
“Those first weeks here, I woke up alone every morning. Cold bed, note on the pillow, you already gone. I got so used to it back then that when I opened my eyes just now, I braced for it all over again.”
His face changes. He knows exactly which mornings I mean. He’s the one who left the notes.
“I left those because I didn’t think I got to assume you wanted me there,” he says. “Wanted to stay every time. Just didn’t think I’d earned it.” He pulls me in until our foreheads touch. “Not doing that again.”
“Prove it,” I say, and I can be light about it now.
So he does, slow and easy in the gray light, and this time I’m not keeping one eye on the door.
Later, in the kitchen, he makes eggs that don’t get ruined for once, and I steal the bacon right off his plate, and he lets me, watching me with that look that still does something to my stomach.
“We should tell people,” I say, around a piece of his bacon. “That we’re together. For real. Out loud. I’m sick of it being a thing people whisper about and guess at.”
He sets down his coffee. “You sure? You know people are gonna talk. The reunion crowd, all of them.”
“Let them talk. They’ve been talking about me my whole life and most of it was meaner than the truth anyway.
” I shrug. “I’m done hiding. I’m done being scared of what a bunch of people who never even liked me are going to think.
I picked you, you picked me, that’s the whole story, and I want people to know it. ”
He grins, that real one, the one that takes over his whole face. “Have I told you I love you yet today?”
“Not since this morning. You’re really slacking.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too. Eat your eggs before I steal those too.”
My phone buzzes on the counter. It’s Ciara’s name on the screen, and she never texts unless she’s worried, so I pick it up. The message is warm and careful, like she always is. Hoping I’m okay. Saying she’s been thinking about me, that she’d love to see me soon if I’m up for it.
I text her back something easy. I’m good, Ciara. Better than I’ve been in a long time. Let’s get coffee soon, I mean it. Love you.
Then I put the phone face down and go back to stealing Richard’s breakfast in our kitchen, in the gold morning light, in the life I almost talked myself right out of.