Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
I know we’re nearing Maine because the road’s no longer lined with luminous trees and white butterflies but instead the vast, sparkling summer sea.
Idyllic Cape Cod–style houses that remind me of Stephen King books dot the hills to our left and the rocky shore flecked with seaweed and toddlers clutching sandy shovels sprawls to our right.
A bucolic seaside town. And in the distance—a towering whitewashed lighthouse, perched on a ragged cliff.
“Isn’t that something?” I utter, before I even realize I’m saying it.
But Tom’s eyes are fastened to the same postcard-perfect sight. The pine trees on the hill, the seagulls circling. “You ever seen one before?”
I shake my head. “Don’t have much of a need for them in landlocked Cherry Grove.”
Tom nods his head and I think it’s to the wistful song warbling out of the radio, until he takes an unexpected right turn off the freeway and up the hill toward the lookout point.
I lurch forward before the remnants of my hangover assault my cranium a second later. “What are you doing? We have a show to make.”
Tom makes a show of sucking in a lungful of fresh sea air. “It’s not every day you get a view like that of the Atlantic. It’ll only take a minute.”
I am stripped of words—unable to do anything but watch as we rise over the coastline with the dreamy, harmonious chorus and the crash of the steady waves lapping at the shore below like sleepy inhales. In and out. In and out.
When we pull up to the lighthouse, Tom doesn’t even roll up the windows or close the top of the Thunderbird. He only turns the car off and circles around it to open my door for me.
“Come on, Hangover Spice,” he jokes, eyes on my impossibly high heels, wind dancing in his angelic curls. He offers me his hand. “Let’s get you some sea air.”
Taking his palm in mine, I waddle through the tall grass and come to a stop before the enormous, looming tower.
I wonder what it must be like to see the world from such a panoramic view.
What that must put into perspective. My eyes sweep the surrounding grassland—the scrubby bushes and empty picnic tables.
A keeper’s house, red-roofed and cheerful, sits nearby, a little sign on the door offering tours and homemade blueberry jam.
Tom lets me go as soon as we’re standing still, and I realize he was only holding my hand so that I didn’t topple back onto my elbow—or anything else—walking in my heels on this thick grass.
The thought hurts my chest. I have come to crave the feeling of my small hand wrapped in his large, calloused one.
I’d trade this entire view for one more minute of that simple closeness.
“We have one same as this in Kerry,” he says quietly. I can hardly hear him over the waves and the wind. “On Valentia Island. Used to be a seventeenth-century fort.”
“A good spot for your post-date walk along the sea.” It’s an effort to pull my eyes from the view, but I turn my gaze up to Tom and watch as he stares at my mouth with such bare longing I find I can hardly breathe.
A chaste kiss while the waves crash, that’s what he’d said came next.
And here we are, a wide, endless stretch of harbor blue rushing into foamy whitecaps down below, lighthouse lantern hanging overhead, barn doors red and bright before us…
As perfect a moment as any I can think of to be kissed by Tom Halloran. I gaze at his mouth in silent plea.
But all he does is clear his throat and divert his churning green eyes back to the car. “Shall we?”
I nod, disappointment cresting inside me like the waves beyond. And nobody’s fault but my own. Tom guides me gently back to the car and I try to soak up every second that our skin is touching. Try to memorize every vein and freckle on the back of his hand.
To my surprise, the ache that hits the hardest is that our one-on-one road trip is nearly over. I’d rather stay up here on this rocky outcropping and ask Tom to tell me more about seventeenth-century forts than rejoin the tour, kissing or not.
All I want is to spend more time with him. I had a chance at exactly that, and I let it go.
—
Thirty minutes later, Tom’s put the car’s roof back up and turned the music off, and the afternoon sun has slipped behind some thicker trees.
We’ve left the seaside behind, freeway curving us back through dense woods and past wide, empty pastures.
The weak AC in the car has left my skin sticky against the leather interior.
Whatever had begun to right itself inside my chest earlier in our trip has gone skewed and sharp again. My head hurts and I miss home.
“Thank you,” I tell him, staring out the window. Green and brown and asphalt gray swish by in a dizzying blur.
When I turn to face him, Tom’s face is calm, but the working of his jaw tells me he’s more concerned by my somber tone than he’s letting on. “For what?”
“Showing me the lighthouse. The Advil. Having my back at the gas station.” My eyes find my hands. “Taking care of me last night.”
“Of course,” he says quietly.
“And after everything…” I shake my head. “I don’t deserve your kindness.”
Tom’s enormous hands tense on the older car’s steering wheel. His palm could probably span the entire thing. “You think I’d stop looking out for you just because you don’t feel the way I do?” He sighs, but his eyes remain on the road. “I hate to think of the kind of lads you’ve known.”
That’s how good I am at this whole romantic human-interaction thing: we kiss, I reject him, (likely) puke on him, force him to drive me seven and a half hours across the country, and when he does something thoughtful or chivalrous I get sad and moody because I have feelings I don’t know what to do with.
Mike must’ve had a will of steel to put up with me for as long as he did.
But avoiding Tom hasn’t changed those feelings. Neither did rejecting him, nor drowning them out with alcohol. Hasn’t this entire day shown me the way I feel for Tom isn’t changing despite how I try to run from it? What else am I supposed to do outside of just giving this thing between us a chance?
The lazy summer afternoon is slipping into dusk and painting the car’s interior a resplendent watermelon pink. Rays of honeyed light slant across Tom’s cheekbones, and he glows as if candlelit. Rhett Barber’s Ford is awash in the colors of my burgeoning admission.
When I can hardly take the rumbling silence a minute longer, I say, “I’m sorry, Tom.”
I know he knows what I’m referring to. “Stop that,” he commands gently. “None of that.”
“I was really cowardly—”
“Clem, don’t think for a moment—”
“I—” I’m about to dive off a cliff. “I have feelings for you, too.”
When Tom turns to face me his expression is as calm as always, but his broad hand has tightened on the wheel.
“A lot of them, actually,” I breathe. “So many it might be fracturing my brain. It’s definitely driving me to drink.” Tom’s lips quirk up at that, and I release a tiny portion of the air I’m holding in my lungs. “I’m not great at this, if you couldn’t tell. So you’ll have to be patient with me.”
“You’re in luck. I’m a very patient man.”
My blood thrums in my veins. “Good.”
Tom’s lip curls up in a half smile. “Grand.”
We whiz by a large stretch of mellow, breezy grassland.
With one hand still on the wheel, Tom slips his other easily around my own, dwarfing it wholly.
I wonder if he missed the contact as much as I had.
My body is in direct contrast to the warm summer afternoon sprawling around us, rich with farm cottages and golden light.
My limbs are tingling. All I can smell is his rain and leather and smoke scent.
I want to run until I collapse to expel some of this heady energy. My hangover is nowhere to be found.
“I won’t kiss you again, Clementine,” he says, his thumb stroking lazily across my knuckles. “Even though it’ll require tremendous effort.” His voice has taken on a quiet roughness. “Especially when you’re givin’ me those enormous, needy eyes of yours as you were at the lighthouse.”
I blink, hyperaware of how my eyes have found his lips again. “Why not?”
“You’re in control. There’ll be no pressure from me, is all.”
“Thanks,” I say, disappointed though I know I shouldn’t be.
“Sure,” he replies, noncommittal. But I can hardly hear the word. His thumb has dragged from the backside of my hand to the inside of my palm. He’s running slow circles across my Heart line and up and down my fingers.
I feel each touch between my legs. When he brings those fingers to the inside of my wrist, I’m shocked to find myself fighting a gasp.
“So soft,” he hums, more to himself than me. His voice is like molasses when he speaks like that. Smooth and rich and thick. I want to lap it up, straight from his mouth. Swallow all his murmurs and grunts of approval.
His hand, still encircling my own, has worked its way onto my lap. We sit there, holding hands for a minute as he navigates a new freeway. I debate turning the radio back on to cut the tension but find it’s the last thing I want. I’d rather drown in the onslaught of all our shared desire.
His thumb skates easily over my thigh. Just a little semi-circle while he’s still holding my hand. The slow swishes of a windshield wiper in misting rain just above my knee.
And yet I am seeing stars. I’ve thought of little else besides his hands on me since we kissed all those nights ago.
And now…those long fingers wrapped loosely around mine, that easily swiping thumb…
it’s turning my borrowed clothes itchy against my skin.
I’m the kind of turned on that physically hurts.
In my palms, between my legs. I’m sweating . I need—
“I think you should pull over,” I say, voice a mere rasp. “Just for a second.”
Tom says nothing, but I can see his throat bob as he registers my implication. His eyes blaze with something I haven’t yet seen as he maneuvers us seamlessly to the side of the rural highway road—his mastery of the one-handed lane change could have me chewing through iron.
The car is hardly in park before I’m climbing across the center console with about as much grace as someone regaining their sea legs. Tom doesn’t seem to care—he scoops me into his lap and my mouth finds his in mere seconds.
And this kiss—
This kiss is nothing like our first.
This is a slow descent into euphoria. This is his tongue sliding mercilessly against mine until I groan into his mouth.
This is his hands spanning my middle, wrapped around my rib cage until his thumbs nearly meet above my navel.
This is my fingers tangling in his hair and caressing his savagely sharp jaw and memorizing every inch of his face and lips and body for the day I miss him so much it hurts to breathe.
It’s more than I can bear. I move to push myself off him—to regroup and wind down—and he catches my hand in his grasp, sliding his thumb hungrily across my palm and through my spread fingers until my exhale is a pleading hum.
He’s coaxing my mouth open with his hand around my jaw, sweeping his tongue over my lower lip and then down my chin and my neck.
And beneath my flimsy little borrowed boxers, Tom is painfully hard.
I can feel his brutal length flexing and thickening against his zipper.
I wonder, as he captures my lips again, if he realizes he’s dragging me back and forth across his erection.
It feels almost unconscious, the way he’s pulling me over him by my hips.
But each hard brush while my knees are splayed on either side of his lap sends a pulse of indescribable pleasure through me. I’m wet . I’m panting .
This old car is already too small for him, and with me on top we’re practically contortionists.
He can hardly bring his hands to my throat without ramming his elbow through the window.
And it’s only a minute later when I press myself closer that my bruised elbow hits the seat behind him and I yelp in pain.
“Did I hurt you?” He’s breathless, his mouth swollen from how thoroughly I’ve devoured him.
I shake my head before pressing my lips to his again.
I’m going to kiss Tom Halloran until we are dehydrated.
Until we need IVs for loss of fluids. He runs his hands up the outside of my thighs as we kiss, until they slide under the too-big boxers and find my panties.
When his fingertips touch the bows on either side of my thong I melt into a puddle in his hands.
But he roams nowhere beyond the skin of my hips.
My nipples are so tight, so pointed, I’m sure he can feel them through not only my T-shirt but his own.
I bring my mouth down to his neck and suck the sea salt and clean aftershave of his skin.
He smells phenomenal—more male than all other men combined.
I huff him like an addict and run my hands down his biceps and up his neck, licking my way up to his jaw…
“Clementine.” He shudders. “Slow down.”
When I pull away he looks as though he might pass out. He shifts underneath me, maybe in an attempt to hide his throbbing erection, but it only serves to push that length right into the heat between my legs. I whimper while we are making full eye contact.
His nails dig into my hips and thighs. “Jesus fuck .”
I nod in breathless agreement, teeth sinking into my lower lip.
“What happened to patience?” he nearly growls. I’ve heard that sound before, when he sings. It makes me helplessly feral then, too.
“Screw patience,” I plead. “Kiss me again.”
He does so, but he’s holding back. Just a gentle press of his lips to mine.
“In New York,” he says against my mouth. “On our night off, let me take you out.”
I don’t know what broken thing inside of me recoils at those words.
Why I want nothing else but to kiss Tom for days on end and to pick his remarkable brain and to listen to him sing like a lark and strum like a god with a lyre and to laugh together and to inhale his after-rain scent but cannot fathom going on a date .
I go on dates often back in Cherry Grove. I let my mom and Everly set me up with almost anyone. But something about those words from his lips makes my mouth dry and my chest tight. It’s too much and too serious and too soon. It’s a one-way ticket to grief, I just know it.
Tom looks disturbed by whatever he’s seen flash across my face. He sweeps my surely catastrophic hair from my face and tucks it behind my ear. “Easy, girl,” he coos, as if I’m a horse rearing up on hind legs. “Forget I asked.”
But I can’t forget any part of him. He’s already indelible ink scribbled across the fabric of me. “Yes,” I manage. “I’d love that.”