Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Molly
G abe reaches out a hand and touches mine when he pulls his car up to the curb outside my house.
“Stay there—I’ll get the umbrella.”
I glance out the window at the rain still pouring down. It should irritate me, but it doesn’t. Right now, I don’t think anything could. Talking with Gabe tonight was unexpected. I knew we were going out tonight to talk . I was low-key dreading it. I thought it would be hard and sad, like opening old wounds and examining the worst moments of my life.
It was none of those things.
It was everything.
I look at Gabe and smirk at him. “No umbrella necessary.”
Before he has a chance to say anything, I push open the car door and jump out onto the sidewalk, leaving my raincoat behind.
I’m instantly drenched. I stretch out my arms and tip my face up to the sky, closing my eyes and letting the rain pour over me and the wind blow my hair. It feels amazing. Cleansing. Like a baptism of sorts, washing away the anger and sadness that have been embedded in my soul for a decade. As they seep away, I wonder how I lived with them for so long because in their place is a wide-open space waiting to be filled. A space that feels like potential and possibility. Anticipation and hope.
Me. It feels like me.
In this moment, I am more myself than I have been in ten years. Arms still stretched wide, I spin in a circle and laugh at the joy of it.
“Rory.”
In a split-second, joy turns to lust because Gabe’s voice is low and deep, and I wonder how I can hear it over the pounding of the rain, but then I realize that’s a stupid thing to wonder. Gabe is a part of me. I would hear his voice in a crowd of a million.
When I open my eyes, he’s standing feet away from me on the sidewalk, his stare locked on me. My breath hitches at what I see on his face. His eyes are deep pools of blue, swimming with desire and a need so intense it electrifies the air. His damp hair falls over his forehead in dark curls, and rain falls in rivulets down his beautiful face. We stare at each other, chests rising and falling in sync.
The air between us is heavy and charged.
I know without consciously knowing that Gabe is waiting for me to make the first move. That whatever is or isn’t about to happen right now is my decision and on my terms. And long term, I don’t know what I want. But right now, I want him. It may not be right or fair, but fuck rightness, and fuck what’s fair. The only man I have ever loved is six feet away, looking at me like I am the reason he breathes, and, in this moment, I can’t breathe without him.
But he’s going to come to me.
Eyes still locked on Gabe’s, I put a hand on my waist and cock a hip.
“Ask me a question, Gabe.”
His lip twitches, a stark contrast to the intensity in his eyes.
“Can I kiss you, Rory?” His voice is raspy and sends a shot of arousal straight though me.
I don’t say anything. Instead, I raise an eyebrow as if to say, come and get it .
And he does.
Gabe is in front of me in three long strides. One of his hands grips my hip, and the other slides around my neck into my hair, his thumb sweeping along my jaw. He tips my chin up and crashes his lips to mine. Yes, this , is my only thought as I grasp his hips and my brain fuzzes and something loosens in my chest even as the need for him swirls in my belly and swims in my blood. Gabe’s hand tightens on my hip, and his taste and scent surround me. I wonder how it’s possible I lived without him—without this —for all this time.
As fast as the kiss starts, it ends when Gabe tears his lips from mine, bringing our foreheads together. Rain streams over us both, and his breath saws in and out of his lungs, and his heart hammers out the same rhythm as mine.
“Rory,” he says again, my name reverent on his lips, and he closes his eyes as if to get a hold on his control. But he must decide it’s not worth the trouble because he cups my face in both of his hands and lays his full, soft lips back on mine. His tongue glides along the seam of my lips, asking me to open for him, and the second I do, Gabe groans into my mouth. Heat skates along my skin so intensely, I’m shocked the rain doesn’t just sizzle off me. I grip his hips harder and pull him closer to me. When I feel him long and hard against my belly, my clit gives an answering throb.
Our tongues tangle and dance and fight for dominance, and Gabe tips my head back farther, taking the kiss impossibly deeper. Kissing him is both familiar and new. The time between then and now collapses, and we are who we were and also who we are. Gabe, the boy he was, and Gabe, the man he is, and me and the multitudes I contain. My mind spins with the knowledge that Gabe is in my heart and my head and embedded deep in my soul, and I couldn’t extricate him if I tried.
I could kiss him forever.
Except I don’t get the chance because suddenly a loud crack sounds above us, followed by a crash, shattering the night. Gabe and I break apart, staring at each other, both of us wide-eyed, breaths heaving before we turn in unison toward the source of the noise.
My house.
And the tree that used to stand next to it, which is now laying straight across my no longer at all intact roof.