Chapter 29
Ren
It’s easier than I thought it would be.
To have this mass-extinction-sized crush on him, to wear around the feeling of the corner of his mouth on mine, and to spend all day laughing and playing and just being . . . me with him.
I think, for the first time in a very long time, I’m just me with myself, too.
No more shards at my feet poking me. No more curving inwards of my shoulders because I’m too afraid to stand up straight. No more hurting my neck because I’m straining to look up at someone on this pedestal I crafted for them.
Just me and someone who, even though he stands almost a foot taller than me, seems like he’s always looking at me from eye level anyway.
It’s the best day, really.
I forget about the job I lost and the one I might have that I’m not even sure about.
I forget that Miller asked for a trade because the death of his favourite person haunted him so horribly, he didn’t think there was anything worth sticking around for the way no one stuck around for him.
I forget that the clock ticks down and somehow, I’m supposed to pretend he’s just this person who helped me with this arbitrary list.
That he’s not a person who picked up my pieces for me—that his hands held mine while I did it myself.
That I’d like to think, I did the same for him.
I lose count of the hours, but the sun drops lower and lower in the sky, and then the stars wink to life, and it’s just me and him, and a cooler of sweating beer, sitting on this docked boat, still in our bathing suits.
Him, hair curling around the nape of his neck, whispering over his ears. Lines crinkling around navy eyes, grin curving the usually sharp lines of his face, and skin bronzed from the sun, still peppered with droplets of water.
Me, shoulders pink despite my best efforts, the freckles that usually hide on my face painted more prominently across my nose, and my hair hanging limp from the lake water.
But he looks at me, and for some reason, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more beautiful.
His grin turns shy, and I think mine does too.
He glances away first, and when his gaze finds the empty leather bench lining the edge of the boat, his eyes pinch closed, and pain works down his throat in a choppy swallow.
“Was this . . . where it happened?” I ask quietly.
Miller shakes his head. “Nah. The police needed that boat for the investigation when they were making sure it wasn’t a—” He winces.
“Doesn’t matter. They took it, and uh, I didn’t want it back.
They cut a cheque and sold it at a police auction.
My aunt and uncle donated the money to some charity for research on heart disease. ”
“And you”—I tilt my head—“bought another one?”
He nods, mouth twisting into a rueful line instead of the playful one I’ve seen all afternoon. “Yeah, uh, different model. But . . . I don’t know. He loved the boat. Felt wrong, not to have one here at all.”
“Did you love the boat, too?”
“Used to.” He shrugs. “Haven’t driven it since.”
“I’ve never driven a boat,” I tell him.
He grins this time. “You have a license?”
“No.” I fold my arms, frowning.
“Can’t let you drive, then. Sorry.” He shrugs again, but he seems lighter.
I fake a scoff. “I didn’t think you’d be such a stickler for the rules.”
“I’ll make you a deal.” His elbows find his thighs, and he absentmindedly tugs on his fingers, but something winks to life behind his eyes. “You can sit on my lap while I drive tomorrow. I’ll even let you hold the wheel.”
I do scoff this time, but it turns into an embarrassed sort of sputter. My shoulders roll back involuntarily, imagining what it would be like if they were resting against his chest, not the leather seat. “That doesn’t feel very adult.”
“Oh yeah?” Miller asks, and the navy of his eyes gets swallowed by his pupils. “Sounds pretty adult to me.”
It does sound adult, and the thought of it, me pressed against him, the ridges of his thighs underneath mine, makes me feel something I don’t think I’ve felt in a very long time.
But Miller clears his throat, throwing me an apologetic smile. “Thanks for . . . coming here with me. For doing everything on my list. Sorry you couldn’t think of a sixth thing to make it, uh, even, and sorry mine were all . . . so depressing.”
“They weren’t depressing,” I murmur, finally looking up at him, glad for the night sky to hide the embarrassment on my face. “I did think of a sixth. It was . . . sex.”
Miller blinks, mouth parting when he takes a heavy swallow. “Sex?”
“Yes.” I sniff, waving a hand. “I know. It’s embarrassing.
And it’s not like you could—” I catch myself before I say it’s not something he could help me with.
I think it’s probably something he’d be very good at.
Shrugging, I dig a finger into the leather seam of my seat.
“I just . . . it’s not something I think I’ve ever really enjoyed, and I don’t know.
I think it’s something that, if you’re interested in sex .
. . lots of people aren’t, obviously, and that’s fine.
But if it is something you want . . . it should be something you like about yourself. ”
“You don’t like—” He takes a steadying inhale, palms his jaw, and I think he considers his next words. “You haven’t ever liked sex? Or . . . yourself, during sex?”
“I don’t think so,” I whisper, shame burning my skin.
“With . . . him—” I don’t even feel like saying Scott’s name out loud and giving him space out on this boat.
He’s already taken too much. I blink up at Miller through tear-stung eyes.
“It was like a . . . chore. Always. I think it was maybe exciting the first few times, but we were young and . . .” A tear escapes, rolling down my cheek, and I swat it away.
“Sorry, this is embarrassing. I’m a thirty-two-year-old woman crying about her abysmal sexual history. ”
“It’s not embarrassing, Ren,” he says quietly.
“Oh yeah?” I choke on a wet laugh, gesturing to the tears now painting my cheeks.
“Yeah. Stand by what I said. Don’t think you have anything to be embarrassed about.” He runs an absentminded hand along the sun-kissed skin of his shoulder before he asks, “Have you . . . been with anyone but Scott?”
“I had a boyfriend in high school.”
“Prom night?” Miller arches a wry brow.
“No,” I laugh softly. “But the equivalent amount of fumbling around before we left for college. And there was a particularly disastrous night during my first week of school with someone else I’d prefer not to think about.”
He drops his forearms to his thighs, a wave curls across his forehead, and he raises his hands. “So, uh, three?”
“Let’s call it two and a half.” I try to laugh, but my voice wilts. “Is that bad? Pathetic?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m just . . . guessing none of them . . . knew what to do with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s important . . . at least to me, to make sure the person I’m with . . . That it’s, uh, working for them.” He shrugs, but the muscles in his neck tighten. “Did it ever work for you?”
It should be funny—me, sitting here, talking about whether or not I can orgasm with a man who first met me when I had mustard in my hair and margarita all over my shirt. But Miller looks at me, and I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.
I shake my head. “Sometimes. Not often. There were things I liked that he . . . didn’t.”
“Yeah?” His hands dig into his thighs, striations of veins running along the backs of them. “What did you want that he didn’t?”
He says it in this way, all weighed down with disbelief that there ever could have been a man who didn’t want something—anything—that I did.
“I wanted . . . to be on top.” I chew on my bottom lip. “He didn’t like that or maybe, I don’t know, he didn’t like the fact that I was in control. So, we never found ourselves in that position, and as a result . . . it didn’t work for me very often.”
“Do you—when was the last time you—”
I give him a flat look. “I have a vibrator, Miller.”
He makes a fist, pressing it to his mouth, and he groans. “I’d pay good fucking money to see that.”
Embarrassment pulls my shoulders back. “You’re making fun of me.”
“No.” He starts shaking his head. His hands find his thighs again, and he leans forward, looking up at me with wholly dark eyes, hair curling in waves around his ears now. “Trust me, I’m not.”
“I get it. It is funny. The thirty-two-year-old obsessed with dinosaurs who’s never had a satisfying sexual experience in her life. I might as well adopt a bunch of cats and—”
“You’ve got—” He cuts me off with an incredulous look and a slow, measured exhale. “You’ve got no idea, do you? You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
“No, I’m not.”
Miller splays his hands wide. “Oh, okay, I’m lying.”
All that does is draw attention to the carving paths of muscle across his arms, his broad chest, and the neatly stacked abdominal muscles that disappear into the waist of his swim shorts.
“Have you seen you?” I flick a hand towards him.
“Have you seen you, Ren?” he echoes, all flared impatience, before he drops back into the seat, slouching down. “You’re wrong.”
I frown. “About what?”
“Earlier, you started to say—you said—” He groans, scrubbing his face, sending the waves of his hair every which way before he stares at me, unblinking. “It is, something I could help you with. Something I’d be, uh, happy to help you with.”
“You’d want to have sex with me?” I ask, so shrill it’s almost a squeak.
“Yeah, pretty fucking bad, actually.”
It’s not embarrassment pulling my head back this time. It’s his words. The idea of it. The idea of him all over me that rolls down my spine, brushes across my thighs, and makes my stomach clench. I start to shake my head. “I’m not—I haven’t—I’d be . . . rusty.”
He flashes me a half-hearted smile that seems so much more like a line of sad resignation, one brow lifting with his fingers off his thigh again. “Wanna practice?”
A hand carves through his hair, a muscle ticks in his cheek, and he sits there, staring at me, chest heaving with barely restrained breathing.
So wonderful and beautiful and he’s got no idea.
Miller Colson-Burke, the man who likes pretty girls.
Who, for some reason, might like me. And I think, if I was going to practice anything with anyone for the rest of my life, I’d like it to be with him.
I look up, swallowing through a whisper. “Yes.”