Chapter Fifteen #2
“Thanks.” She bit off a nibble and then, what the heck, shoved the rest in her mouth. She wished she had some water to wash it down with, but the sound of the stream trickling beside them was already making her want to pee again. “And thanks. For sticking with me.”
“Of course.”
“I know you really wanted to zip-line.”
His gaze slid to hers. “Not worth the trade-off.”
In her heart, she held out so much hope for his meaning.
That he cared about her. That he spent years regretting his broken promise.
And most of all, that he felt about her the way—and here her brain stumbled—the way she felt about him.
That after all these years of trying to ignore her heart and convince herself that she was over him, she was not.
Tyler was still there, hanging in her soul like the moon hangs in the sky.
Visible at times, concealed at others, but always there. Always there.
She wanted confirmation. She needed to hear him say it. “Not worth the trade-off?” she asked.
“I mean, obviously, the alternative is so much better than zip-lining.” Tyler looked at his fingers as he picked at the damp bark on the log. “Getting to spend time with you again feels like we’re two halves of a granola bar. If you line them up just right, you’d never know it had been broken.”
Lulu’s lungs accordioned.
He reached over, his fingers grazing the tops of her knuckles.
On their own volition, she found her fingers looping through his. His touch, small and tender, felt huge and meaningful.
She sat there unspeaking, the acute sensation of his fingers touching hers setting her mind whirling.
Here they were among the ancient trees, nobody around.
His thumb stroked the side of hers and her heightened focus zeroed in on that tiny spot of skin.
And like a mirror effect, the sensitive spot between Lulu’s thighs responded like her thumb, but much, much more heatedly.
Everything about this moment conspired against Lulu.
There was the harness, which pressed against her bladder, especially in this sitting position.
There were bugs in the log they were sitting on, and one was crawling near her knee, which she was actively ignoring with little success. And of course…there was Tyler.
Holding her hand. Missing her. Inciting a rebellion among the foot soldiers of her libido.
Why was she holding this long-running grudge against this guy because he wasn’t there for her fifteen years ago?
Look at him now! He was being there for her, and in fact had climbed down off a zip-line opportunity of a lifetime to march through the humid jungle and possibly be eaten by jaguars just to support her, and then, despite the fact that he might have been really hungry and just obfuscating to be kind, had given her the entirety of his delicious granola bar and then made some very sweet, surprisingly charming metaphor about the same said granola bar?
And then. How quickly her temporal lobe went on hiatus at the same time as his fingers left her hand and reached for the side of her face.
And how easily she leaned toward him, her lips craving his.
And how their helmets bonked into each other and after a second attempt to get their faces closer, they hastily unclipped the latches and tossed the helmets to the ground.
Now his fingers were threading against her scalp and there was this tingling going on in every single centimeter of her body.
She noticed all those thoughts in her brain that were reminding her that this was a bad idea because he was going to disappear again.
And not to mention that she was a person in an unstable situation financially and socio-emotionally—being relationship-averse and living in the home of her godparents while single parenting—and a thousand and one other naysaying thoughts that she drove over with a vengeance, gunning her mental semitruck to maximum velocity because hell if she was going to let her neuroses keep her from what she was engaged in right now, which happened to be making out with Tyler Demming.
Now. Now that was happening. An explosion of sensations obliterated her inner monologue.
His mouth grazed hers and then, pulling back, Tyler’s gaze searched her face like it was a lost treasure, sought after for years and unburied at last. With identical urgency, they grabbed for each other, his energy lifting her to her feet and stepping her complicit body backward toward a huge tree, vines dripping like ropes, where his hips pinned her against the smooth bark.
Oh god, she was suddenly hungrily, greedily gripping his neck with both hands, her lips eager for his mouth.
Her tongue she held back until he teased her lips apart.
The newness, the unexpectedness excited her.
And it was so good. This kiss was nothing like the teeth-and-tongue clumsiness of their youth, all hickeys and chapped chins.
Tyler Demming had grown up.
Their kiss shifted in waves. Intense and needy at first, it mellowed to a soft, yearning kiss, then changed again until their mouths were a conduit for lost years of restraint and desire.
His knee pressed between her legs, his hands roamed to cup her ass cheeks, drawing her closer. “Is this okay?” he asked.
“Everything’s okay,” she said into his mouth, and stood on her toes to wind a leg around his thigh.
The sound of his eager exhale was a melody, and her sigh harmonized, the two of them a wanting song.
His groan. Her mew. It was all sight and smell and sound and touch.
Weren’t there five senses? She was sure there were, but at this all-consuming moment, she was hard-pressed to come up with the fifth.
From somewhere in the stratosphere came a staticky screech, followed by an overloud voice. “Did you say everything’s okay?”
They jumped apart. Tyler, coming to his senses, yanked the walkie-talkie from Lulu’s back pocket.
“Hello?”
“This is Javier. You pushed the emergency call button. Everything okay?”
“Fine!” Lulu shouted at the same time as Tyler said, “We’re good. All good.”
“Because it sounded like there was some kind of struggle going on—”
“All good. False alarm,” Tyler said, and Lulu pitched in, “We’re fine. We’re good.” She grimaced at Tyler, embarrassed.
“Okay. Signing off,” Tyler called.
Grabbing the walkie-talkie from Tyler’s fingers, Lulu pushed the talk button. No reason to be impolite. “Thank you for checking in,” she said, her voice as cool as a flight attendant’s.
“Okay. Good,” Javier said. “The walkie-talkie should only be used for emergen—”
“Got it. Thank you,” Tyler said, flicking the button. Checking that the walkie-talkie was solidly off, he threw it to the ground and pressed the length of his body against Lulu’s.
“Where were we?” And without waiting for a response, his mouth covered hers.