Flashback 3
Ivy
Fourteen Months Ago
I lie half across his body, resting my ear on his chest, right over his heart.
Over the last few seconds its race has slowed.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Gently, lazily, he pulls his fingers through my hair, crown to tip, crown to tip . It’s comforting. It’s hypnotic.
My eyes flutter closed, concentrating on his heartbeat. It’s steadier and steadier now. Strong and certain. Like him. Like the way he looks at me when he slides inside of my body.
His other hand, palm down and still, rests on my lower back.
We are tangled and naked, sweaty limbs and the sweet smell of sex.
An oscillating fan on my bureau dusts our skin every few seconds, making goose bumps rise on my backside.
I press my lips to his warm skin and open my eyes again.
The early-evening sun, still high and bright in the sky, slants into my bedroom, and the white lace curtains flutter with a breeze from the harbor.
The first of three ship horns booms through the town.
Back to your ship, tourists. Time to go.
In four days, it’ll be time for me to go, too.
My heart stammers, and I force the thought from my mind.
Stop it. Don’t think about it.
I’m getting good at that. I’ve been doing it for weeks.
Over the ripple of his pectoral muscle, I spy my phone on the bedside table. I put it on Do Not Disturb when Sawyer knocked on my door. Clark’s been texting and calling more often lately, and with added pressure from my father, I feel myself growing weak. If Clark keeps calling, and my father keeps insisting that I give him another chance, I feel like I might give in.
Stop it. Don’t think about Clark. Not right now.
Especially when nothing has ever felt more right—not in my entire life—than this summer spent in Sawyer’s arms.
I close my eyes again, concentrating on Sawyer’s heart.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Live in the moment, Ivy. Live in the moment.
It’s good advice. When I don’t take it—when I think about leaving him—it feels like someone’s reaching into my chest, putting their fingers around my heart like a cage, and trying to rip it from my body. It comes as close as I’ve ever imagined it would feel to die a painful death.
“You okay?” he asks me, the rumble of his deep voice making my eyes open.
“Mm-hm.”
“You’re quiet, princess.”
I lean up on his chest and tell myself to smile. And despite the chaos in my mind, it comes easily. It’s so easy to love him.
Stop it. You don’t love him. That’s not allowed.
“It’s intense sometimes,” I say, pressing my lips to his skin and lingering there.
“Always,” he corrects me. “It’s always intense. Since the first time.”
He’s right. It is.
The first time I had sex with Sawyer, I didn’t know it could be like that. I didn’t know it could feel like that. Those first few weeks, we were like an addiction to each other. We couldn’t get enough of touching each other, making love to each other, bathing together, just being together. Being apart was agony, even if our separation could be counted in minutes. Coming together was nirvana, but never enough. And that was back before my feelings for him had crystallized. The way I feel now is so much deeper and more dangerous than it was at the beginning of the summer. The way I feel now—
Stop it. Don’t think about your feelings for him. They don’t matter.
Live in the moment.
“Do you have to go back to Dyea?” I whisper.
We coordinated our work schedules to be free this afternoon, but I’m never sure how much time we have. Sometimes he has to go back to work, or I do, or we both do.
“Nope. Not until tomorrow morning.”
“Same. Free until nine a.m.,” I say, tracing our names on his chest with my fingers.
“That tickles.”
He reaches for my hand and presses my fingers to his lips, then lowers it back to his chest, his hand flush over mine. His fingers shift, weaving through mine until they’re braided together.
Another breeze winds its way through the window as a second ship’s horn bellows.
Time to go. Time to go.
“Late August,” sighs Sawyer, reaching for the bunched-up blanket beside me, and pulling it over our bodies. “Starting to get chilly. Are you cold?”
I lean up and grin at him. “I’m from Fairbanks, southern boy.”
His face cracks into a wide grin, and he chuckles, letting go of my hand to run his fingers through his messy dirty-blond hair.
“Fairbanks,” he says.
Suddenly, he isn’t laughing anymore.
Fairbanks.
My smile fades, too.
It’s such a pretty portmanteau—fair + banks—but it’s a thief, and a liar, and a separator of people who have no business being apart.
“Don’t go,” he says suddenly, the words coming out in a desperate rush. His eyes scan my face. He leans down to press his lips to mine. “Don’t go back to Fairbanks.”
“And do what instead?”
“Stay here.”
“After the summer?”
“Why not? Get a job. Find a place to live.”
“That’s not the plan, Sawyer,” I tell him, lying back down on his chest. Thump-thump. Thump-thump . “I have to go back to college and finish my degree.”
“Fine. Go back to college, but…don’t go back to him,” he whispers.
“Sawyer…”
“He hurt you.”
“He’s sorry.”
He says he’s sorry.
He’s texted it. And spoken it over voicemail. And promised me in twenty different ways that it will never happen again. Clark arrived in Fairbanks for lacrosse last week, and my father took him out for dinner.
“He’s sorry,” my father told me. “Listen, young bucks make stupid mistakes. You’ve got to forgive him, Ivy. Move on from that unfortunate incident. You could have a beautiful life together.”
Speaking of my father, his plane will arrive at the Skagway airport on Friday morning at eight a.m. to pick me up, and I will touch down in Fairbanks four hours later.
“Ivy, please—”
I lean up and place my fingers over his lips, my expression as severe as I can make it.
“You promised,” I remind him, quoting myself, “ Super casual. Nothing serious. I leave for Fairbanks at the end of the summer. Remember? You promised.”
And if you can’t be strong, Sawyer, how can I?
He turns his head away from me, and my fingers are left suspended, anchorless, in mid-air. I lower them back to his chest. I close my eyes. They’re burning too much to stay open.
It’s been almost three months since our progressive date, and we’ve had sex a hundred times since then. I’ve spent hours curled up naked beside him, and he’s never broached the subject of Clark or Fairbanks or the future of us. Never. Not once. He kept his promise until now, and even now, he hasn’t shared his feelings for me, only asked me not to go back to Clark.
Meanwhile, I’ve fallen in love with him.
I’m in love with Sawyer Stewart.
He’s funny and beautiful, he’s spontaneous and adventurous and fun. ( But I always knew these things about him .) What I didn’t know until this summer is how he’d seize my eyes and hold them when he moved inside of me. I didn’t know the sweet sound of possession that would slip from his lips as he sank into my body. I didn’t know the tenderness I would feel when he held me, when he kissed me, when he touched me with worshipful reverence. I didn’t know how it would feel to fit together with someone so perfectly, that you had no idea where your body ended and his began.
I started this summer believing that we could be friends with benefits, and I will end this summer realizing that Sawyer is the love of my short life.
And still, I will leave him.
Why?
Because I am twenty-one years old, and the only home I’ve ever known is the one I share with my father in Fairbanks. My ex-boyfriend, whom my father adores, is sorry and promises never to cheat on me again. No matter what Sawyer can offer me, I can’t pass up the chance to matter to my father, the parent who stuck around when the other one abandoned me. I don’t have the strength or courage to defy his wishes. I know it, and I hate myself for it because Sawyer’s heart is beating under my ear, and with every beat it speaks of his love for me.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
When I leave Sawyer, in the quiet chaos of that separation, there will be profound anguish, as there always is when things bound to each other are torn apart. It’s going to hurt. I will be lucky to survive it.
And still, I will leave him.
“Sorry,” mutters Sawyer, turning to face me again. He kisses the crown of my head, lingering for a moment. “I know I promised. I just wish…”
“I know,” I whisper.
“Do you?” he asks.
I roll onto his body, so that my breasts are crushed against his chest. His cock stiffens beneath the thatch of curls at the apex of my thighs.
“I know,” I whisper again, wiping away a renegade tear that escapes without permission.
Live in the moment.
I sit up, with my palms flat on his chest. I lean forward, reach for his erection, then slide back, easing my pussy onto his erection. I lower my body until I am sitting on his lap with his cock buried deep inside of me.
Live in the moment.
He reaches for my hips, thrusting upward, his eyes filled with profound tenderness.
I close my eyes and lean my head back.
Live in the moment.
All too soon, it will be gone.