Twenty-eight
Teagan
Heath pulls me through the crowd by the hand, weaving through the amalgam of black dresses and tuxes, no one seeming to notice. It seems easy. Too easy.
We run into a group talking to my parents and he stops. My heart jumps into my throat. Mom spots him and her eyes go wide.
“Heath! Darling!” He snakes an arm around my waist, turning me to him and away from her. She can’t see I’ve been crying if she can’t see me. “It feels like forever. How have you been? How’s the family?”
“Everyone is doing great, Mrs. H. Thank you for asking.”
I place my hand on his shoulder and rest my chin on top of it. As they continue to talk, I close my eyes and take a deep breath to slow the pounding of my heart. It works, however briefly. When I open them again, I lock eyes with Lenny.
He stands with some of our dads’ associates. They talk, but all he does is stare at me. His expression is unreadable, but Heath’s hand on my hip and my smudged lipstick paint quite a picture, I assume.
I turn my head back to look at Heath and find him already looking at me. He pulls me with him when he takes a step and my hope returns.
“Tell your parents I said hello, won’t you?” my mom adds.
“Absolutely.”
He shields me from Lenny’s view until we slip through the front doors of the banquet hall. When my heels sink into the hallway’s carpet, I can’t believe it.
Just like that, I’m free.
Heath pushes the button for the elevator, and we wait. The crowd visible through the open doors keeps the last of my fear from subsiding, but next to him, I feel safe. His hand strokes up and down my back as if to say, You’re okay . I realize I’m clinging to him, holding on for dear life.
The elevator chimes and we step on with some others from the party. When the doors close, a sense of relief hits me like a tsunami. I breathe away the tears that come to my eyes, not wanting to cry with witnesses.
Without saying a word, Heath pulls me against his chest. I wrap my arms around his waist and rest my head on his shoulder. My tears fade. His touch calms me like nothing else can, as scary as that is to admit.
“I’m sorry I was late,” he says beneath the volume of the elevator’s crooning jazz. His expression is apologetic. Morose, in a way. It surprises me.
“It’s okay.”
The shadow of a smirk twitches on his lips. “Really?”
I rub my hand up and down his chest. After today, the harsh words, regrets, and disappointment I’ve felt in myself, the pain of admitting I want Heath close to me pales in comparison. “Really.”
The elevator stops and the couple next to us gets off. Heath keeps looking at me with those gray eyes.
I don’t know what I’m thinking—if I’m thinking at all—but when the doors close, I lean closer. He doesn’t move away. My eyes drop to his lips. With his hand at the nape of my neck, he pulls me to him. I close my eyes and hold my breath, waiting, wanting to feel his kiss. His lips brush lightly against mine right as the elevator slows.
We step away from each other, and our eyes catch. The look of reluctance on his face leaves my body buzzing with a confusing mix of sensations. In a way, I’m glad we were interrupted. Kissing isn’t part of the contract, but neither is piecing me back together when I’m lying broken on the ground.
He takes my hand again, leading me out of the elevator, and I know exactly where we’re going.
~
In Heath’s bed, the lights are low and the passion is high. I can’t remember the last time I felt this way. Uninhibited, unafraid to be open and raw with someone, but for the first time in years, I feel like I can trust him.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to finally let him in. Just a little bit.
Heath inhales a sharp breath when my lips crest his head. The salty taste of his excitement coats the tip of my tongue. His hand settles against my cheek, appreciating me rather than urging me to continue. I can’t take it any longer.
I push myself up and crawl onto his lap. In his seated position, he reaches for the little packet beside him, but I don’t let him finish tearing it open before I have him straddled and placed at my entrance.
He stops me from sinking onto him. “Babe, wait. I don’t have—”
“I don’t care,” I breathe.
“Yes, you do.” But I don’t. Right now, all I care about is quelling my urge. I wrap my arms around his neck and widen my knees.
“Teagan.” His breath trembles as he fights himself. Still, he stops me. With more sense than I can possibly muster, he rolls on the condom and pulls me back into position. Pushing my hips down, I finally feel him, stretching me, filling me, relieving me of my anxiety inch by delicious inch.
His hand grips my ass while I slide myself up and down his length. Bracing myself with both hands behind his neck, I watch his face twist when his head falls back with a moan. I drop harder onto his lap, my body numb to everything but the heat building inside me. His eyes look into mine with insistence, but the pleasure is too deep. I tangle my fingers in his hair while my body shudders with the feeling rushing through me, and I don’t fight him when he rolls me onto my back beneath him.
He strokes it slow and deep, his perfect body on full display as he pulls himself out to the tip and plunges back inside me. Fast and deliberate, his hips pump between my thighs while he stares down at me. Sweat glistens against his skin as he pants.
“Yes.” I sigh when the pleasure blooms inside me. “Just like that.” Heath moans as if in acknowledgment.
“Fuck,” he whispers, never stopping his pace, his thumb doing lazy circles against my favorite spot. The feeling makes me quiver around him. I’m close and he knows it.
Falling forward, he lies on me and buries his head in my neck. He pulls my legs up by the back of my thighs and fucks me, hard and fast.
My moan comes out like a gasp. As basic as the position is, his intensity makes it so hot. His breathy moans in my ear, his muscular body rolling on top of mine while our hips clash violently. He’s hard, deep, hitting all the right places. My eyes roll back and my legs shake.
“Oh my god,” I groan. “Heath, baby, yes. Yes!” I barely recognize the voice spewing from my mouth. His arm wraps around me and a hand cradles my head. His grip on my nape makes me feel dominated, supported. Touching me like this, I’ll let him have me any way he wants me. I’ll let him have all of me. “Oh god. Yes.”
It’s too much. I’m so close but I don’t want to let go just yet. His lips claim my neck, his teeth soon after. My nails claw the skin of his back and his ass. His moan sets off a spark inside me and I clench around him. Then I lose myself to him completely.
I cry out when the orgasm tears through me. He keeps stroking as my body grips and releases him, each wave blinding me and drowning me in intoxicating, consuming ecstasy.
My limbs fall limp as he continues to take me, the orgasm still rolling through me. With a groan, his hips shudder and ruin his rhythm. His pace slows, and after a few more delicious thrusts, stops.
With my head still cradled in his hand, his other wrapped around my thigh, I lie swimming underneath him. I trail my palms over the scratches I left on his back, ready to apologize and compliment him when I can form words again. But when his shoulders shake, I go cold.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He leaves me, hiding his face as he moves to the edge of the bed. He fiddles with the condom, but I can tell he’s crying.
With my head still floating from my orgasm, I barely manage to cover myself and crawl over to sit beside him. As I watch him cry, I try to make sense of what is happening. “Heath. What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing,” he says.
“It’s obviously something.” I grip the sheet to my chest and lean over to get a better view of his face. “You’re freaking me out. Tell me what’s going on.”
He looks up at the ceiling, wiping a tear from his eye. “Seeing you hurting tonight, it set me off because—” He exhales, avoiding the words he knows he will say next. “I’ve been going through some shit with my mom lately. I can’t help her, and it is killing me.”
“Your mom?” I ask, still trying to comprehend the scene happening before me. “Is she okay?”
“No.” I wait for him to elaborate. “When I snapped at you after Vegas, it had nothing to do with you. I was fighting with my dad because he keeps putting my mom in rehab.”
“Wait. What?”
“It’s not what you’re thinking. I mean, it is, but . . . can I tell you without you judging her?”
“Why would I—? Of course you can. Is she all right?”
“She’s—” He takes a moment to collect his thoughts. “She has been abusing pills. But she’s not addicted to them she’s addicted to being thin.”
Shock makes it difficult to process his words. How did I not know this was happening?
He continues. “She’s been on and off diet pills for forever, ever since she was in pageants. Since my grandma died, she’s been in a dark place, and her old coping mechanisms came back.” The look of shame on his face breaks my heart. “The pills are just unregulated amphetamines. When she takes them for long enough, she loses track of reality, what year it is, everything. Doctors think it’s drug-induced psychosis, and that the cycle will continue unless she gets help for the eating disorder she’s struggled with for decades, but Dad finds the pills and instantly sends her away to rehab. Then when he leaves town, she begs me to get her out, and I have to decide if I want her to be miserable or want Dad to be pissed at me for going against him.”
Jesus . “Is that why he cut you off?”
“Yeah.” He wipes his cheek, but still can’t look at me.
“I’m sorry I laughed about you getting cut off. Had I known why . . .” I want to apologize for not knowing what was going on, how serious it was, but we weren’t supposed to be talking this way. We weren’t supposed to be talking in any way.
“No, you were right to laugh. It was past time for me to grow up, and it has been good for me. I just wish he had done it for other reasons, you know?”
“I’m sorry about what is happening with your mom too.”
Heath looks at me and his brow crumples again. “Teags, what were you doing in the bathroom at the party?” His eyes stare into mine, pleading for the truth.
My muscles tense. After everything he told me about his mom, I know what he must assume about me. “It’s not what you think,” I say. “I threw up, but it wasn’t intentional. Tonight stressed me out and I just . . . couldn’t keep it down.”
“But what about the rest of the time? Are you eating enough? Do you feel guilty or anxious when you do?”
I can’t answer his questions, because I’d have to admit it to myself first.
My eyes well with tears. It’s not pity behind his words, it’s the understanding no one else seems to have. I feel seen for the first time in a while. It hurts, but in the way it hurts to remove a bandage to clean the wound beneath it. A helpful sort of pain.
I stare at him but don’t know what to say. I don’t want to lie to him after he told me so much truth. “Sometimes, yeah,” I admit past the lump in my throat. “Please don’t be upset. I’m fine, I promise.”
“But I want you to be better than fine, Teags. It’s not okay for you to get so anxious you can’t eat.”
“I know. Usually I can deal with it, but today—” I want to cry again. “It was a lot.”
“What happened?”
I shake my head, looking through the air to gather all the pieces into a single sentence. “I’m still cleaning up the mess from Vegas, my parents are the way they usually are, and Rowan . . . he hates me.”
“Hates you?”
“Yeah. He thinks I’m perfect, that I’ve never made a mistake. But you know that’s not true.”
“No one is perfect, but you’re pretty damn close.”
“It makes me feel like shit,” I admit. “The whole time I’ve been killing myself to make my parents happy, they’ve been turning it around to put more pressure on him.”
“Your parents have always been on your asses. You shouldn’t have to feel you’re not enough if you don’t do everything they want,” he says. “Did you tell him that?”
I shake my head. “He wasn’t in a place to listen to me. And even if that was true, I thought I was helping him by being the perfect kid they wanted. I can’t remember the last time I did something I wanted to do until . . .” I hesitate to admit it. “Until I did this. With you.”
He gives a weak laugh. “Yeah, well . . . me either.”
Tears cloud my eyes until I can no longer make out the features of his face. I wipe them away before they fall.
Heath’s hand strokes against my back. “I know we have our shit, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to struggle on your own.” Tears choke him again. He breathes them away, then looks me in the eye. “I love what we’re doing and I love the contract. The sex is amazing, Teags. Seriously. But sometimes, I just . . . I fucking miss having you as my best friend.”
I twist my lips to keep them from quivering. His words hurt me as much as they heal me. It is difficult to think about how close we were and be able to separate it from the pain that tore us apart. So much happened that we can’t fix, so much we can’t erase, but part of me misses him too.
Moving closer, I wrap my arm around him. He hugs me back. “I’m still here,” I say into his shoulder. His grip tightens.
We let go and look away from each other. I dry my face and Heath clears his throat. The silence lingers.
“Now that we’ve made that awkward as fuck, do you want to have sex again?” he asks.
“Yeah.”