Chapter 19 #2
“No.” I say it slowly, the singular word dragged out, and the rest of what I say is begrudging, but true. “You didn’t fail him. I think that it’s good he’s had you. Most people’s spouses wouldn’t be so forgiving, I think. Not to where they could do this. Coparenting and cohabitating.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
I finish the form, tick off all the appropriate boxes and give it back to her. She makes quick work of it, slotting it neatly into the stiff envelope. She’s already stamped it and written the address of the probation office on it. There’s nothing left to do.
“I’ll take care of this,” she says. “I’ve got some errands to run in town, anyway.” She collects her bag from the back of one chair. “You can stay here and wait for Luca, if you’d like.”
“If you’re okay with that,” I say. “I could go down to Wonderland or something and wait there instead.”
She flicks her hand. “It’s fine. Make yourself at home.”
I watch her bustle around, slipping into a pair of low-heeled pumps. I think that she must be either insane or a superhero for wearing heels while pregnant. She calls out a farewell to me and soon she’s gone.
And I reflect that maybe Demi really isn’t all that bad.
Maybe she’s just, like me, a person in a shitty situation, trying to do her best with what she’s got.
The sound of the security door banging inwards rouses me from where I doze on Luca’s bed and I’m flooded with abject terror, because for a second I have no fucking idea where I am.
The bedroom doesn’t look familiar at all and the light through the window above me is much darker than it should be for a summer afternoon.
There’s rain drumming heavily against the pane, and a glittering flash of lightning splits the sky beyond as thunder reverberates through the house.
As Amelia bounds off the bed like a shot I remember where it is that I am, and then I get a secondary split-second of panic in case I shouldn’t be here.
Even though Demi said I could, and I haven’t been asleep that long, have I?
I just went to close my eyes for a few minutes after throwing the ball around for the dog.
But Luca’s alarm clock isn’t lit up, and I don’t know where the fuck my phone’s gotten to—
“Noel?” Luca calls out. “Demi?”
And that grounds me, the sound of his voice, relief easing through my fear-stiffened limbs. “I’m here,” I call back, getting to my feet. I reach for the light switch and flick it uselessly; the power has gone out, I guess, in the storm. “In your room.”
The flashlight from his phone briefly blinds me as I poke my head out into the hallway. He switches it off and pockets it. “How long’s the power been out?” he asks. “Where’s Demi?”
“No idea. I guess I fell asleep.” I ruffle my hand through my disheveled hair.
“And she had errands to run or something—she said it was okay if I stayed.” I add this last part as an afterthought, in case he thinks I am here illicitly.
Wait until he hears that we’ve actually come to some kind of accord, me and her.
I stare up into his face as he approaches, and it’s easier to see when he steps out of the dark hallway and into the bedroom.
The top half of his gray t-shirt is drenched, his pale hair clinging to a face that’s wearing a strange expression, one I’ve never seen on him before.
“You’re soaked,” I say. And then, when he doesn’t answer right away and the funny look remains, “Are you okay, Luca?”
“No,” he says at last. His voice sounds like gravel.
“Oh.” I search his face, looking for the reason why—though I can guess. Because I know his family does this to him, every time. Remember it even back before, texting me in the aftermath of lunch with his father. My hands reach for him as he steps close to me. “Luca, do you—”
Which his when his mouth crushes mine. Definitively, bruising, teeth clicking, hands coming up and wrapping around my head and pulling me even closer.
Trapping me there so I couldn’t escape if I wanted to, which I don’t, not really.
I throw my arms around him and press myself to his wet body, feel the dampness seeping through my shirt and I don’t care.
Should care, maybe, I know he’s upset about something—his dad—but I know this, too.
The desperation to lose yourself, to shed and replace those awful feelings with something warm instead.
The need to be wanted and claimed in the face of rejection.
I know it so, so well.
So I give it to him. Me.
I offer it up to him without fight or even a hint of resistance.
Whatever he wants, he gets. His mouth claims mine and there’s the taste of blood, mine or his—no, it’s mine, I’ve cut my bottom lip on my teeth—and his tongue plunges between my lips.
His fingers knot into my hair so tightly it’s painful, but the good kind, and I make a small sound when he wretches my head back from his.
We’re both breathing too fast. Too loud.
Louder than the rain on the roof and window and nonstop rumble of thunder.
“Luca.” My voice is breathy and small.
“We’re not supposed to,” he whispers roughly. “Here. She doesn’t like it. We agreed.”
I don’t say anything, and in the moment I don’t particularly care what his wife doesn’t like or agreed to, truce or not. I lick the inside of my bloody lip very slowly, and watch his gaze flick downward before it returns, almost reluctantly, to mine.
“Do you want this?” he asks me, lowering his head.
“Yes.” Oh, fuck yes.
And Luca doesn’t weigh it any further than that.
He kicks the door shut behind him, locks it, and then picks me up and tosses me onto his bed.
The wet, clinging t-shirt comes off and then he’s on me, kissing my mouth and exploring the cut inside my lip himself as I gasp.
Then to my ear, tongue tracing along the edge, to my jaw, to my throat.
My hands are fucking everywhere, palming his pecs and then his ribs, his flanks, down the flat and ripping plane of his stomach which twitches the further I go. I want him naked, I want more.
I almost expect Luca to grab my wrists, stop me, pin them above my head.
He likes to play keep away, almost to the point of frustration; I know he likes to give more than receive—which kind of sucks sometimes, because I like to give, too.
Especially to him. I like seeing the things I can do to him, how I can make him feel, the way I can blow his mind when I’m allowed to.
He does. Allow me, that is, without snatching my fingers away as they skim the waistband of his jeans.
He is watching me, going utterly still except for the heaving of his bare chest, and his breath comes loud in the dark space between us.
My hands unbuckling his belt and pulling it out of the loops, one by one.
When I go to drop it by the side of the bed, though, he stops me.
“Luca, please.” Begging, always, the way he likes, but I want it too. “Let me.”
He takes both of my hands in his. The belt’s scrunched up in there somewhere. “Why?”
For a second I think it’s a game he’s playing, a why should I let you have when you’re such a bad boy type deal, and I almost answer in kind.
The half-smile dies on my lips before it can get very far, though, just seeing the look on his face, and I know it’s an earnest and desperate kind of why, a sincere need to know.
I open my mouth, shut it, reconsider, and shift where I feel him flagging against my hip even though all the denim.
There is a part of me that thinks we should maybe stop this—that it’s not good or healthy to do in his state of mind—but another, much bigger part disagrees.
It has nothing to do with lust, or at least not much.
Here, together, like this, is as honest as we get.
These horribly raw parts of ourselves that seem to just mesh and we become something bigger and more whole.
Fixing ourselves one dinged up piece at a time every time we’re close in this way, popping out dents as we go.
There is something healing here for both of us. The want, the need, the affirmation: yes, I like you just like this. You don’t have to be any other kind of way at all. Only you. All of you. Every you.
My gaze holds his. “Because I love you,” I answer.
Luca closes his eyes as if my admission hurts him. “I don’t feel good enough,” he admits. “For you. For this. For anything.”
“You are.” I lean up and kiss his face, very gently. “Let me.”
The belt is dropped to the floor. Luca lies on the bed and this time I get to undress the rest of him with that aching and torturous slowness he sometimes does with me.
Pulling the snap of his jeans apart and tugging them down with the boxers, exposing the perfect tan skin degree by degree.
The perfect V-cut that draws my eye to his big veiny cock that looks like something sculpted, and it’s getting stiffer by the second.
I get to press my lips to his perfect calves and thighs, listening to the sounds he makes when I do so.
I get to run my fingers up along his hips and watch his face adoringly as I rub my cheek along the inside of his knee.
Get to hear him suck in his breath as I finally let my lips drag along the underside of his dick.
God, he smells fucking good, rain and musk and sweat, and the pearl of pre-come beading at the head is salt on my tongue.
“I want you, baby,” Luca tells me. He’s practically shaking and I love it. “I want you.”