Chapter 19I asked Atticus where I could find you.
nineteen
. . .
i asked atticus where i could find you.
“Yeah?” I blink, watching tears skate down her soft cheeks, her full pink lips curved in a soft smile.
“Yeah,” she breathes, driving her other hand into my pocket to fish mine out. With both hands linking us, she steps into me. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
Her surprising admission— that she's in love with me —it’s…
I can hardly fucking move. I don’t say it back, not yet.
It doesn't feel right with kids and adults everywhere and wandering eyes sticking on us. Though not saying it back right now is really hard, I have things I need to say and I don’t want to say them here.
“Let’s go to my place after Mara’s class, and we can talk, okay?” I stroke my thumbs along hers as she nods.
“How’d you know I was here?” she asks, her eyes never breaking the connection with mine. I don’t want to look away either because the last nearly twenty-four hours have been fucking hell.
I called in to work to try and right my head.
I wondered if she hadn’t told me about her virginity because she never planned on having sex with me.
I considered that maybe she didn’t tell me because she really did believe her books had taught her what she needed to know.
It was only when Atticus texted me this morning that everything fell in line and I was no longer left wondering about Delane’s reasoning for not giving me the one truth I gave her.
Atticus
People lie to protect themselves from a truth they ain’t ready to admit just yet.
Maybe now she’s ready to admit it.
I didn’t bother responding to him because I knew what the message meant.
That she hadn’t been honest for a specific reason, and that fact brought me hope.
Because it didn’t make sense to me that Laney would have lied, knowing that she had a reason–whatever it was–made it possible for me to get off my couch and get dressed.
I’d asked Atticus where I could find Delane this afternoon since I knew it was her day to take Mara to karate.
“I asked Atticus where I could find you.”
She shakes her head, wiping under her nose with the back of her wrist. “I should have been looking for you. I owed you an apology.”
Guiding her to the gym, we make our way back to her stuff, where I help her collect it in silence, both of us passing core-warming energy back and forth in subtle touches and small smiles. Mara approaches us just as we’re done clearing the spot.
“Hi, Miller,” she says, sweat beading along her upper brow, a smear of dirt running the length of her forearm. I pinch the fabric of the gi.
“Foot?”
She looks at the dusting along the fabric and nods. “Yep, but it’ll come out. There hasn’t been a single stain we couldn’t get rid of, right?”
Mara turns to Delane, whose cheeks are flush, gaze far off, and I realize then because I didn’t say it back, now that the adrenaline is settling, she may be worried.
As Mara says goodbye to some girls nearby, I drop my hand to Delane’s lower back, bringing my lips to her ear, my words kept private by the wall of her curls curtaining her shoulder. “I have so much to say to you when we get to my place.”
She swallows as we peel apart. “Yeah?” Her eyebrows twitch a little.
I lean in again. “It’s going to be okay, alright? I just… want to talk to you at my place.”
As if my words were all she needed, my chest tightens at the elated smile she gives me.
I follow behind Delane as she drops Mara back at home. I watch the glow of her phone come to her ear as she idles along the curb in front of her house. A moment later, Art appears in the kitchen window, his phone held to his ear.
I like that she’s telling him she’s coming to my place.
She doesn’t have to lie because they trust her.
And she can go because she has freedom. And more than all of that, I like that she wants to tell them.
That she cares about her family enough that she doesn’t just send Mara up to the house with a message as she drives away .
Once Art raises a hand to me, I wiggle my fingers at him through the front windshield, unsure if he can see but not taking the chance that I didn’t wave if he could.
Then, she calls me.
“Just wanted to tell them I’m going to your place.”
I can’t help but smile because last night, I wondered if she’d ever come over again. “I’m glad. They don’t mind you spending the night?”
There’s a pause. “Am I?”
I don’t waste any time answering that, not after everything. “Hell, yes, you are.”
Her laughter makes me hard. “Yeah, I told them. They don’t mind.” Her voice is so soft when she says, “my family really loves you, Miller.”
“Pull out, drive to my place; I’ll be behind you.” Suddenly, I’m overwhelmed with the desire to get home. “We’ll talk there.”
Back at my apartment, Delane and I walk up the stairs together. She’s grinning, bumping my shoulder with hers, hands linked. Her breath huffs out in white clouds as I fidget with the key at the lock, finally getting us inside.
She twists the deadbolt as I slide the chain on.
She takes her coat off, hanging it up as I do the same.
Our gloves come off. We kick off our boots.
Her scarf is gone, and then mine, too. My cap is on the floor next to my hoodie, then she pulls her sweatshirt off, too.
Another minute and we’re already completely naked, just one foot inside my place.
Taking her hand, I guide us down the hall, both of us ignoring Salsa for the moment.
Closing us inside, I pull back the covers to my bed and watch as Delane climbs in, the setting sun falling over the subtle curves of her breasts like paint splattered perfectly on a canvas. It’s still early, not even quite dinnertime, but we both know exactly why we’re climbing into bed.
We need this.
We need to share this first together.
I climb into the bed, my cock already growing fat and achy as I get a peek at her hardened nipples and trembling stomach.
With my head kept up on the palm of my hand, elbow to the mattress, I lean over her, just taking her in for a quiet second.
She stares up at me as if she knows I need this and just studies my features as I take in hers. That’s what is so right about us–I’ve never felt like staring into someone's eyes while not speaking would be comfortable at all.
It’s surprisingly not weird.
Time to say it back.
“I love you, Delane. I’ve known that for a while, but I never let myself consider how I felt because you’re so smart, gorgeous, and fun….” I trail off, losing myself in the ethereal smear of green circling her pupil. “I never thought you could love me. So I loved you from afar.”
When her bottom lip starts a generous tremble, I bring my mouth to hers in a slow, passionate kiss.
A kiss where I feel her apology again, a kiss where I feel her love too.
A kiss where… I get an idea of my future, and it's just like this; the two of us together, whispering and kissing in the dark, touching and feeling, experiencing and promising, planning and thriving.
“You,” she pants when our mouths break apart. “You love me?”
I nod. “Atticus has been accusing me of it for a while. It turns out, the only thing harder than having Atticus be right is having him know it.”
She grins. “Tell me about it. I sadly do not think I’d be here with you if it weren’t for him poking his big greasy bun in my business.
” Her smile falls away as I stroke the backs of my fingers down her hip and thigh.
Her flesh pebbles beneath my touch, so I slide closer to her.
So close that my hard cock now rests on her hip.
“You’ve loved me?” she asks, retracing our steps back to what I’d just admitted; her tone says things she isn’t saying like she can’t understand how I could have loved her for so long.
I nod. “Loving you has been my constant the last few years.”
“I never thought I could have you,” she says, her voice quiet like she’s ashamed. I tip her chin up and take her mouth in what I hope is a reassuring kiss. “But I liked you, too. I liked you so much that I was a bit in denial about what you meant to me.”
I suck in a breath as she wraps her palm around my cock, stroking me from the root to the slick, dripping head. “So you love me, huh?” she asks, stroking me again.
Groaning, I tangle my fingers in her hair and hold the side of her head as I look down into her eyes. “So much, Laney.”
She swipes the pad of her thumb over my slit, stroking a stream of precum down my shaft as she does. “And I love you,” she breathes, pumping my cock faster now. “So much.”
“That,” I groan, the familiar tingle spreading through my balls and taint as she strokes. “Is hard for me to believe.”
Popping up off the mattress, she throws a leg around me, straddling my hips.
Placing both hands against my chest, she smiles down at me.
“See, this is why we started this in the first place. The fact that you can’t believe I’d love you.
” Reaching between us, she positions my cock at her entrance but doesn’t sink down around me.
With both hands splayed against my chest yet again, she smiles. “We thought the same thing about each other; can you believe that?” Slowly, she wiggles her hips, feeding herself the crown of my cock. She winces, her quads flexing as she pushes herself off my cockhead a moment later.
“Should.. Do you want me to be on top?” I ask; missionary is largely the traditional position for this.
She shakes her head. “I like you being on your back for me,” she says, cheeks flush.
And I have to admit, I do, too. In fact, while the best thing in the last few weeks was being with Delane, the second best thing was enjoying her control.
Edging me, teasing me, showing me a world of orgasmic possibility— she sinks down a little more as I interrupt.
“I’ve liked you controlling things between us sexually,” I admit.