Chapter 35
Present Day
West’s room is dark when an alarm goes off, the first hint of periwinkle light bleeding around the edges of his curtains.
His hand is under the shirt I’m wearing (his), splayed across my stomach.
“Don’t go,” he murmurs into my hair as he draws me closer, his sleep-raspy voice scattering goose bumps across my neck.
I relax into his chest, remembering my half-baked plan to wake up in this bed for the rest of my life.
A pretty thought in the afterglow of two mind-bending orgasms, but hours later, it hasn’t lost any appeal.
In fact, I only want it more now that I know what it’s like to wake up in his arms.
“What about my flight?” I mumble through bee-stung lips, my eyes already slipping closed again.
“Skip it. Stay here.”
“What about your job? Think of the teenagers who will be disappointed not to see their sexy professor.”
West lays a scratchy kiss on my shoulder. “That’s weird. And it’s spring break.”
I snuggle deeper into the crook of his arm, bewildered by the good timing.
Is it possible that the goddess of fate and timing is on our side for once?
He has the week off, and I have a long stretch of days before my book tour launches in tandem with the premiere of the third Torched movie.
A week at least. Two if I move some prelaunch appointments.
“I don’t have enough clothes,” I pretend to protest.
“You won’t need them,” he promises, and my body warms. Eyes still closed, I smile into the pillow as West brushes a featherlight kiss against my neck. When his hand wanders north and he rolls my nipple between his fingers, I surrender with a happy sigh.
I will not be making that flight.
Our plan to live and die tangled in West’s sheets is thwarted by the need for food.
I grin stupidly at him over a bowl of oatmeal, and he doesn’t even try to hide his pleased smile as he watches me.
As soon as my spoon hits the empty bowl, he pushes his plate away and knocks my chair sideways with his feet.
He pulls it toward him until we’re sitting face-to-face with my legs draped over his.
His large palms rest on my thighs, just below the hem of the baggy shirt I’m wearing.
“Hi, Mars.” With his wide smile, floppy curls, and bright eyes, he has very little in common with the brooding character on my shirt.
“Hi, West.”
The air shimmers between us with an intoxicating mixture of anticipation and certainty.
“What do you want to do today?” he asks. My eyes slide to the fingers drumming on my bare thighs. “Other than that,” he clarifies, reading meaning in my glance. “Obviously we’ll do that.” He leans in and kisses me, pulling back with another grin.
God, I could look at him like this forever.
“I met this cute guy once,” I say, and West’s fingers tighten as his smile slips off his face. “He claimed that Tucson is better than New York.”
“Oh?” His smile has returned, but I lean forward and kiss him as an apology for chasing it away, even briefly.
I shrug. “Seems like now is his chance to convince me.”
West squares his shoulders as he internalizes the challenge. He presses his tongue to his cheek and thinks. “Okay,” he says finally. He taps my thighs twice. “Get dressed. We’re going out.”
“I was mostly joking. You don’t have to…” I wave my hands in the air, trying to express an emotion I’m not fully conscious of.
“Have to what?”
“You know, impress me or show me a good time or whatever. I don’t care about Tucson. I’m only here because of you. It could be Chernobyl out there for all I care.”
West’s mouth curls in distaste as he sits back in his chair. He pulls his hands into his own lap.
“Wait. What’s wrong?”
He turns his head, frowning out the window. “Nothing.”
“West.” Reluctantly, he faces me again, still grimacing.
I shuffle out of my chair until I’m in his lap, straddling him.
He watches warily as I rest my hands on the back of his chair, bracketing him in so he has nowhere to look but at me.
“As I learned last night, you are very good with your words when you want to be. Use them. Tell me what just happened.”
He releases a frustrated sigh. “It’s nothing. I’m being unrealistic.”
“About what?”
His jaw clenches as he searches my face. A moment later, the tension bleeds from him. He kisses my forehead, then tilts my chin with his finger. “If you think there’s a chance in hell that I’d have you for a week without trying to impress you, I worry that Drought didn’t land the way I intended.”
I tilt my head in question.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he promises as his hand smooths a path up my spine. I push off the chair, but West grabs my waist, trapping me against him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“You told me to get dressed,” I remind him as he shifts my hips closer to his, lining my center up against him in a way that makes my breath hitch. I brace my hands on his shoulders as my eyes flutter closed.
“Did I?” he asks as he sucks the skin below my ear. I nod breathlessly against his mouth. “You have to get undressed in order to get dressed. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.” He runs his hands under my shirt and draws it over my head, leaving me naked in his lap.
West packs a picnic, and we hike Saguaro National Park, hopping over streams formed from the weekend rain and winding among the cacti.
When he sees how giddy I am from the blue sky and the sun on my shoulders, he takes it upon himself to do a live reading of New York’s weather forecast. He sits me down on a large boulder, clears his throat, and delivers his line: “Forty degrees and rain for the rest of the week.” I suppress a shudder.
We stop for fruit slushies at Eegee’s after our hike, and the nostalgia sugars my blood as we pull the car over on Tucson’s Astro Trail and eat them lying in the bed of his truck with pillows and blankets.
West tells me that the trail is named for its proximity to observatories, planetariums, and national parks.
It’s designed for stargazing on clear, dark desert nights like this one.
He positions me between his legs and pulls me back against his chest, and I enjoy the silence as we wait for the stars.
By now most of the surface conversation has been scratched away, leaving us both with the understanding that we have bigger discussions in our future.
I’m in no hurry to move out of the bubble we’re in now, however.
“Why did you think I was there to meet you at our spot on the first day of the festival?” I ask, slowly putting together that first conversation now that I have more context.
West removes a spoon from his blue raspberry–stained lips. “Just a thought I had,” he says cryptically as another pleasant quiet settles between us. “Do you have to work this week?” He drags his fingers deliciously through my hair.
“Hmm, not really. I should stop neglecting my inbox sooner or later. And I have emails to send, appointments to reschedule. It’ll only take a couple of hours.”
He nods. “Use the office. I’ll clear out a space for your things.”
“Don’t bother. I can send emails from anywhere.” I rarely work at a desk even at home. I write from my bed as often as not.
His chest tenses against my shoulder blades. In a blink, he’s relaxed again. “I’d like to take you on a date tomorrow.”
I lift his arms and wrap them around my middle as I fight an inevitable smile. “That can be arranged. Under one condition.”
“Name it.”
“I get to plan Wednesday.”
“You’re on, Darling.” I settle my head against his chest under a canopy of stars, and we watch the sky turn from purple to navy to black, my fingers tracing lightly over his forearms while his draw lazy swirls down my neck, across my thighs, and under my shirt.
“I haven’t seen stars like this in years,” I say, mesmerized by the glow above us.
“I thought that might be the case.”
“Thank you, West. I’ll miss this view when I’m back to freezing my ass off in the city.
” I can’t remember the last time I felt so content.
My brain is usually taken up by an endlessly repopulating list of things I should be doing.
Drafting. Editing. Reading. Promo. Here, my mind is blissfully quiet, and the only thing that dampens my mood is the regret I already feel that this perfect, stolen week will have to end.
He motions between us. “Is there anything about our new situation that makes you nervous or unsure?”
I lift my chin and press a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “Right now? No.” He hums lightly in response. “What about you?” I ask.
“Fuck yes.”
“What?”
“Next week,” he says bluntly, tiptoeing right to the edge of one of those big conversations.
I cinch his arms tighter around me, and we quietly watch the stars for another hour, neither of us daring to ruin the perfect moment.
When West knocks on his own bedroom door the next evening, my nerves are out of control.
I kicked him out after our joint shower so I could get ready without the distraction of his hands and his mouth and his body, and in sixty short minutes I became a wreck.
How does one go on a date with the man they’ve been in love with for more than a decade?
West picks up a lock of my hair and lets it slip through his fingers. “I could get used to this.”
“What?”
“Picking you up for a date from my bedroom.”
I search my brain but can’t find a response. When West knows what he wants, he is not a subtle man. And I understand where he’s coming from. We’ve always been all-or-nothing, and neither of us wants to lose more time when we’ve already lost so much.
After a beat too long, he says, “I have something to show you.” He moves into the room and opens the drawer to his nightstand. He ruffles through the stack of papers inside the drawer, and my already-nervous stomach squirms uncomfortably.
“I went through that drawer the night of the fire!” I blurt.
He looks over his shoulder, mouth quirked.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t read anything. I was just so curious about you and your life.
I wanted something tangible or…I don’t know.
I also touched everything in your shower and used your razor.
” I slap my hand over my mouth as West laughs.
He pulls a letter from the stack and hands it to me. “What’s this?” I ask.
“Read it.”
I unfold the paper, and my heart drops when I read the first line.
Mars,
I’m sorry. I love you. I’m so, so sorry.
It’s the apology he wrote seven years ago and never sent.
West shoves his hands in his pockets and waits. I fold the letter and hand it back to him. “I don’t need to read this.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve already forgiven you.”
He frowns. “I would feel better if you read it.”
“I don’t need you to grovel, West. Not even a past version of you.”
He sighs, looks strangely defeated. “Will you at least take it with you when you go back to New York?”
“I told you, I don’t need this to know that I”—my eyes widen at the words that almost slipped out. As if it wouldn’t be crazy to admit forty-eight hours into this thing—“that I’ve already forgiven you. I’m ready to move on.”
“You think that now, but there’s every chance in the world that when you leave, you’re going to remember that I ruined your life, and you’ll slip away again, despite the fact that I’m trying desperately to hold on to you this time.
If you have this letter as a reminder, I might stand a fighting chance. ”
“Hey, that’s not going to happen.” I grab his wrist.
He looks down at where I’m holding him, his hand still tucked in his pocket. “What is going to happen when you leave?”
I tug his hand out of his pocket and slip my fingers through his. “Take me on that date, West.”
He tucks the letter into my suitcase on our way out.
“Being here makes me feel old.” I hook my ankle around West’s under the table at Bison Witches as he wordlessly slides his pickle toward me, just like he did on our first date. West and I are without a doubt the only people over thirty in the entire bar.
“Try teaching high school. I feel like I’ve got one foot in the grave.”
“It is still so weird to me that you’re a teacher.”
“You don’t trust me to educate the young minds of America?”
“Please. I bet you’re the best teacher that school has. It’s just odd that one of the most important aspects of your life was unknown to me until a couple of days ago.”
West nods. “I feel like I know everything and nothing about you at the same time.”
His statement lands uncomfortably. I hate thinking of him as a stranger. “Don’t say that. It makes me sad.”
“Nonsense. That’s what the date is for.” He knocks his foot against mine, a reminder that we’re in this together. We don’t have to spend another day of our lives as strangers if we don’t want to. “Tell me the stuff I don’t know.”
“Like what?”
He tilts his head side to side. “Off the top of my head…Is Daphne still your roommate? How do you take your coffee? What time do you wake up in the morning? How many hours a day do you write? Do you write with music on? TV in the background? Total silence? What do you do when you’re sad?
How are your parents? Do you visit? Do they visit you?
Where do you live? Do you own your apartment?
Do you like living in the snow? Where do you spend Christmas?
What makes you feel better when you’re sick?
What’s the last perfect book you read? Do you want any more tattoos? A pet? Kids?”
I throw my head back and laugh. “That’s off the top of your head? Holy shit, West.”
“I want to know you, Mars. Sue me.”
When I realize he’s being sincere, I reach across the table and take his hand. “Where do you want me to start?”