Thirty
Liam
Steam curls around our naked bodies while water fills the tub.
“Come here.” I steady her with my outstretched hand as she eases herself into the steaming water, her skin flushed pink from the heat and holding memory of our bodies tangled together in the grass.
The water ripples around her breasts and long brown hair as she settles, looking up at me with those almond dark eyes that still make my stomach drop even after what we just did. I step in behind her, careful not to slosh water over the edges, and pull her back against my chest.
“Is it too hot?” I ask, my lips against her damp hair.
“It's perfect,” she murmurs, her fingers tracing patterns on my thigh beneath the water.
We sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes, my arms encircling her, breathing together.
“It’s probably a little too late to ask you if you’re…” she says in a chuckle, but I sense she wants to run away from the conversation.
“Clean?” I say the word for her.
“Yeah...?”
“I am, I wouldn’t be protecting you the way I have been and be sexually unsafe to you.” I reassure her, gently twisting her long hair in my fist. “It was my first time… being bare. I guess we both experienced a first tonight.” I kiss her shoulder.
She looks back at me, surprised. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
Her back rising and falling against my chest, and the weight of her against me, trusting and all of her finally being mine, makes something possessive stir deep in my chest. My arms tighten around her instinctively, and I press my face into the curve of her neck, inhaling her scent.
I'll never be able to let her go. Not now, not after everything.
The thought spirals through me, that my breath catches.
“Liam?” She turns slightly.
“Yeah, I just...” My voice sounds strange even to my own ears. “I can't let you go,” I whisper, “I don't think I'll ever be able to. Don’t ever make me have to let you go.”
She shifts slightly, turning to look at me over her shoulder.
“You’ve fucked me up Sara.” My hand slides up to her waist, bracing her as I point to my temple with the other, “Up here. You’ve fucked me up to a point I didn’t think I could feel how I feel for another human.
The thought of you with someone...” I trail off, my lips finding their way from her shoulder to the hollow of her neck.
Her eyebrows draw together, confusion clouding her eyes.
“There isn’t anyone…” she says, her voice soft but wary.
The question that's been burning in me finally slips out.
“Tyler. You let me believe he was your first.”
Her body tenses against mine, and I feel her pulse quicken under my palm where it rests against her collarbone. The water laps gently against the sides of the tub as she shifts.
“I never actually said that,” she says carefully.
“But you knew what I thought. You knew I believed it,” I retort.
“You were too busy hating me to ask, and I honestly didn’t care what you thought.
” She turns to get a better look at me. “You just...
assumed. And I didn't correct you because you never gave me the chance. You were so convinced I was some kind of— ” She stops herself, her eyes searching mine. “You were wrong about me.”
“So, what happened between the two of you then?” I ask, feeling some legitimacy in asking her this question knowing I have no right, and I’d accept her telling me to fuck off.
“I…I missed Joe, but I couldn’t give Tyler what he didn’t deserve. It would’ve been the equivalent of me letting myself drown, hoping for numbness.” Her gaze is so confident, stoic, but holds a deeper sorrow I know I’ll never fully heal for her.
My grip tightens around her breast, cupping her face in my other hand. Everything I thought I knew about her.
“You're right,” I admit, the words painful as they scrape past my pride. “I had made up my mind about you."
She watches me carefully, her eyes searching mine for sincerity.
“If I'm honest, I was terrified of how much I wanted you from the beginning. It was easier to paint you as something you weren't than to admit how fucking vulnerable you made me feel.” I explain.
Her eyes drop to where our bodies meet beneath the water, her fingers tracing absent patterns on my chest. She takes a deep breath, her ribs expanding against mine.
“Did you...” she hesitates, voice suddenly fragile as glass. “Did you feel this way about me when Joe was still alive?”
Her question hits me like a physical blow. My brother's face flashes in my mind—his smile, so like mine but somehow brighter, more genuine. This is the question I’ve been dancing around in my own head. I have buried these feelings so deeply that I am completely unable to uncover them.
“I don't know what you want me to say,” I finally manage, my voice hollow, rubbing my forehead.
“The truth,” she whispers. “Just the truth, Liam.”
“I always thought you were beautiful. Anyone with eyes would, but Joe...” I trail off, memories of my brother's grin when he talked about her flooding my mind. “I tried not to.” The words feel like a betrayal even now. “I buried it so deep I convinced myself it wasn't there.”
She nods slowly, her eyes still downcast, a sadness coming over her.
“Baby, look at me.” I lift her chin to me. Her eyes meet mine, glistening, the vulnerability in her gaze makes my chest ache.
“I genuinely thought you hated me Liam,” she whispers, her voice breaking on the last word. “All this time, the way you looked at me, like I was something you wanted to annihilate. I thought—”
“I couldn't look at you without seeing him.” I interrupt, the words tumbling out before I can stop them. “Without seeing everything I'd lost and, in my mind, I could never have you. You were everything I wanted and could never allow myself to want. A twisted twist of fate.”
Her body presses against mine, our heartbeats syncing in a rhythm that feels both foreign and familiar.
“When Joe died, I thought I'd lost everything, Sara. It hurt so bad, it still feels suffocating. He was always the better half of me. The one who knew how to love without borders, but I resented anyone that made me feel weak.”
“Weak?” she whispers, her eyes searching mine.
“You are my weakness, Sara. I would never have acted on us if he were still around,” I continue, needing her to understand. “Never. You were never meant to be mine.”
A sudden shift occurs in Sara's expression, something flashing behind her eyes that I can't quite read. She sits up straighter onto her knees between my thighs, facing me, water cascading down her body, my breath catching at her grace and beauty, and I cup her face.
“Weakness,” she repeats, the word soft on her lips. She reaches up, her wet fingers tracing the contour of my jaw, “is that what you think this is?”
I swallow hard, unable to look away from her gaze. “What else would you call it?”
She shakes her head slowly, her eyes full of redemption.
“Strength, Liam. The courage to feel something, despite everything. Despite loss.”
Her lips softly find mine, kissing me so gently as she continues, “I've been holding onto ghosts, we both have. I've been so afraid of betraying Joe's memory that I've been punishing us both.”
I reach for her, but she shakes her head, needing to finish what she's started.
“I kept thinking, hoping, that if I let myself feel this—feel us, it would somehow erase what Joe and I had.” She places her palm against my chest, right over my heart, and I’m enthralled by her.
“But that's not how any of this works, does it? I was looking at it all wrong. It doesn't replace. It grows.” She leans into my neck, kissing me right under my ear. “It grows Liam, and you don’t have to worry about anyone else because despite how painful the road has been, I'm exactly where I want to be. I’d breathe in all the hurt and heal all of my scars over and over if it still led me to you. And perhaps destiny always intended me to be yours. We will never know for sure, but I am certain of it now.”
If Joe were still alive, would she ever be mine?
Answers I’ll never find, but I have drawn a truth that was hidden beneath her gaze for far too long, and her words break something open inside me.
I move forward, my mouth locks onto hers, my hands sliding into her wet hair, cradling her head as I pour everything I want to say into the kiss.
She gasps against my lips in abandon, her body arching into mine.
“Sara,” I breathe against her mouth, barely breaking contact. “You're not my weakness. You're my ruin.”
I kiss her deeper, hungrier, as if I'm trying to consume the very essence of her confession.
My hands roam over her skin, tracing the curve of her spine, the swell of her hips.
She responds with equal fervor, her fingers digging into my shoulders, anchoring herself to me.
I lift her closer onto my lap, her legs straddling me, our bodies pressed together in the cooling water.
“I've been drowning for years. Since before Joe died. I never thought I deserved to be happy… Never. And you have the power to make me so fucking happy, baby.”
“I know… and you deserve it. You deserve it so, so much.”
She raises herself slightly. I feel her warmth hovering just above my cock, a promise suspended between us. Then she lowers her mouth to mine, kissing me with such tender ferocity that I nearly come undone right there.
In one fluid, uncertain motion, she sinks down onto me, her body taking me in inch by inch, her breath catching with each small descent.
Her face tightens with a crease between her brows, lips parting around a soft, broken sound that sits somewhere between pain and want.
I feel every centimeter of her heat closing around me, the unbearable slowness of it pulling a gasp from my throat that I press against her lips.
My hands find her hips and grip hard, fingers pressing into her skin. The brief, distant thought that I might bruise her only makes me hold tighter.
“Guide me…” she whispers, pleading breathily.
“Fuck,” I breathe, my forehead pressed against hers as she begins to move with my hands helping her.
Her rhythm is intentional, achingly slow, each rise and fall of her body sending waves of pleasure crashing through me. Water spills over the edge of the tub and the bathroom floor could flood, I wouldn’t care.
I could live inside her, her warmth, how tight she is around me.
Her body rising and falling on mine, our connection so much deeper than physical and while she’s hesitant to roll her hips, there's something unbearably erotic about guiding her, teaching her, watching her discover what brings her pleasure and me being the one to experience it with her.
“Like this,” I whisper, my hands on her waist, showing her how to grind forward slightly at the bottom of each stroke. I feel a satisfaction surge through me when she follows my lead and gasps in a soft moan, her eyes flying wide with surprise.
“Are you so full of my cock, baby?” I murmur against her and cup her face, thumb brushing across her cheekbone as I thrust up into her, and she rides me harder, faster.
“Liam,” she gasps, “I'm close—I can't—”
Helping her chase her release, I cup one of her breasts and bring it my mouth, lapping my tongue around her nipple. “You’re doing so good my beautiful girl,” I tell her.
Her eyes flutter closed, her head falling back, her hair cascading down her back as her movements become more erratic.
“I've got you,” I whisper, watching her face contort with pleasure. “Let go for me, Sara.”
When she shatters, I'm right there with her.
Her arms wrap around my neck, clinging to me as if I'm her lifeline and waves of pleasure crash through us both.
Her grip tightens around me, almost suffocating, and she cries out against my shoulder, her entire body trembling.
My own release hits me like a freight train, pulsing inside her as I grip her hips and pull her down one last time hard against me.
Her name tears from my throat in a hoarse shout that echoes off the bathroom tiles.
For a moment, we're suspended in perfect, breathless unity as her walls clench around me, drawing out every drop I empty inside her.
I pant against her neck, my heart hammering so hard I think it might crack my ribs.
“Fuck, baby.” I chuckle.
She collapses against me, completely spent, her body going slack in my arms. I cradle her to me, pressing reverent kisses to her temple, her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth.
My lips trace the delicate line of her jaw, down the column of her throat, across her shoulders.
I can't stop touching her, tasting her, worshiping every inch of her.
I feel her smile against my skin, the curve of her lips pressed to my shoulder, “We should get out before we turn into prunes,” I murmur against her temple, feeling her small laugh vibrate through her body in my arms.
“Mmm, okay.” She hums, making no effort to move.
I grin at her reluctance to go and press one last kiss to her forehead before lifting us both from the cooling water. She shivers as the air hits her wet skin, and I quickly reach for the plush towel hanging nearby. With gentle movements, I wrap it around her slender frame.
“Come here, my beautiful.” I lift her into my arms again and carry her to the bedroom. She feels perfect, her damp head nestling against my chest.
“Am I sleeping on the couch since I don’t have a bed anymore?” She laughs softly against my skin as we move toward my bedroom.
“The fuck you are,” I say with unmistakable dominance.
My bedroom is bathed in soft evening light, shadows stretching across the unmade bed, Fiasco sleeping in a ball of fur on the bottom corner.
I set her down, watching as she throws the towel to the floor, her movements slow and languid with exhaustion.
Her hair fans out in dark, wet tendrils across my pillow, and all I want is to protect her, sleep beside her naked body.
I pull on a pair of boxers and climb into bed, gathering her into my arms. Her body curves against mine perfectly, and we lie in comfortable silence as her breathing grows steadier against my chest. I trace lazy patterns on her skin, memorizing the feel of her under my fingertips.
“I should have found you sooner,” I murmur against her hair, not sure if she's still awake.
She stirs against me, humming contentedly. “You found me,” she whispers, her voice thick with approaching sleep.
I trace my finger along the curve of her jaw, torn between wanting to preserve this moment and needing answers. “Tomorrow,” I say finally, my voice low and firm. “We're going to talk about how the fuck you got on that boat.”
Her body tenses against mine. She freezes for a second and takes my hand to her chest, holding it right over her heart. I can feel its rhythm, steady and strong beneath my palm, as her eyes drift shut, and she peacefully falls asleep.