Chapter 47
NOW
Paloma
Bennett and I have weaved in a constant dance around one another for three years—except in the first week before school, the August heat muggy and overly warm.
“I didn’t celebrate my birthday growing up,” I’d confessed to him once, stretched out in a bath he’d run for me, a little tipsy on wine.
He didn’t comment, but his hands paused where he’d been smoothing the strands of my hair.
I hadn’t hesitated to tell him the date when he asked, too unfocused to notice the determined set of his brow.
Every year, he would take me to Speyside for at least one night.
Cooking for me, making me a coconut cake (which I’d discovered is my favorite after several attempts), and singing happy birthday in a low rasp.
I swam most of the day, then sat close to him in front of the bonfire while he read poems—some new, some old favorites.
It was the best day of the year for me; one of my only good days some years.
Bennett’s birthday was a different story. Because unlike me, Bennett had friends who loved him, family who wanted to spend every June 28 with him, loving on him and making him happy. A bittersweet day for me as I spent the evenings watching his stories; Rhys and Freddy’s, too.
Only once was I brave enough to show up, when the guys threw him a rager at their newly christened Hockey House.
I spent most of the night in the shadows, watching them celebrate him and play drinking games.
I was distracted by the strong column of his throat working beneath a funnel held by Freddy, though he’d had to stand on the table to reach the big goalie’s mouth at the right angle.
I stayed all night, only slightly drunk. Holden spent some of the night trying to get me to play, flirting and suggesting we could go home together. But I stayed, waiting for the chance to sleep next to Bennett in his bed.
Instead, we’d only had one moment, outside of the bathroom in a dark corner. He’d run into me, blinking slowly while his entire face melted into happy surprise.
“You’re here,” he’d said, his finger running along my cheek. I blushed and smiled.
“Happy birthday, Bennett.”
I took the frozen moment to kiss his cheek, watching his eyes close and a breath push out of him.
“Best birthday ever.” He sighed before Freddy rounded the corner calling for him to join them for King’s Cup.
I left after that, but the taste of his salty skin and genuine smile were enough to sustain me for a long time.
Now, it’s icy cold and darkly cloudy, but still classic and beautiful. Speyside always has been—the small town surrounding it, the spaced-out houses weathered and lived-in. This place has always felt like a home to me; one I keep close to my heart like a secret.
“Hungry?” Bennett asks when we step inside. He flicks on all the lights and turns on the heat. “I can get the fireplace going and we can eat?”
I nod, watching him switch the Waterfell cap around backward on his head, curls spilling out from the bill against his neck. I pull the scarf off my now-heated neck and tuck it on the hook by the door with my thick jacket, following Bennett into the dimly lit kitchen.
Perching myself on the counter, I watch him cook, accompanied by the quiet lull of music from his speaker and the sizzle of a pan.
I follow his directions to make a salad in a pretty painted porcelain bowl while he cooks. He pours me a glass of sparkling grape juice, smirking as he offers me a cheers. It all feels so domestic.
Another piece of my soul latches on to him.
“I have something for you to look at,” he says, leaving the steaks he’s cooked us to perfection to rest as he grabs his backpack.
He pauses briefly by my blue bag, noticing a bunny ear hanging out of the side where I zipped it up.
I blush, my mouth opening to defend the childish, terrified impulse to bring it along, but stop when he grazes it with his finger and looks up at me.
“‘Real isn’t how you are made, it’s a thing that happens to you.’”
I know the quote because I’d read the book over and over as a child, hiding in the far shelves of the library in elementary school where they kept the kids for after-school programs. Sometimes my mom never showed up and someone had to walk me home or call my neighbor.
But I always had that stuffed bunny, half hidden because I was terrified the real owner would come back.
It barely looks like a bunny now—not even the same color it used to be, because I’ve loved it so much.
“You read it?”
He nods. “The first night you mentioned it, I did.”
Something lodges heavy in my throat. At eighteen, being loved by Bennett was overwhelming. It still is, but not in the same way. This time, I’m not afraid. I’m only in awe of him and the purity of his heart.
He doesn’t say anything more about it, grabbing a stapled packet of papers and handing them to me as he goes back to plating mushrooms, potatoes, and steak.
“It’s a list of internships for your sports program.
” He clears his throat, avoiding my gaze before I finally glance down at the printed list—programs mostly in the surrounding areas, all age groups, almost all hockey.
All the information is printed alongside it: start dates, requirements, brief pro/con lists.
“In case you want to . . . be here. Or close.”
I want you here. I want you close. It’s his way of saying words he’s not ready to speak aloud. But I hear them all the same.
“Does this mean you’ll be staying here?”
“At Waterfell,” he specifies, taking my hand where I’ve frozen at the countertop and guiding me to sit on the floor pillows near the fire. He sits across from me, one thigh pressing nearly into the brick lip of the fireplace because he’s so massive.
Bennett takes his hat off and tosses it on the sofa. He runs a hand through his hair, tousling his curls. “I switched, officially, to English with a minor in poetry. I talked with Dr. Britton last week and he helped me.”
My smile is so wide my cheeks hurt, my eyes water. “Yeah?” He nods. “God, Bennett—I’m so proud of you.”
We eat and talk quietly, about school and hockey and everything in between. And like always inside the walls of Speyside, it doesn’t feel like we’ve spent three years running in circles, apart from one another. It feels like we’ve always been this.
After he returns to refill my glass, I grab my gift for him.
“I brough you something, too,” I whisper, handing him the folded note tucked away inside a yellowed, dingy envelope I know he recognizes.
His fingers are hesitant, but he reaches out and takes it, unfolding it slowly and reading silently in the glow and heat of the fire still crackling beside us.
I can’t write poetry
But I can write it like this—place the words,
Just so
So that you read it like your favorite poem.
So you trace your eyes over the pages, sensual and slow
So that your teeth bite down on the words
(bite down on my shoulder again and let me show you)
Can I slip you into my brain? It would make it easier to show—to tell
The spaces inside my brain are filled with dust and fear and
I never wanted you to see that. To know me as that girl.
I always wanted you to just see me
p. love. (Your Love)
As I am. The girl who likes to swim and lets you wind your fingers into her hair until we are just one string tangled forever
That is to say, I love
I love you. I love you.
“It’s . . .” I suddenly stammer, heart pounding the longer he takes, the more I track his gaze roving across my words. “I wrote it. For you. Is that so weird?”
His brow furrows and his eyes rise to mine reluctantly, like he’s angry he has to look away from my heart on that paper.
“Every poem I’ve ever written has been about you,” he says, almost exasperated. His breath saws out of him again. “You . . . you wrote a poem for me?”
“I just . . . I needed you to know. To understand—”
His body covers mine, pushing me against the soft pile of blankets. His palm braces the back of my head as he lays me flat so rapidly, I forget to breathe.
Bennett’s hands make quick work of my clothes, an edge of roughness to his usual calm demeanor.
His eyes are wholly black, chest rising and falling rapidly above me.
I pull at his buttoned-up flannel until he nearly rips it off, shoving down his pants and underwear and tearing open a condom with his teeth—a fierce intensity I’ve never seen in him.
Like he’s unraveling before my eyes, nearly feral with desperation. For me.
“You write poems about me?” I ask, brain fuzzy with lust and want—but the words stick.
He thrusts into me, my entire body bowing to his strength, spine arching as he catches my waist and keeps me suspended.
“You’re the only thing in my head,” he whispers, eyes feral as they take stock of my body, the dips and curves and shadows. “I have to write about you.” A kiss to my mouth, almost too harsh, too frantic. “I’d never written a poem of my own until I met you. I didn’t think I could—and then, you.”
His fingers dig into my skin, holding me still as he thrusts hard into me again. A loud whine bursts from my lips.
“Your hair in my fingers like silk,” he says. “Let me inside of you—your mouth, your body”—he juts his hips forward, before bowing over me to kiss my temple and touch my hair—“your brain, your heart.”
He’s writing poetry with my body, his own like a pen and mine the paper. I can feel my walls tightening around him, fingernails gripping into the mass of his biceps as I struggle to hold on while falling over the precipice of pleasure.
“‘Bite down on my shoulder again and let me show you,’” he growls into the skin of my neck, fucking me harder and my teeth lance his skin as I come; my words from his mouth.
Bennett flips me over in his grip, settling my knees against the cushioned pallet beneath us as he takes me from behind, covering my entire body with his bulk. He moves my hair and kisses the back of my neck.
His hips stutter, fast and slow, then give one last deep thrust as he comes and groans into my shoulder, his lips soft—before the slight sting of a bite that makes me squeeze him again.
“I love you,” he mutters, repeated like a mantra into my hair as his fingers weave around the strands. “Your mouth. Your voice. Your hair.”
“Bennett,” I moan, my body boneless, like a heap only he’s holding up.
“Slip me into your brain,” he says, his hands circling my ribs, cradling my body like an offering as he keeps his hips flush to my ass, dipping his head to kiss the center of my back so reverently. It’s like being worshipped. “Keep me forever.”
I want to.