Chapter Two
A few hours later, I’m at my hotel bar around the corner from Halle’s apartment.
I know where it is because my name is on her lease.
I pay for it every month…and I may also get updates from the doorman.
Nothing too intrusive, just if she’s partying too much—not often, and if she’s happy—again, not often, and if she’s getting groceries or food delivered.
And okay, if any men are sniffing around.
I’m on my third drink, and I already know where the night will lead me.
I knew it, and Halle knew it too when I took her home in an Uber.
But I really was trying.
I really do want more for her and for myself, if I’m being honest, and this tradition we have every year isn’t healthy. It’s a toxic cycle I’m worried we’ll never be able to break.
What would happen on October seventh when we met other people? We’d sneak away under the ruse of needing to be with family? Screw each other’s brains out and then return to our partners? What would happen when either of us got married or had kids?
I slam down my glass on the bar, thinking about Saint having kids with someone else because it means she’s fucked someone else, and to my knowledge, she’s only ever fucked me. Even in the year we’ve been apart, I don’t think she has, but the intrusive thought slips in and throws me off kilter.
Me: Have you slept with anyone else?
Her answer is instant.
Saint: You’re so predictable. Let me guess, you’ve had three drinks?
Me: Answer my question.
Saint: Answer mine first.
Me: Yes, I’ve had three.
Saint: It’s insulting that you have to ask. Do you know me at all?
Me: As well as I know myself. But say what I need to hear.
Saint: No, Sebastian.
Me: Why?
Saint: Same reason you haven’t.
Me: Who says I haven’t?
Saint: Don’t be an asshole.
Me: How do you know?
Saint: Because I also know you as well as I know myself.
My dick throbs at her confidence. That she doesn’t need the same assurances I need. That even though I'm fighting this thing between us, I’ve been hers for years, and no other woman has had a chance. My phone vibrates again, and when I look down, I see she’s texted again.
Saint: Do you want to sleep with someone else?
I stare down at her words and let out a sigh, knowing I can show her better than I can tell her that she’s all I want.
I throw down some cash on the bar for my drinks before I walk down the block toward her apartment.
I also have a key to access her elevator, and with a nod to her doorman, who I’m sure still can’t figure out who Halle and I are to each other, I’m in the elevator pacing, my dick already hard at the thought of being this close to Halle and a bed.
Not that a bed is a necessity.
When you’ve been sneaking around for almost nine years, you've learned to be creative.
The elevator dings to let me off on her floor, and I’m in front of her door in moments.
Just as I lift my fist to knock, it swings open, and Halle’s fresh face comes into view.
She’s wearing one of my sweatshirts and a pair of my sweatpants, and it reminds me of all of the clothes she’s stolen from me over the years.
I tear my gaze from the University of North Carolina sweatshirt I definitely thought I'd lost and meet her gaze. Her eyes are red and have tears in them, and when I look at what’s in her hand, I see the last picture she and her father took together just hours before he was killed.
“Fuck.” I’m through the door, slamming it behind me and pulling her into my arms, and the dam fucking bursts. “I’m here, baby. I’m sorry.” All of my thoughts from earlier go out the window, and all I care about is comforting her however she needs me.
“You said it would get easier,” she cries into my chest.
“I know, I’m sorry.” I pick her up in a bridal carry hold as she continues to sob into my neck and hold her tight against me because it’s been years since she cried like this.
She cried the majority of the year he died, but it was like once she turned five, her heart hardened, and it was rare that she’d shed tears to this extent.
So, for her to be sobbing uncontrollably, I fear some of this has to do with my telling her “no” to continuing our carnal tradition tomorrow.
Like I’m somehow abandoning her. It was as if what we did somehow shielded her from the pain, and my saying no just reopened the wound.
“Please stop crying,” I tell her as I sit on the couch, keeping her on my lap.
“Talk to me. What’s this about?” I wipe her tears from her face and drag my nose across hers.
She doesn’t say anything at first. She just looks up into my eyes as I rub her back gently, trying to coax the words out of her. “I hate that I’m a burden to you.”
“What?” I ask, shocked because that’s the last thing I was expecting her to say.
“That you feel like you can’t move on because of what we’ve been through. That you can’t think about pursuing anyone because every October seventh, I need you.”
“Hey.” I lift her chin to meet my gaze. “This is not us. We don’t do that.
You know that you are absolutely not a burden to me.
Just like you knew I’d eventually show up here tonight, you know that on any given day, any given moment, you’re what’s on my mind.
Even with a country between us, even though we only see each other once a year, you’re here.
” I hold her hand over my heart. “You know how much I love you.” She goes to speak up, and I cut her off.
“Ah-ah, don’t try it.” I glower at her. “Not just like a sibling.” I hold her tighter.
Of all the ways I love Halle St. John, like a sibling is at the bottom of the list. I love her in so many ways and in so many roles, and they are all connected in confusing and taboo ways, in ways no one would approve of.
“I don’t know how I’m ever going to give you up,” she whispers as fresh tears stream down her face.
“Who said you have to?”
“We always say we can’t do this forever.
” She sniffles. “But I don’t know how to exist in a world where you and I aren’t doing this.
Where you’re not this person for me.” She bites down on her bottom lip.
“I’m scared no one will ever love me as much as you do, and I’m even more scared I’ll never love anyone as much as I love you.
I don’t know how I’ll ever be happy with someone who isn’t you. ”
I swallow, hearing her voice the same thoughts I’ve had a hundred times over. Thoughts that I know are very real, because while I’ve learned to live with it, there’s a constant dull ache in my chest with every day that goes by when I don’t see her.
“I have these dreams,” she continues, “dreams about Dad…” Her eyes well up again.
“I have a baby, and she runs toward him as she knows him despite never having met him, and when he picks her up, he points toward me and asks who I am, and she screams Daddy! and then I realize they’re talking about someone behind me.
Any guesses who it might be?” She looks up at me, and I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me at the thought of being the father of her baby.
I know about every single one of Halle’s dreams. I used to sit up with her and decipher them.
Ones that were flashes of the day it happened.
One of her killing the man who did this to our family.
Trivial ones like showing up on the first day of undergrad in her pajamas, or when Rachel Green from Friends was somehow in her statistics class, or the hundreds of sex dreams she had about me.
But this one is new.
“Me?” My voice is hoarse with emotion and lust, and my dick hardens when she gives me a slight nod.
“I can’t picture anyone else as the father of my children. It’s just you. It’s always been you. I know you’ll protect them and keep them safe because you’ve done that for me my whole life.”
I move her to straddle me so she’s seated directly on my cock, and instantly she moves to get comfortable, rubbing herself against me, and a whimper leaves her lips. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper when she drops her forehead to mine. “Every day I wake up and wish you didn’t have to live with this.”
“Knowing I have you makes it bearable. Slightly,” she whispers back, and her words hit me square in the chest because I’ve been able to make the worst thing in her life slightly less painful just by loving her the way I have for twenty years.
Loving her is the easiest thing in the world, and somehow it eased the hardest thing she lives with.
“You’ll always have me, baby. You know I’m always in your corner,” I tell her, rubbing my nose along hers as her lips move even closer to mine. I know it’s only a matter of time before our lips touch and will remain that way for the better part of the next twenty-four hours.
“I want more than that,” she whispers against my lips, and I know she’s already succumbing to the high of us.
She’s much less understanding about why we can’t be together once I’ve rubbed my dick against her a few times.
“Take me to bed,” she whispers against my lips. “Please, I need you. I love you.”
“I fucking need you too, Saint,” I tell her as I press my lips to hers.
I’ve kissed Saint countless times, yet it feels like that first time in her bedroom.
Shaky hands brought on by anticipation, and our hungry lips moving against each other.
I run my hands up her back, beneath my sweatshirt, and begin rubbing circles gently into her skin.
A soft sigh leaves her lips that makes my cock twitch.