Chapter 11
NATE (SENIOR YEAR, HIGH SCHOOL)
Acool breeze sweeps through my open window, fluttering the physics notes that are laying across my bed.
The chill of the wind bites into the skin of my bare arms, the mild fall weather is steadily cooling as we approach the winter months.
I’m stretched out with my back against the headboard, Ellie’s head rests in my lap as she lays diagonally on my king-size bed.
She has a book balanced on her bent knees while highlighting the text inside.
We are studying for our finals, but the only thing I’ve been productive at studying is Ellie’s profile.
Three more weeks of physics and then I am on to my final semester of high school.
I’ve managed to bring my grade up significantly—enough to maintain my football scholarship.
Ellie is no longer tutoring me, but we don’t spend any less time together.
We’re with each other nearly every day of the week now…
every night of the week too. The demand to touch, see, feel one another has become as essential as water, a need as crucial and basic as breathing.
When I’m not with her I feel incomplete, as though my life no longer operates fully.
Call it what you want, codependency, trauma-bonded…
but this thing between us? It was inevitable.
We played with fate, tying our lives together in a way that’s unbreakable. We became soulmates.
Ever since that night.
Leaving the front door open saved my life.
Ellie was concerned when she hadn’t heard back from me.
She’d driven by twice, seeing my car in the driveway, but told herself she was overreacting.
The third time, she saw my front door wide open and was filled with deep-rooted anxiety, her senses screaming at her that something was wrong.
She doesn’t even remember leaving her car, she was just compelled to get to me.
She didn’t knock or ring the bell for anyone, she walked right in searching for my room.
I open the bathroom door and see her standing there, this beautiful angel with so much fear in her eyes, fear that I put there.
I drop to my knees; they connect with the hard tile as pills spill from my hand.
She takes one look at me, the Xanax scattering on the floor, and drops to her knees beside me.
She doesn’t say a single word. She just holds me as I silently cry.
Minutes pass by before she tugs at my hand and helps me up off the bathroom floor.
She holds onto me as we walk into my bedroom and get into my bed.
Curling into me, she hitches her leg over mine, making sure our bodies are flushed together.
She gently caresses my face, my head, my neck, carefully avoiding my injuries while peppering little kisses anywhere her lips can reach.
She cares for me in a way I’ve never felt before.
This is all new to me, her tender touch, her whispered concern as she offers sweet words of comfort.
I’ve never been consoled before, not even as a child.
Her soothing support heals something deep inside my soul.
I fight the shame I feel over receiving her comfort. This will be the last time I see her. She’ll realize how pathetic I am, crying like a weak, spineless man. She’ll be gone before the morning sun rises, and I will be alone again. I’ll go back to living a life without feeling anything.
I keep my eyes open, watching her, waiting for her disgust to appear.
She locks her gaze with mine, letting me see her genuine concern before closing them tight, unable to fight her fatigue from such an emotionally draining night.
I know they’ll pop open again, once she realizes she is lying next to a pathetic excuse for a man.
I watch as her breathing gets heavier and her hands gracefully fall from my face.
I close my eyes, happy for the moment of reprieve and the time I get to hold her before she wakes up and leaves me.
I feel myself begin to fade into my dreams, balancing in the fragile existence between sleep and wake.
I feel her hand feather lightly down the side of my face, rousing me from my semiconscious state.
“Stay,” she whispers when she realizes I’m awake.
My eyes flutter open to find her staring at me, not an ounce of sleep shadowing her gaze.
How long has she been watching me? I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.
She palms my cheek, tears falling from the corner of her eyes.
“If you can’t stay for you right now…stay for me. ”
She’s spent every night lying next to me since the day she found me in my bathroom.
For the last seven weeks, she sneaks out of her house and into mine, letting me hold her in my arms as we fall asleep.
Every night, just before sleep claims me, I hear her quiet whisper—her quiet reminder—that I’m needed here.
“Stay.”
As if I could possibly ever leave her.
I love her.
“What cha thinkin’ about?” she asks, extending her neck as she looks up at me. A small smile plays on her lips. “You have this panty-melting smirk on your face, and it’s doing things to me,” she says, giggling. The boldness of that statement is diminished by her shy little laugh.
I look down at her, brushing the hair out of her eyes with my free hand. “I was just thinking about how boring these notes are, and how much I’d rather be kissing you. Panty-melting smirk, huh?” I raise an eyebrow and try to recreate that smirk she’s talking about.
“So, then kiss me, Romeo,” she flirts back, despite the rosy color staining her cheeks.
I love that I can still make her blush, that she displays this shyness with me.
Despite seeing all of me, all of my ugly and all of my pain, she is unapologetic in the way she cares for me.
She tells me she needs me as much as I need her, but I can’t imagine that’s true.
I didn’t know a feeling like this could exist. This sort of all-consuming, overwhelming, irrevocable devotion.
She is everything I will ever want. She’s the only person I will ever want.
A dream I didn’t even know I had.
I never imagined I would have someone devoted to me.
Someone who wants to know all of me and doesn’t ask for anything in return.
She wants to know what my dreams are, what my ambitions are.
She—enthusiastically—makes wild plans for our future together, because she plans to have a future with me.
Backpacking through Europe, white water rafting in the , sky diving near the Grand Canyon.
She’s uninhibited in her passion, and I happen to be someone she’s passionate about.
She’s someone who sees all of me and stands by my side, taller and prouder for it.
I don’t just love her. I’m in love with her.
Endlessly.
Eternally.
I have never been more sure about anything in my life. I will love this girl until I take my very last breath. When that time comes, I will leave this earth with a smile on my face because I got to love her, because she let me love her.
I can’t imagine a better ending than that.
I bend over and capture her lips upside down, both laughing at the awkward position.
She flips over and crawls up my lap, straddling me, her knees cradling my hips.
The position aligns her perfectly, and I can’t help the groan I let out before seizing her lips again.
She starts to rock against me, more confident in her movements than she was the first time she felt me against her.
It was about two weeks after she’d started spending the night in my bed.
We were having a heavy make-out session, and I was hard as fuck.
The way I always seem to be when my hands are on her body.
She felt me against her and tentatively pushed her hips more forcefully into mine.
It was clumsy, it was awkward, we were misaligned.
I watched her move against me, coming hard into her panties, her satisfied smile making it all worth it.
Even though I had to relieve myself in the shower later that night, it was the hottest moment of my entire damn life.
Ellie doesn’t have any experience with sex, so I am letting her set the pace. Fuck am I driving myself crazy in the process, though. She’s getting bolder, more curious. Two nights ago, she removed her pajama pants, grinding against me skin to skin.
I didn’t come in the shower that night.
But I did make a mess.
“I want you.”
Just like that, my thoughts are immediately brought back to the present.
I smile gently, trying not to let her see my excitement. I would never want to pressure her into something she’s not ready for. “I want you too, baby.”
“No…Nate…I… I want you. I want to…to do this.”
“Pip, trust me when I tell you I want to do this more than you can even imagine.” I lift my hips up from under her to prove my point. “I just don’t want you to do something you regret because you think I need it.” I won’t risk this girl for anything, especially not my fucking hormones.
“I could never regret you, Nate. Never. I want it to be you. I want it to… only be you,” she says, looking down timidly.
Her cheeks flame with that admission, as if she thinks I could possibly reject her.
Yeah, right. My cock’s been trying to burst out of my pants since she uttered the words, “I want you.”
“Ellie, look at me,” I demand, my voice more serious than it has ever been with her.
She raises her eyes to mine, and her expression gives me the confidence to say what I say next.
“I care about you. So fucking much. I will still want you tonight,” I lean in to kiss her cheek, “tomorrow,” nose, “next month,” forehead, “and next year,” lips.
“I’ll want you whether you give yourself to me right now, or the night I remove a white gown from this beautiful body.
You’re my forever. I don’t care that I’m eighteen.
I’m smart enough to know that a connection like this is rare.
What we have? It’s Eternal. I already know it will always only be you. ”
I want to say the three words that will forever change our story. But not yet. The timing has to be perfect.
A torrent of tears fall down Ellie’s cheeks, she swipes at them trying to dry her face. It’s useless, they continue to trickle from her eyes, soaking the sleeves of her shirt she mops them up with. Her reaction has me starting to think I said something wrong, but she finally breaks the silence.
“I care about you too, Nate,” she whispers, quiet but sure.
Her voice is muffled from all her tears, but I can hear the honesty as she speaks the words.
“I… like, really, really want you now.” She lets out a wet laugh, and I smile at her beautiful, swollen eyes.
I lean in and kiss her salty lips in complete disbelief that this girl is mine.
She loves me.
She doesn’t need to say the words for me to hear them. Words I’ve only ever heard from Emmy. It feels like all the stars have permanently aligned and I’m finally on the path I was designed to be on. We are fated. Ellie is my purpose, our souls connected by a destiny we have no control over.
Ellie leans back, putting space between our mouths.
She gives me a small smile and reaches down to grab the bottom of her shirt.
She glances up, staring directly into my eyes as she lifts her shirt over her head.
She doesn’t sever the connection, still looking at me when her face reappears and her shirt is discarded on the floor.
I take a deep breath as I get lost in the beauty of her body.
She slides out of my lap and stands in front of my bed.
She unbuttons her jeans and slowly glides them down her legs, making a show of it.
I lean back against my headboard, giving her my full attention.
She walks back over to me, her matching bra and panties barely covering the rest of her body.
I suck in a breath when she climbs back into my lap, seating herself directly over my impossibly hard erection.
She runs her hands along the straps of her bra and looks up at me with mock innocence.
“Think you can help me out with this next part?”