Yes, Ill take that one #3
“Actually. No promises though.” She finally steps closer. Maddy’s signature cheekiness is all over her face. “You might look annoying or say something stupid and I will not want to speak a word to you.”
“NO.” I blurt out. Panic rises through me.
Her eyes snap at me.
“Maddy.” I try to stay calm but words are coming out of me faster than I could manage. “I have spent five days trying to find a version of my life where giving you space doesn't feel fucking unbearable. There isn't one.”
I try to breathe normally, it doesn't work.
“I saw something ugly coming towards you, and my first instinct was to get rid of it before it reached you. Not because I thought you were stupid, Maddy. Because I love you, and apparently loving you has made every protective instinct I already had about ten times more fucking annoying.”
My voice comes rougher now. “So yes, I'm going to tell you things before I solve them. When they’re messy. I will fucking try. But, I'm going to fuck it up sometimes. You’re not allowed to not talk to me ever again.”
Maddy is staring at me.
I keep going because apparently this is what desperate looks like. “Maddy. I mean it. You can’t threaten me. I don’t want another five days like that again.”
“You love me?” She says it so quietly I barely register the words myself.
Oh. I didn’t want to say it like that, when we’re like this. I take a deep breath. “Yes.” It comes out more nervous than anything else I said tonight. I have no fucking idea what she is going to do with those three words. “You don’t have to say anything back.”
Why did I say that?
Maddy’s eyebrows rise.
I have somehow rejected myself on her behalf.
“I wasn’t—” I start.
“Will.” Maddy calls my name softly.
“Huh?” My throat is blocked.
“Stop buffering.”
I close my mouth.
Maddy looks at me for another second, then she steps forward and slides both arms around my waist. Her face rests against my chest, breathing me in.
Five days of Thank you, Will. Then this. Something inside me nearly breaks.
My arms come around her slowly, mostly because moving too quickly feels like I might scare the moment away. I hold her tighter.
“You're crushing me,” she mumbles against my chest. That makes me immediately loosen my arms and laugh into her hair.
Before I know anything else, her hands come up to my hair, pulling my face down to her and Maddy kisses me like the last five days no longer exist.
There's no build. She goes straight to it, all tongue and heat and both fists in my hair. She makes that tiny impatient sound I have missed so badly when I don't pull her close enough.
So I get a hand flat against her lower back and pull until her body fits perfectly against mine. And every thoughtful, emotionally intelligent thing either of us said tonight leaves my head entirely.
Jesus. She's freezing. Bare legs in February, cold hands, cold nose, and lips like the only warm thing in New Jersey.
She pushes. I let her. My back hits the upright post besides the patio.
I stop kissing her long enough to look behind me. “Did you just shove me into the basketball hoop?”
“You’re such a mood killer, Willy.” She doesn’t even open her eyes.
Then the floodlight clicks off and the whole yard goes black, and Maddy freezes with her mouth against mine.
“Don't move,” she whispers.
I stare at the shape of her face. “Why?”
“We're invisible.”
“It is a motion sensor, Maddy, not federal surveillance.”
“Shh.”
“Maddy, Nate's bedroom window is literally—”
Her hand slides under my shirt, cold fingers flatten against my stomach. And that shuts me up for good.
I catch her waist and turn us, putting her back against the post this time. My mouth finds the corner of hers, then her jaw, and the spot just below her ear, while her fingers push beneath the hem of my shirt again, wandering lower over my stomach.
My hand goes to the back of her thigh and lifts, and Maddy makes a sound that is going to have to be discussed at a later date, and she gets one leg round my hip.
I press myself closer, “I missed this.”
She pulls back enough to see my face. “I noticed.”
“My dick missed you too.” I murmur into her lips. Her hot breath grazes my cold skin.
Maddy bursts out laughing directly into my mouth.
Nope. There will be no elegant weeping in moonlight tonight.
My still girlfriend is laughing at me while I'm hard against her in our own backyard four minutes after I told her I love her for the first time.
Apparently this is the great romance of my life.
Completely fine with that.
She presses one last kiss to my mouth, slower this time, then stays there, nose brushing mine. “You're still sleeping alone tonight.”
I blink. “What?”
“I just found out you love me and might move to England. I’m still processing. That’s at least two business days.”
“You were inside my shirt thirty seconds ago.”
Her smile becomes wicked.
I tighten my hands at her waist. “Fine.”
Suspicion enters her eyes. “Fine?”
“It's after midnight in twenty-three minutes.” I grin.
Maddy’s jaw drops. “Willy.”
“Twenty-two now.”
I lean down and kiss Maddy again. Harder.
The floodlight comes back on and neither of us gives a fuck.