Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kit
Tess strolling down a sidewalk in Loveless with the wind plastering a sundress to her legs. Tess painted blue by an overhead aquarium, chin tilted up to take it all in. Tess curled up on a ratty couch next to my mother, cooing affectionately over my baby pictures. Until now I thought I’d seen this woman in all her most beautiful forms.
But waking up to find her sleeping beside me, naked and sprawled out beneath a fluffy, white comforter? Nothing else could ever compare.
I lie completely still, afraid even the slightest movement will wake her and end this fantasy come to life. Golden spools of her hair form a fan around her head. Her pink lips are pursed, skin creamy and smooth in contrast. A freckle I hadn’t noticed before mimics a piercing on the shell of her nose. The comforter cuts across her ribs and her arms rest on top of it. Her breasts are exposed, perfectly round and pert with rosy nipples that leave me salivating. I want to devour her as much as I want to leave her be, in order to avoid defiling someone so angelic.
Impossible. It feels impossible that she exists. That I’m here with her now. And yet the rightness of it is something I’m more sure of than anything before in my life. There was a shift between us yesterday. Whatever it was left both our walls down, more so than they’ve ever been. Now all I can think about is finding a way to keep it like this for as long as possible.
I want to believe that we’ve really turned a corner. That she won’t change her mind again and retreat the moment she wakes. I want to fulfill every promise I made to her in that shower, with her body slick against mine. But apprehension stirs my gut. I’d be stupid not to consider the very real possibility that she’ll regret this as soon as the sleep has fully cleared from her eyes. It’s the anxiety of that which pulls me reluctantly from the warm bed.
The sun has yet to fully rise. Only a few milky strands of its light illuminate the room. The coffee shop in the lobby won’t open for another hour and some change, so I settle for the cheap coffee maker that sits on the counter of the kitchenette in the corner of the living area. It hisses to life, spitting out one and then another cup of black coffee, which I doctor from the selection of sugars and creamers on the tray to hopefully resemble the drink Tess enjoys every morning.
She doesn’t stir for the noise of the coffee maker, or me slipping on my shorts from yesterday. When I push open the sliding glass door in her bedroom, it’s the sound of the not-so-distant waves that finally pulls her into consciousness. She stretches like a lazy cat disturbed in its nap. Her back arches, the fullness of her breasts shifting. Then I’m the one shifting, adjusting my erection into the security of my waistband.
I half expect her to cover herself when she remembers she’s naked, but instead, when her lids crack open and she turns toward me, propping her head on her palm, I’m greeted with an uninterrupted view. She catches me looking, and responds with a bleary smile. “You’re up early.”
I clear my throat and drag my gaze up to meet hers. “Unfortunately you can take the man out of the Air Force, but there are some things about the Air Force that you can’t take out of the man. And also, you were snoring.” I wink and hold up two steaming cups of coffee. “I thought we could watch the sunrise together.”
She chuffs at the blatant lie—if anyone was snoring, it was me—but rolls toward the edge of the bed and sits up, the comforter falling to her waist. She grabs the nearest piece of clothing, which happens to be the shirt I left on the floor, and yanks it over her head.
Add Tess in my clothes to the list of my favorite views.
“I may snore, but you talk in your sleep.” She reaches me in a few easy strides and plucks a coffee from my hand, but makes no move to pass me and step onto the balcony. Instead she leans into me, every curve of hers soft against all my hard, and attempts to impersonate me with an even more affected Southern accent than her usual. “ Tess is so perfect. I’ve never wanted anyone so much. I can’t believe I didn’t sleep with her when I had the chance. ”
“If I really said all those things”—I lean down and plant a kiss on the tip of her nose—“then it’s only because they’re true.”
She didn’t expect such blatant honesty. I can tell, because her cheeks flush and she glances out to the ocean, which is calm enough to reflect the early dawn like glass.
I tap my cup to hers in the world’s laziest toast, earning back her attention. “Hope the coffee is okay. I eyeballed it based off the stuff the barista makes you, but I didn’t think adding ice would work well.”
She arches a brow, her gaze dropping to the cup she’s holding. One barely contained wince later, she swallows her first sip and says, “It’s perfect.”
My responding snort ripples the surface of my own subpar beverage. “Really testing your acting skills this morning, huh?”
“And?” She holds her arms out as though she’s offering herself up for scrutiny.
I shrug. “Needs work.”
She scoffs, finally taking this opportunity to step fully over the threshold and fold herself into one of the rattan balcony chairs. The hem of my shirt hits her just below her butt, and pools in her lap when she sits. I can’t help thinking about what lies beneath and truly kicking myself for being a gentleman last night, even if I know it was the right decision for us both. If this is the part where she turns tail and runs, then it’s a good thing I’ll never truly know what I’m missing.
“You coming?” she asks with a tipped brow.
I move silently to the other seat and lower myself, hoping my boner isn’t too painfully apparent.
The wind kicks up, stirring a few of her wild hairs. I’m sure I look no different. As soundly as I slept with her beside me, I’m probably littered with sheet wrinkles and matted hair. There’s an intimacy to it that knots my throat. I’ve missed this. Having someone to wake up next to. It’s one of the simplest pleasures. A gift you don’t even fully appreciate until it’s gone.
Tess tilts her head in my direction. “What’s got your eyebrows in a bundle?”
I try to relax my scowl, but it’s here to stay. I take a sip of coffee, letting the warmth seep from my stomach out to my limbs, easing me deeper into the chair. Then I focus on Tess, squinting against all her bright light. “I’m just trying to enjoy this moment while it lasts.”
She draws her knees to her chest and, in a flash of creamy skin, pulls my shirt up and over her knees till they’re covered. I can just make out the curve where her butt becomes her thigh. The desire to bend over and bite her there is akin to my heartbeat with its resounding throbbing in my chest.
“You planning on going somewhere?”
“No,” I say honestly. “But I’m sure you are.”
She wraps her arms around her legs, coffee in hand and cradled against her shins. Then she lays her head on her knees and peers over at me with a soft expression. “I deserve that.”
“It wasn’t meant as a dig.”
“Good, because I didn’t take it as one.” The corners of her mouth dip. One finger taps out a steady rhythm against her coffee cup. “I meant what I said, Kit. I don’t know what this means for us. What it could ever turn into. My life is in constant flux, and that’s only going to get worse after this trip. I told you I couldn’t afford to waste this time because it’s the last time. I—I don’t think I’ll be coming back to the Carmen after this year.”
She pauses for dramatic effect. The thing is, I’d be more apt to believe her if she said it with an ounce of conviction. But I don’t say that, not even when her brow furrows in question. Instead I press my lips together and nod for her to go on.
Her lips part on a heavy sigh. She blinks, and when her eyes reopen, they are still trained on my face but unfocused, like she’s seeing something else entirely. “My life needs a complete overhaul. I don’t know what it will look like when the dust has settled. But as it turns out, resisting you is almost as distracting as just accepting how I feel and letting it all play out. So that’s what I’m offering. That's all I can offer. Me, for this little window of time before everything changes and I hopefully become someone you wouldn’t even recognize as Tess Monroe.”
A tear leaks from the corner of her eye and drips onto the bridge of her nose. I set my coffee on a little glass table to my right and then drag my chair closer till I can swipe that tear from her skin with the pass of my thumb. She gazes up at me, and it’s like a fist has grabbed hold of my heart. She seems so lost. I remember that feeling. Looking up in the middle of your life and realizing you don’t want to be where you’ve ended up, yet having no clue where to go from here.
I tuck a wild hair back behind her ear, then pinch the lobe before dropping my hand. “I’m all for growth, babe. I fully believe that if you don’t like something about your circumstances, then you should go balls to the wall on fixing it. Why do you think I left the only career I’d ever known and started over in Loveless?”
A smile slowly creeps over her wobbling lips.
“But you’ve got to realize something. You will always be recognizable to me. I’d notice you in any room you walked into, find you in any crowd. There’s no changing that. You’re like a lighthouse for me. You can repaint the exterior all you want, but the light’s what draws me in.”
Her eyelids flutter closed, like she’s letting my words wash over her and soaking them all in. I bite at the inside of my cheek, wincing as the stinging pain makes my eyes burn. Or maybe it’s all the emotion festering in my chest that has me tearing up.
Purples and oranges and dusky pinks illuminate the sky and, in turn, paint Tess’s skin the softest shades of morning. I itch to touch her. To reassure her. But the truth is, I’m so far out of my comfort zone that I don’t know which way is up, only that this woman feels a lot like true north. I wish I could promise to be enough for her, but I can’t. The only thing I’m sure of is that, in whatever form, she’s more than enough for me.
“What are you saying?” Her voice is a strained whisper, nearly drowned out by the calls of seagulls waking to a new day and the waves eagerly lapping at the shore.
“I’m saying that, if you’ll let me, then for the time we have left, I will not get in your way. I’ll help however I can to make this the best trip you’ve ever had.” I pluck the coffee cup from her hand and place it gently on the ground, then draw her hand into mine and squeeze. “And I’ll deal with my own broken heart when it’s all over.”
Her forehead crumples. “Kit?—”
“I’m kidding.” Deep down, I’m not so sure that I am. But that’s my own shit to deal with, not hers. “My flight home is in six days. I will get on that plane and refrain from begging you to join me. I’ll be a perfect gentleman. Though I can’t make any promises about behaving well on your next visit to Loveless.”
She giggles softly. It brightens her whole face, even as another silent tear slips from her eye.
“Do we have a deal?”
A half smile tugs at her lips, but her gaze is hazy. Wistful. Like she’s taken every single word I’ve said to heart. And I truly hope she has, because I meant them with all of my being. She shifts her hand in mine until my kind gesture becomes a firm handshake. “I suppose we do. Pleasure doing business with you.”
I let out a relieved chuckle that ends with me clearing my throat. “So what’s left on the list?”
That cute wrinkle appears between her furrowed brows. “What list?”
“You know, of things you need to do. Goals for the trip. Memories you wanna make.”
“Oh.” She sucks in a breath and sits up, dropping her legs from beneath my shirt till her bare feet rest on the concrete balcony. “I, um, don’t really have a list. Not really a list kind of girl.”
This fits perfectly with everything I know about Tess, so much so that it makes me grin. “Lucky for you, I’m the king of lists.” I retrieve my phone from my shorts pocket, relieved to find there’s a minuscule amount of battery left. I open my notes app and title the page Tess’s To-Dos for a Perfect Final Vacation .
She leans close to peer over my shoulder, the scent of the hotel shampoo in her hair making me shiver. “A little wordy, don’t you think?”
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” I add a few bullet points, then glance at her expectantly. “What do you still need to do to make this the best last visit to the Carmen that it can be?”
With pursed lips, she considers this, peering out at the ever-encroaching sun as she does. Finally, she says, “I’d like to find another whole sand dollar.”
I type that out on the first bullet point. “Next.”
“Dinner, with Mo and Alex and Jenna and Mara. The whole family.” She smiles softly and adds, “You can come, too.”
Something in her voice when she says family effectively knocks the wind out of me, but I recover quickly. “What else?”
“Crab hunting.” When I meet her gaze, she holds a finger up in warning. “I’m not explaining further, so don’t ask. It’s a Monroe tradition that’s best experienced without preconceived expectations.”
“Got it,” I say hesitantly. “Anything else?”
She sighs heavily. “I’d like to figure out what I want to do with my life.”
My shrill whistle pierces the morning air, causing a few of the early risers I’ve been running into on my jogs to glance in our general direction from their spots on the beach. One woman in a precarious downward dog tumbles over.
“What?” she asks, brow furrowed.
“Nothing.” I type it out as instructed. “Just a big ask for six days.”
“Maybe I’d have figured it out by now if you hadn’t been distracting me for the past week.”
I wave my hands in a show of innocence. “Hey now, don’t go blaming me. You’re the one who invited herself to come along to Mississippi. Could’ve had two days free of me, but no.”
“You’re right,” she sighs. “But then I’d never have seen your T-ball pictures, so I guess it was a fair trade.”
I level my gaze with hers and smile grimly, instantly tightening the air around us. “I’m glad you were there.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long while, so I drop my attention back to my phone. It’s a good enough list for the time we have left. I save the note and am about to back out of it when the phone disappears from my hand.
Tess has yanked it into her lap. I try to reach for it, but she evades me easily.
“What are you adding?”
“Just one last thing.” Her fingers fly over the screen. When she’s satisfied, she saves the note and locks the phone, handing it back to me with a satisfied grin. “There. Now, the sunrise was absolutely beautiful, but I’m still exhausted from yesterday, so I’m going back to bed. Care to join me?”
As much as my muscles are begging for a run, if only to release all this built-up tension, I hesitate. How many more chances will I get to fall asleep next to Tess? I’d be an idiot to give this one up.
“Definitely.”
“Perfect.” She stands and retreats through the small gap between our chairs, into the opening that leads to her bedroom, then dives headfirst into the covers.
I’m about to follow her when curiosity gets the better of me. I open the note and scroll to the bottom, getting hard all over again when I see what she’s added.
5. See if sex with an uncircumcised penis is any different.
I practically leap from my chair and into the room. As soon as the sliding door is shut behind me, she rolls over and smirks. “You promised to help me with all my goals, remember?”
“Am I allowed to pick which one we do first?”
Her smile is wicked when she replies, “I’ve already got one in mind. Don’t worry, I think you’ll love it.”
A shiver runs down my spine. I bet I will.