Chapter 13 #2
“Both,” I said, surprising even myself.
Something dark and electric flickered in his eyes. He dipped his head and kissed me, so hard like he was trying to burn himself into me, into every scar and fragile place he could find. He slid his hands down my sides, lifted me up, and wrapped my legs tightly around his waist, without thinking.
He walked us backward into the tiny living room, never breaking the kiss.
His mouth slanted over mine, teeth scraping against my lower lip, tongue coaxing me open.
He didn’t put me down this time. My thighs still gripped around him, trusting him to hold me, all of me, but not treating me like something breakable.
When he finally tore away just enough to look at me, he said it again, this time a vow, “You’re mine tonight, Alicia. And I will worship your beautiful body as long and in as many ways as you let me.”
And for a little while—a long, endless while—there was no past, no future, no fear that my dad or brother might see what I was doing. And how I was falling into this man.
Just the heat of his mouth, the rasp of his hands against my skin, cupping and biting my braless breasts, the low groan he made when he finally, finally sank into me, still standing and holding me tight, and the soft moans I didn’t even realize were mine, or his, when the world went spinning apart again.
Later, much later, when we lay tangled on the couch, my body aching in the best ways, his breath hot against my collarbone, he pressed a kiss against the hollow of my throat.
“I’ll really sue you,” he mumbled sleepily, “for breaking my brain to bits. Again.”
He chuckled against my skin.
“I’ll sue you for breaking in and risking my Dad getting a heart attack,” I whispered.
“But you started it, girl.”
The first thing I noticed when I woke up wasn’t the sunlight filtering weakly through the blinds.
It wasn’t the ache low in my belly or the sore spots blooming across my muscles.
It wasn’t even the smile pulling at my lips before I could stop it.
It was the absence. The space beside me was empty.
A blanket was pulled up around me, careful, almost protective, but the body heat was gone.
The steady rhythm of someone else’s breathing was gone.
This man had a way of leaving the bed, early.
For a second, confusion prickled under my skin. Had I dreamed it all again? The way he had whispered against my skin: filthy promises and even filthier actions?
No. The ache between my legs was too real for dreaming.
And the quiet thumping in my chest, though?
That was new. I sat up slowly, wincing a little.
My room (how did we make it from the living room sofa?) was still, bathed in pale morning light.
And then I saw it: neatly folded on the chair by my vanity table.
His leather jacket. It still smelled faintly of him: cedarwood, old books, something rain-drenched.
My fingers carefully pleated the sleeve before I could think better of it.
Underneath the jacket, tucked just barely into the pocket, was a scrap of paper.
The familiar handwriting I could now recognize from a mile away.
I unfolded it carefully: Some people never go crazy.
What truly horrible lives they must lead.
“Your new favorite author. Not too bad, you must admit, girl.”
A smirk tugged at my mouth despite everything. Of course: Bukowski. Or Chinaski. I pressed the note against my chest for a second, grateful and absurdly uneasy at the same time.
Just him being him: wildly poetic, intuitive, beautiful, with an ounce of sadness. Like we all.
My head thudded back against the cushions, eyes closing.
I curled up for another few minutes, breathing him in from the jacket like a teenager with her first real heartbreak.
But no: no heartbreak. On the contrary, this man had found a way to my heart and helped me put my broken, scarred pieces together, more than I would like to admit.
This molten, confusing, giddy thing sitting in my chest, fighting with uncertainty like a living animal, was just something I’d been living with since the crash. My phone buzzed on the night table.
Paul?:
Didn’t want to wake you. Girl, you are something else. And you are the survivor, not me.
PS. I think I left half my soul (and definitely my jacket) behind. Keep them both safe for me.
I smiled into the blanket, absurdly warm. I texted back:
Me:
They’re under lock and key, Andersen. Just come claim them before anyone gets suspicious.
Paul?:
Planning on it. And planning on you too, all the time, every minute of every day, if you’re not careful.
I laughed into my wrist, body still sore. Life, at the moment, was almost too sweet to bear, and that was scaring me.
Didn’t all things fall in the end?
Dad was in the kitchen when I crept downstairs, Paul’s leather jacket slung over one arm like contraband.
“Morning,” he said, not looking up from his paper.
His voice was easy, casual. Too casual. I eyed him warily. Did he hear us last night? Had we woken the whole damn neighborhood? I mumbled something about needing to leave early for work and bolted for the door. Dad just shook the paper once, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. Jesus, he knew.