Chapter 29 Adela
I can't stop thinking about how tall he is.
Just the physical fact of him standing behind me.
He was close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him without being touched.
The width of his shoulders when I turned and had to look up further than I expected.
The way the air in the library felt different with him in it — heavier, charged, like the pressure before a storm.
I recall the tone in his voice when he commented on my essay, the way he read over my shoulder quietly, and his voice right next to my ear.
I'm lying in bed staring at the ceiling at ten o'clock on a Tuesday night, thinking about a man's height, his voice, his proximity, his smarts.
I pick up my phone and text Beckett.
Come over.
He arrives twenty minutes later, and his hair is a little grown out, his blue eyes still striking.
It’s been a minute since I’ve seen him, and everything about him pulls me in.
He takes one look at me and something in his expression shifts.
He knows my moods in a way that should probably feel more comforting than it does right now.
"It's been a while," he says.
I pull him in by the front of his shirt and kiss him before he can say anything else.
He makes a surprised sound against my mouth and then his hands find my waist, and he kisses me back, warm and sure and present in that way he always is, and I close my eyes and let myself sink into it.
He walks me backward toward the bed, and I go, pulling him with me, my fingers reaching under his shirt while his mouth moves down my throat. He's tall too. Is Cody this tall? I tiptoe to kiss Beckett’s lips, and it reminds me that Cody is tall like this, too.
What is it about tall men?
Beckett’s tongue brings me back to the moment. He's always unhurried, like he has all the time in the world and wants to use it carefully. He feels like my safe place.
His shirt comes off first, then mine, and his mouth finds my throat, and I tip my head back and let him.
His hands slide down my waist, my hips, taking his time the way he always does, and I feel myself relaxing into it — the familiar warmth of him, the specific way he touches me like he's in no hurry and wants me to know it.
He lays me back, and his mouth moves down my body. I thread my fingers through his hair as he pulls my thong off. I pull him back up by the hair because I need more than this.
He pushes down his boxers and aims for me. His dick presses into me slowly. I feel every inch as he enters, and I exhale against his shoulder, my fingers pressing into his back.
He feels good. He always feels good. I match his rhythm, my hips rolling up to meet him, and for a while there's nothing except this — the heat of him, the friction, the pressure building low and slow and inevitable.
Then I shift. I want to turn around, so I hesitate.
He pulls back and looks at me, something flickering in his expression.
“Are you okay?”
I nod, pushing his chest. He exits me, and then I move.
I turn around, looking back at him. He watches my face when he pushes back inside me from behind.
I groan from the pleasure, gripping the headboard.
This feels completely different. He’s deeper, I’m fuller, and every movement hits somewhere that makes my breath stutter.
His chest is warm against my back.
His hands find my hips and grip, and he starts to move, and I stop thinking.
He's close behind me, his mouth finding the curve of my neck, his chest pressed to my back, and I push back against him, chasing the sensation, and he gives me more — harder, deeper — and I press my forehead to my forearm against the headboard and feel it. Fuck, he feels so good.
And then he drops his mouth to my ear.
"You feel—" His voice is low. Rough at the edges. Close.
The heat of his breath against my ear short-circuits something in me.
The proximity reminds me of Theo.
Not consciously. Not as a choice. Just — the library.
He was standing behind me. That specific warmth I felt before he said a word, the width of him, how I had to look up further than I expected when I turned around.
His voice in my ear when he leaned down — you're implying it when you should be stating it — and the way my entire nervous system responded before I could stop it.
I wonder what his hands would feel like on my hips.
The thought makes me… oh, God.
My whole body tightens — sudden and overwhelming — and I push back harder against Beckett, and his grip tightens on my hips, and he makes a low sound against my neck.
I reach back and grip his thigh and pull him deeper, and the pressure crests and breaks all at once, my body shuddering through it while I bite down on my forearm to muffle the sound.
I don’t want him to stop.
My phone rings from the nightstand. It’s face down, so I ignore it, letting it ring. Beckett doesn’t seem to mind. But as soon as the call ends, it rings again directly after.
Beckett hits a spot, and I cry out, reaching for my phone.
I flip it over, and my body stills when I see Judge Ravenshaw’s contact.
Beckett keeps going, and I let the call go to voicemail. Two seconds later, the screen lights up again. It’s Judge Ravenshaw again. Horror floods through me. Did Cody die?
“Beck,” I warn, but he’s pounding into me so hard I can’t form the words.
“Come for me,” he whispers, thrusting into me harder.
My face falls into the pillow. He wipes the hair from my face and keeps the fast pace. Before I know it, he’s rubbing my clit and forcing my body to orgasm, even with the idea that Cody may have died just now.
The thought makes my body relax. Now I don’t have to worry. Beckett pulls out my orgasm, listening to my body. And then he comes shortly after.
We stay like that for a moment. Both breathing too hard. His forehead against my spine.
Then he presses his lips to my shoulder blade and rolls to the side, and I collapse onto the mattress. I feel intense guilt for what was in my head when I just orgasmed.
When I reach for my phone, it buzzes again.
“Shit,” I mutter.
I accept the call.
"Adela." Judge Ravenshaw's voice is careful. "I apologize for calling multiple times at this hour."
"It's okay," I say. My voice comes out steadier than it has any right to. "What's—"
"Cody is awake," he says. "He came around this afternoon. The surgery was successful, and he's stable." A pause. "He's been asking for you since he opened his eyes."
Everything stops.
Not gradually. All at once.
What?
Beckett feels it — the way my whole body goes from present to absent in a single second — and he lifts his head and looks at me, and I am staring at the ceiling with the phone against my ear and the judge's voice still going.
"Visiting hours begin at eight tomorrow," he's saying. "I know he would want to see you as soon as possible. He keeps—" His voice catches, just slightly, the first crack in the composure. "He keeps saying your name."
I don’t know what to say. What am I supposed to say? I thought he died, wished it even, and now… now…
“Adela? Are you there?”
Shit. I start crying.
"Yes, sorry. I will be there first thing tomorrow morning," I cry. "Send me the address and the room. I will be there."
I hang up, not hearing another word, Cody’s dad says.
The room is very quiet.
Beckett is watching my face. “What is it?”
"He's awake," I whimper.
Beckett doesn't reply.
And that's when it hits me. Not gently. Just all at once, the way grief always arrives when you think you've already dealt with it. My eyes fill before I can stop them, and I press my hand over my mouth, and the sound that comes out is embarrassing in its rawness.
I don't want to go.
I don't want to walk into that hospital room and look at his face and perform the version of myself that existed before I knew.
Before the videos and the laptop and the flowers and the card that said crying won't bring him back. Before I started sleeping with Cody’s teammate.
Before I stood in a library and let a stranger read over my shoulder and felt more seen in twenty minutes than I did in two years.
I don't want to do any of it.
"I don't want to go," I admit out loud. My voice cracks on it. "I just want to stay here. I don't want to face him."
Beckett sits up fully. "Then don't."
I shake my head, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
"I have to. If I don't show up—" I breathe through it, pulling myself back into the cold, calculating part of my brain that has been running quietly underneath everything else for weeks now.
"If I don't show up, it looks wrong. It makes me a suspect.
It upsets him, which upsets his father, which—" I stop. "I don’t have a choice, Beck."
I fall into his arms and cry. He holds me closely.
After I’ve cried for a few minutes, he says, "I'll take you."
"No." The word comes out before I've fully decided it. "I need you to leave right now. I can’t do this with you anymore."
Something moves across his face. Not hurt exactly. Something more complicated than hurt.
He nods once.
He finds his shirt from the floor and pulls it on with a quietness of someone choosing not to make something harder than it already is. He picks up his jacket. His keys.
At the door, he stops.
"Adela."
I look at him.
He seems like he wants to say something. Several things. He stands there for a moment holding all of them.
"Call me after," he says.
Then he's gone.
I sit on the edge of my bed for a long time.
Then I get up, turn the shower on, and stand under it until the water runs cold and I feel something closer to functional. I get dressed in my pajamas.
I sit on the bed again and pick up my phone.
I call Maeve.
She answers on the second ring, her voice shifting immediately from sleepy to alert when she hears mine. "What happened?"
"He's awake," I say. "Cody's awake."
The sound she makes is pure relief. Uncomplicated, genuine, and everything I can no longer afford to feel. "Oh, thank god. Oh, Adela—"
"I'm going to the hospital in the morning," I say, trying to hold back my cry.
"I'll meet you there. What time?"
"Visiting hours start at eight."
"I'll be there at seven fifty. Are you okay? Are you—"
"I'm okay," I force myself to say. "I'll see you tomorrow."
I hang up and lie back on my bed and sob.
Maeve will show up tomorrow full of genuine love for a boy she has no reason not to trust. She'll probably cry. She'll hold my hand. She'll think my tears are relief.
And I will stand next to her and perform every single second of it.
Because that's what this requires now.
I close my eyes and wish to wake up from this nightmare.