13. Skye
— ? —
Skye
His mouth finds mine in the dark.
Four years of anger dissolves into heat. I grip his shirt, pulling him down onto the couch, and he groans against my throat like he’s been starving for this exact moment. Like he’s been dying slowly and I’m the first breath of air.
“Tell me to stop,” he breathes against my collarbone. His hands are shaking. Actually shaking. “Tell me and I will.”
I should. Every rational cell in my body screams at me to push him away, to remember what he did, to protect myself from the devastation he’s already proven he can cause.
“Don’t you dare stop.”
Something breaks loose in him. His hands slide beneath my shirt, and the touch is reverent. Like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he moves too fast.
I don’t want careful, and I definitely don’t want gentle right now. I just want to forget, and I need to feel something entirely different from this constant, exhausting weight of always having to be strong.
I arch into him, furious at my own need, and pull the shirt over my head.
The cabin is freezing, goosebumps rising on my skin, but his body is warm, and when he presses against me, I don’t feel cold anymore.
I don’t feel anything except the heat of him, the weight of him, the desperate way his mouth finds every inch of exposed skin.
“Skye.” He pulls back just enough to look at me, his eyes dark and desperate in the shadows. “I’ve imagined this every night since you left. Every single night.”
“Shut up and prove it.”
He does.
His mouth trails down my throat, pausing at my pulse point, feeling my heart hammer against his lips. Lower, across my collarbone, down the center of my chest. He takes his time with my breasts, his tongue circling, teasing, until I’m writhing beneath him.
I remember this. The way he takes his time. The way he makes me feel like I’m the only thing in the universe worth paying attention to.
I hate that I remember.
I hate that it’s still true.
“More,” I demand, and he gives me more.
His hands everywhere. His mouth everywhere. My pajama pants disappear somewhere between the couch and the floor. His fingers trace up my inner thigh, slow, deliberate, and when he finally touches me where I need him most, I nearly come apart right there.
“So wet,” he murmurs against my hip. “All for me?”
“Don’t get cocky.”
He laughs, and then his mouth replaces his fingers and I stop being able to form words at all.
He brings me over the edge once with his tongue, watching my face the entire time, his eyes never leaving mine even as my back arches off the floor and his name spills from my lips like a confession I never meant to make.
I’m still shaking when he crawls back up my body, kissing a path from my navel to my throat.
“Again,” he says.
His fingers slide inside me, two at once, curling in that spot he somehow still remembers after four years. His thumb circles my clit while his mouth captures mine, swallowing my moans.
The second orgasm hits harder than the first. I have to bite down on his shoulder to keep from screaming loud enough to wake the entire resort.
“Please,” I hear myself beg when I can breathe again. “Jaime, please.”
He’s hard against my thigh, straining against his sweatpants. But he hesitates.
“Are you sure?”
“If you ask me that again, I swear to God-”
He sheds his pants in one motion and settles between my thighs.
One thrust and he sinks into me.
We both go still.
It’s exactly like I remember and nothing like I remember.
Four years have changed us both. My body softer now from pregnancy and midnight snacks and never having time for the gym.
His harder from whatever grief-fueled workout routine he threw himself into.
But the way we fit together is the same. Like coming home.
His forehead drops to mine, his breath ragged, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding back.
“Move,” I whisper.
He moves.
It’s slow at first, real deep, with every single deliberate thrust hitting spots that literally make my vision go blurry, but then it gets way faster the second I dig my nails into his back, just urging him on because I need his full touch and presence.
The world narrows to this cabin, this floor, this storm raging outside while a different storm rages inside me. I wrap my legs around him, pulling him deeper, and he groans my name like it’s being torn out of him.
“I missed you.” His voice breaks on the words. “I missed you every single day.”
I can feel myself getting close again, that devastating tension building. “Don’t ruin this by talking.”
“I missed your laugh.” He thrusts harder, punctuating the confession. “Your terrible coffee.” Harder still. “The way you steal all the blankets.”
“Jaime-”
“I missed waking up next to you.” His pace turns relentless, and I’m climbing, climbing, so close I can taste it. “I missed falling asleep with you. I missed every single thing about you, and I hate myself for ever taking it for granted.”
“Stop talking,” I gasp, but I don’t mean it, and he knows I don’t mean it.
“I love you.” He kisses me, hard and desperate, his rhythm faltering as he gets close too. “I never stopped loving you. Not for one second. Not for one heartbeat.”
I shatter.
The orgasm tears through me, devastating, complete, and I clench around him so hard he has no choice but to follow. He buries his face in my neck, my name on his lips like a prayer, his whole body shuddering as he spills inside me.
***
We’re tangled in blankets on the floor where we somehow ended up. The storm still rages outside, but quieter now. Rain instead of thunder.
He tries to pull me against his chest. I don’t let him.
“This was a mistake,” I say to the ceiling.
“Maybe.” His thumb traces my cheek, gentle in a way that makes my chest ache. “But I’d make it again. Every time. For the rest of my life.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No. It doesn’t.” He props himself up on one elbow, looking down at me. “But I’m done pretending I don’t want you. I’m done pretending I can be around you without wanting this.”
“Jaime-”
A knock at the cabin door.
We both freeze.
Shelby’s voice cuts through the wood: “Skye? Are you in there? I was trying to call you but you’re not answering.”
I scramble for clothes, heart pounding. Jaime’s already pulling on pants, but not fast enough, because Shelby never did understand boundaries.
The door swings open.
Her flashlight sweeps the cabin, landing on the chaos. Blankets strewn across the floor. My clothes tangled with his. Both of us flushed and disheveled and very obviously not sleeping.
The beam stops on my face. On his. On the damning evidence scattered around us.
Shock and betrayal flash across my best friend’s face, hardening into a fury so cold it makes the storm outside look tropical.
“Are you kidding me?” Her voice is ice. “After everything he did?”
“Shelby-”
“No.” She holds up a hand, stepping back like I’ve physically struck her. “You ugly-cried for eight months. You moved states. You had his baby alone in a hospital room while I held your hand because he wasn’t there.”
“I know-”
“And now he buys your company to corner you, stalks you across six acquisitions, and you’re rewarding him for it?” She points at Jaime, who has the good sense to stay silent. “You’re giving him exactly what he wants?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s not complicated, Skye. It’s not complicated at all.” Her eyes fill with tears. Shelby doesn’t cry. Shelby gets mad and throws things and makes plans. Shelby doesn’t cry. “He’s doing it again. Getting exactly what he wants, no matter what it costs anyone else.”
“That’s not-”
“I was there.” Her voice cracks. “I watched him break you. I held you while you sobbed so hard you couldn’t breathe. I flew out for your due date. I sat in that delivery room for eighteen hours, and I watched you look at that baby and cry because he had his father’s face.”
“I know.” The words are barely a whisper.
“Then how could you do this?”
I don’t have an answer. I don’t have anything except the memory of his mouth on mine and the terrible, wonderful feeling of being wanted.
“He’s Josh’s father,” I finally say. “That complicates things whether I want it to or not.”
“That’s not why you slept with him and you know it.”
She’s right. That’s the worst part. She’s absolutely right.
“Shelby, please-”
“Don’t.” She backs toward the door, shaking her head. “I can’t watch him destroy you again. I won’t. I refuse to stand by while you hand him the knife and show him where to cut.”
She disappears into the storm.
I move to follow, but Jaime catches my arm.
“Let her go,” he says quietly. “She’ll calm down.”
“Don’t tell me what my best friend will do.” I yank my arm free. “You don’t know her. You don’t know anything about my life.”
“Then tell me.” He’s not angry. He’s just tired, standing there in the half-dark, looking at me like I’m the only thing that matters. “Tell me what you need. Tell me what I have to do.”
“I don’t know what I need. I don’t know anything anymore.”
He steps closer, not touching, just present. “I’ll wait until you figure it out. However long it takes.”
I dress quickly and leave without answering.
The storm has calmed to a steady rain. I make it back to my flooded cabin, where I sit on my roommate’s dry bed and stare at nothing until dawn breaks through the clouds. My body still hums with the memory of his touch. My mind replays Shelby’s face on loop.
Both of them right. Both of them wrong. And me, caught in the middle, not knowing which way to turn.
When I finally stand to pack, I find something on my pillow.
A business card.
Leslie Ashford, Independent Consultant
On the back, in handwriting I don’t recognize:
He’ll get bored again. He always does.
My blood runs cold.
Leslie would never set foot in a place this rustic herself. But the storm left half the cabins hanging open in the dark last night, staff and strangers tracking through, and money always buys a pair of hands willing to climb a flooded hill and leave a card on the right pillow.
I stare at the card for a long moment. Then I slip it into my pocket and finish packing. Some wars aren’t over just because you want them to be.