Chapter 11 ADAM
Chapter eleven
ADAM
Of course I noticed her flushing when I told Dorothy she was a good girl. If “good girl” is what she wants to be called, I’ll say it. I’ll say whatever she wants.
She left my shirt on the chair. The one I ruined with a Sharpie, turning the UPenn logo into a zombie brain during finals. Back then, I sent it with a granola bar and a dumb inside joke. Her laugh had felt like victory.
It’s still here. Outlived me.
She told me—in that one message after she disappeared, when I was starting to think I should stop hoping—that she didn’t ghost me to hurt me.
She didn’t come to Pittsburgh because she wasn’t ready.
Didn’t tell me about the cancer. The stem cell transplant.
The nights she couldn’t breathe. The pain. The rage. The fucking fear.
Because she wanted that part of her life to stay hers. She wanted that part to not become her entire self.
She said hiding was a kind of lie. Said she was protecting me. But really, she was protecting herself.
Because letting me see her like that felt worse than being alone.
I take the pillow from the bed, dropping it onto the hardwood floor. Another trip for the spare blanket folded in the closet. It’s not ideal, but I’ve slept on clinic floors during blizzards. This is luxury by comparison.
The bathroom door creaks open behind me.
Eve. Towel-damp hair. Flushed cheeks. Candy-cane pajamas that say, “lick me.”
Fuck me.
She frowns. “You’re not sleeping on the goddamn floor.”
“The dogs picked the bed. I picked the floor.”
“Well un-pick it.” She crosses the room, reaching for the pillow I’ve positioned. “This is ridiculous.”
I grab the other end of the pillow before she can snatch it away. “What are you doing?”
“Moving you back to the bed.”
Neither of us lets go in this ridiculous tug-of-war.
“Let go, Foster.”
“You let go, Harrison.”
One sharp tug and she stumbles forward, caught off balance.
My arm shoots out, catching her waist. The pillow falls forgotten as she collides with my chest, her hands bracing against me.
We’re inches apart. Close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from her skin, smell the shampoo in her hair. Her pulse jumps visibly at her throat.
Neither of us moves.
Her hands press against my chest, my palm sliding to the small of her back like I’m steadying a skittish colt.
She breathes in, sharp but shallow. Her eyes flick to my mouth for less than a second, but I catch it.
I always catch it. I’ve been still for broken-legged dogs and wild-eyed barn cats.
I’ve stitched wounds through Pine Creek’s Tornado Warning three years ago. I can do this. Be the safe thing.
Her eyes search mine, looking for something I want to have in me.
She shifts closer, just barely, but enough that I feel the heat of her through both our clothes. Her face tilts up, and for a moment she hovers there, close enough I can feel her breath on my jaw. Close enough that all I’d have to do is lower my head an inch. Maybe less.
Her fingers curl into my shirt. Not pulling. Just... gripping.
“This is a bad idea,” she whispers against the space between us.
“Probably.” I don’t move. Can’t move. Won’t.
She stays suspended there, caught between backing away and closing the distance. I watch her pulse flutter at her throat. Watch her wrestle with whatever war she’s fighting in her head.
“I don’t do Steri-Strip sex,” she says, barely audible. “I haven’t... not since Chuck.”
“Steri-Strip sex?”
“Like sex to cover trauma? A distraction? A quick fix for—”
“How about feel-good sex with someone you trust and who wants you?”
She pulls back just enough to look at me, something flickering in her eyes. “You’re leaving tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“This can’t be anything more than tonight.”
Her lips are almost brushing mine when she stops. Freezes. Her jaw sets with some kind of decision.
“One night,” she says, harder this time. Making it a declaration. “That’s all this is. All it can be.”
“Eve—”
“No expectations.” Her voice steadies, finding its clinical edge even while her body stays pressed close. “No promises we can’t keep. No regrets. No remorse.”
My hand flexes against her waist. “Is that what you want? Are you sure?” I ask, my voice rougher than intended. “Just tonight?”
“It’s all we have,” she says, but her fingers curl into my shirt, contradicting her words. “You’re moving tomorrow…”
“And you’ll go back to Chicago,” I finish, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “Back to the life you’ve built without me.”
Hurt flashes in her eyes. “We both moved on, Adam.”
“Did we?” My hand slides from her waist to the small of her back, not pulling her closer, but not letting her retreat either.
“Because I still remember exactly how you sound when you laugh. How you tap your fingers and clear your throat when you’re nervous.
How you used to fall asleep during our calls and I’d watch you breathe for a while before hanging up. ”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Not that long,” I murmur. “Not when I look at you and still see the woman who made me read unrealistic romance novels out loud at three in the morning.”
“Maybe they were.” And she shakes her head. “I’m hoping they weren’t.”
“They were educational,” I tell her, the tension between us shifting into something warmer, more familiar. “Especially Chapter 12 of—”
“Don’t you dare,” she warns, but her body relaxes against mine.
A smile forms on her face, like the Ghost of Christmas Past. It doesn’t last long. But when it fades, not from discomfort, but from the weight of what’s happening between us.
“Everyone’s always so careful with me now,” she says quietly. “Like I might break if they say the wrong thing. Look at me the wrong way. Even you—sleeping on the floor instead of just...” She trails off, gesturing vaguely between us.
Something clicks into place.
“I don’t want to be careful with you, right now, Eve,” I admit, surprising both of us with my honesty. I let my thumb trace the edge of her jaw. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want...” She hesitates, swallows. “I want someone who sees me. All of me. Who knew me before, during and still wants me now.”
Her hands slide up to my shoulders, her body swaying imperceptibly closer. “Tell me to stop,” she breathes, her lips a heartbeat from mine.
“Never,” I say, and mean it.
She hesitates.
Then, she leans in. Her breath hitches against my mouth, warm and shaky, like she’s trying to hold the entire moment in her lungs.
Like she’s asking a question she’s terrified to know the answer to. Like someone rejected her before. More than once.
Her lips brush mine once, then again. She pulls back, eyes searching, hands hovering like she’s waiting for permission to want this. So I bring my hand up, gently curl my fingers around the back of her neck. Anchor her there. Not forcing. Just holding.
“I’m going to kiss you back now,” I whisper. “Unless you don’t want me to.”
She swallows, fingers curling into my shirt. “I want you to.”
That’s all I need.
I slide my hand to her hip and pull her against me, my cock pressed against her belly through sweatpants that might as well not exist.
Then I kiss her—really kiss her—like I’ve waited seven years because I fucking have.
She gasps, the sound sharp and involuntary…then she crashes into me.
No hesitation. No easing in. Just raw, built-up need breaking wide open.
Her mouth opens under mine, hot and desperate, tongue sliding against mine like she already knows the rhythm.
She grinds against me and I groan into her mouth, the friction a goddamn jolt through every nerve ending.
My hands are under her shirt, dragging up the curve of her waist. Her skin is warm and impossibly soft, and I want more. All of it.
She arches into me like she’s offering it, like she needs to feel every inch of me pressed against her. Then she moans.
Low. Rough. Vulnerable.
The sound hits me in the chest and gut all at once.
And I lose it.
Tongue. Teeth. Clutching. Devouring.
Her breath, her taste, the way her body moves like it’s finally allowed to want mine back… seven years of tension explode between us, reckless and unstoppable.
We kiss like we’ve already gone too far to turn around. Like we never want to.
When we come up for air, her lips are swollen, her chest rising fast against mine, her eyes dark and stormy and searching.
She stares at me like I’ve ruined her for everyone else. And fuck me, part of me hopes I did.
“Nice boys don’t kiss like that,” she whispers.
I grin against her mouth, still close enough to taste her breath. “Oh yes, they fucking do.” I drag my thumb across her bottom lip, slow and sure. She shivers, like she’s unraveling beneath it.
“But I’m not a nice boy, Eve. I’m a kind man. And kind doesn’t mean I won’t fuck you like I’m memorizing every inch. Doesn’t mean I won’t make you lose control. Doesn’t mean I won’t…”
A soft laugh escapes her, almost a deflection. “Cocky,” she says, the word an attempt at distance. A step back in disguise.
I catch her wrist gently, and guide her hand halfway, until it hovers above the hard length pressing against my sweats. No further.
Her eyes flick to mine. Waiting. Measuring.
She closes the space. Her hand curves around me, slow and sure, and the sound I make is almost a groan—low, broken, helpless.
“Not cocky,” I manage, voice raw. “Certain.”
And fuck, the way she’s looking at me now, like she wants to consume and memorize and match me beat for beat? It’s all I can do not to lose it right there.