Chapter Thirty-One
MY BAGS ARE packed. All our files for Lineage have been uploaded into Dropbox. The house is, essentially, shut down for the foreseeable future. Aside from one last bag of trash to take out in the morning, it’s almost like we were never even here.
I should be thrilled I’m going home tomorrow. I got my way; we’re going to that dinner and I don’t have to miss the holidays with my family. But for some reason, that’s not at all what I feel when I tiptoe my way back downstairs, wearing one of his old T-shirts and a pair of sweats.
Oliver is showering in the owner’s suite, which is where I should be, curled up in bed, waiting for him. Instead, I’m sitting at the piano in semidarkness. My fingers rest on the ivory keys, but I don’t make a sound.
I’ll miss this place—that much I’ve made peace with.
After all the bitching I did when Oliver first sprang this on me, I’ve grown to like it here.
The quiet expanse of it all doesn’t freak me out anymore, doesn’t make me feel like I don’t belong.
It’s the opposite, actually. I like that it’s so peaceful that I can hear myself think—something I’ve had to do a lot of in the last three months.
A soft knock at the door catches my attention.
I’m already smiling when I turn around to find Oliver leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, hair still damp from the shower.
He’s wearing a clean white T-shirt, those gray sweats, and his glasses—the most lethal combination in human history. I force a swallow.
“Hey,” he says softly.
“Hi.” I scooch over on the piano bench and pat the empty spot next to me. “Sit?”
When he does, I’m enveloped by the smell of him.
It’s so intoxicating that it’s almost dizzying.
How he can smell so good, so clean but also expensive in a quiet luxury kind of way, I’ll never understand.
I found his cologne on the bathroom counter the other day and sprayed it in the air, but it doesn’t smell like this when it’s not on him, and I doubt he sprayed any on tonight after his shower.
No, the good part—the part I can’t get enough of—is all his own body chemistry.
“Needed one last go-around at the piano?” he asks, pulling me out of my reverie.
I lean my head against his shoulder and let my hands fall into my lap. “Something like that.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” he asks quietly. “To leave here after all this time together?”
“Very.” I blow out a breath of relief. “There were times where I felt like this would never end—like I would actually live in this house for the rest of my life or something. But now it’s our last night and I’m thinking about going back to my tiny-ass apartment and I…
I don’t know. I guess maybe I took this for granted. ”
His fingers find my chin and, with a gentle tug, he turns me so we’re face-to-face. There’s a tiny pinch between his eyebrows, the action so small I would have missed it three months ago, but I see it now. He’s sad, too.
“This is where it started for us,” he replies. “At the piano.”
I know what he means; even though we technically met at a café in the city, this is where things changed for us.
But I’m not sure if he knows that’s true of our first go-around, too, all those years ago.
If he even remembers the first time we spoke to each other in that Juilliard practice room.
If I affected him as much as he affected me, even if I couldn’t or wouldn’t admit it then.
He clears his throat gently. “Celia, I don’t—I don’t want this to end.”
“I don’t, either.” The words come out of me in a rush, the relief palpable in my chest. “I care about you so much. These feelings… they are a lot.”
If I were braver, I’d tell him what I think those feelings are.
I’d tell him that I feel tingly and warm whenever I look at him.
That I understand every nice thing he’s done for me has been to show me that he cares when he struggles to articulate it.
That I think he’s one of the only people in my life who understands my passion for this weird, difficult career I’ve worked so hard for, and I am so grateful for it.
His thumb skates along my jaw, grounding me in the here and now.
I lean into him, drinking in those big green eyes and committing those faint freckles along his nose and cheeks to memory.
When his lips meet mine, my eyes flutter closed, and I suspect he’s feeling and thinking the same thing because there is no restraint or hesitation in the way his lips and tongue move over mine.
We’re running out of time.
That thought—that reality—sends my heart spluttering and my stomach swooping.
I grip his shoulders as I half lift myself off the bench and swing a leg over him until I’m straddling his lap.
He doesn’t miss a beat, not when his hands cup my ass to give me a little more support while my legs dangle over the other side of the bench, and especially not when those long fingers of his manage to grip my hips and grind me against him.
Both of our pajama pants do little to hide how this is affecting him.
I cup his jaw while we kiss each other with a sort of reckless abandon, almost like it’s a competition to see who can taste the most of each other.
His hands keep controlling my hips, pushing and pulling me over his lap, and I start to wonder if I’m going to come like this by how fast the pleasure is building between my legs.
I let out a moan when he shifts his hips under me and before I know what’s happening, he’s standing, lifting me with him while my legs wrap around his waist, his lips never once leaving mine.
My ass hits the piano keys in a jumbled, discordant mess of a sound.
Oliver looms over me, a dazed sort of half-smile on his face, as we pull back from each other.
My chest heaves as I take in his blown pupils, his puffy lips, his messed-up hair—but it’s the way he’s looking at me, like I’m all that he sees in this world, that forces me to put a name to that feeling currently blooming in my chest.
Love—I’m falling in love with him.
Does he know what I’m thinking? He might because he’s watching me carefully, his focus dialed in on me so as not to miss a single thing, when one of his hands dips below the stretchy waistband of my pants. I’m not wearing any underwear. He shuts his eyes briefly and groans at this discovery.
I have no choice but to close my eyes when his fingers slide over me, then inside of me, my legs falling open as wide as they’ll go.
Every time I move or shift on the piano, I strike more keys, but it doesn’t matter.
It feels so good when he does that thing I like that someone could throw a drumstick at my head and I wouldn’t notice.
The way he makes me feel, so alive in my own skin, that’s all I have right now, and I’m literally shaking for it.
“Turn around,” he says, voice gruff and low, as his hand slips out of my pants.
I peel myself off the keys and do as I’m told, bracing my hands on the top of the piano for support.
Maybe it’s because we only have a few hours left here together, or maybe we both want to show each other how we feel, but there’s a frenetic energy between us tonight.
My pulse is going a million miles a minute and I can hear the labored breaths of Oliver behind me, especially when he pulls my pants to my knees.
I rise up on my tiptoes in anticipation.
“Oliver.” His name is a whisper, a plea, a prayer—I could write a hundred sonatas and vocalises and études for the way he’s making me feel right now, the way his strong hands hold me in place to guide himself in. “Please.”
He takes a shuddering breath before he asks, “You’re close, aren’t you?”
He knows the answer to this. Somehow, he knows my body better than anyone I’ve ever slept with, including the boyfriends I dated for a lot longer. I push back into him to show him exactly what he’s done.
He murmurs my name as he starts to move. It feels so good, all of it does, that I know it won’t take long for me. I’m overwhelmed by him, in me and around me, our history in front of us and behind us, all of it culminating in the place we’re joined together.
How I feel, those words—they’re right there, on the tip of my tongue.
When he slips a hand around my front and touches me there, it’s over for me, in a shuddering cry with my hands slapping the shiny wood of a Steinway piano.
He’s right behind me, muttering a stream of oh-gods and oh-fucks until everything slows to a languid stop.
His warm chest presses against my back as he brushes the hair off my neck.
I never do say those words. Not when we help each other clean up, not when we inspect the piano and determine we did not damage it, only defiled it in theory.
I think them, though, all through the fitful few hours of sleep I get next to him.
But then our phone alarms beckon us out of bed much too early in the morning, and I know the moment has passed.
Our time in Maine has come to an end.
LINEAGE—EPISODE EIGHT, “ALL’S FAIR”
EXT.—MOORE FAMILY ROOFTOP
561
FADE IN on HARRISON. His back is to his brother and sister as he takes in the New York skyline. His hands clutch the glass partition.
EMILY
You can’t be serious, Harry.
JAMES
(laughing)
This is honestly the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. Ever.
HARRISON turns to face them.
HARRISON
Well, it’s done. She’s your sister-in-law now.
EMILY
Maybe in the eyes of the law, but she doesn’t belong here. She’s not family.
HARRISON
You’re a fucking snob.
JAMES
(laughing)
He gave it all up for a bartender. Em, you owe me two Gs, by the way. I told you he would do it.