Chapter 20
Lou: This is going to be a disaster.
Chuck: The fact that we seem to still be old in the past or Paloma’s terrible decision making?
Lou: I guess only time will tell.
I snuggle my face deeper into the soft pillows and inhale the clean scent of lavender and sandalwood and something so close to what the course smells like in the early hours when the grass is dewy.
He groans behind me and pulls my body to his chest, nuzzling his nose into my hair.
It's been two months since our first outing. I refuse to call it a date. That would make this real when it’s only temporary. A fling.
Even so, this fling feels more concrete than anything I’ve allowed myself to feel in…
well, a really long time. In high school, there had been this boy who I let myself believe was really and truly into me, simply because he’d been asking me out for what felt like every day since sophomore year.
He wasn’t. We went on a couple dates, he spent all his time trying to convince me to sleep with him, and I was foolish enough to believe it was anything more than that—the second I slept with him, he ghosted me.
As if he wasn’t the one who was tired, as if I wasn’t the catch.
I cried my heart out to the girls when he had the nerve to text me.
Pendejo
Thx it wuz fun but were dun
Couldn’t even string two words together for a phone call. He broke my little teen heart, a heart which was already torn to shreds from my parents.
The high school angst reinforced that love really wasn’t for me, and I didn’t want the hurt that came along with the other feelings.
But with Clinton, I would…I would try, really I would.
I stretch my legs, flexing my toes as I feel his hard length press into me.
Turning my head slightly, I peek over my shoulder at his handsome face.
“Good morning.”
He kisses the side of my head and says, “Good morning, Dove.” Clint’s voice is still gravely from sleep, and I push my ass into his dick to show him how much I like it, enjoying the rumble in his chest as I do.
I should pull away and shower, but I don’t.
Instead, I turn in the bed to face him, and I run my fingers through his short black curls before I can let myself look at his face.
There are so many unspoken emotions sitting there, and I do my best to hold my own emotions back.
This can’t be anything more than a fling, no matter how much the both of us want it to be more.
He’s leaving in a few months, and I’m unloveable.
Clint runs his hand over the shell of my ear, tucking the loose hair behind it, and if I could cry without seeming like a fucking fool, I would. Here, snuggled into his chest, I feel safe, and I don’t know what to do with those feelings but savor them.
He hums low and leans in, pressing a soft kiss to my lips and then one to my jaw before he wraps his arms around me, cocooning me into the false reality that we could last. We both know those thoughts ring true here, in this bed, with our legs tangled up with each other.
I want to wake up like this every morning, minus the melancholy.
“You sleep okay?” he mumbles into my hair.
“Yeah. You?” The sense of calm I want to exude in my voice is null. It’s too quick, too bright to fit in place as I swallow down the hurt of him leaving and what I can’t give to him.
“I did,” he says and takes in a breath, “with you here.”
Somehow he makes it seem so easy, so simple, as if we could make this work, and if I could, I would—with him.
I smile up at him, or I try to. My lips tug down still. “I mean, I do hog the covers. It’s a wonder you don’t freeze when I’m over.”
“I’m always warm when you’re by my side, Paloma.
Except when you run your cold toes up my leg.
” His words sit like a weight on my chest, and I do the only thing I can—I push out a laugh.
I aim to make it light and carefree as I shift to my back and stare at nothing but the ceiling because if I look up at him, he’ll see.
“Well, you are stuck with me for now,” I say, hating how small my voice sounds.
Two months. I remind myself. Two months and then he’ll be gone. I’ll be fine. Totally fine. I always am.
His fingers brush a strand of hair from my forehead with a gentleness that shreds me.
I don’t say Thank you. Don’t say Stay. Don’t say Please don’t go.
Instead, I close my eyes and let the silence say everything I'm too much of a coward to admit myself.
Clinton
I watch Paloma carefully. The same way you would watch a wounded bird. She is something wild and beautiful, but if I make any sudden movements I’m scared she’ll fly away.
She thinks she’s hiding behind her carefully crafted walls when instead she’s giving me every single one of her emotions as if they’re playing on a movie screen.
I want so badly to pull her into my arms and promise her things I’m not even sure if I have the right to promise.
Two months wasn’t enough time to convince Paloma.
Not when she already made it clear about what she did and didn’t believe in. Love wasn’t on the list of beliefs.
So instead of pulling her into my chest where she was minutes ago, I stay where I am. Close enough to feel her warmth but far enough she won’t bolt. “You hungry?”
Her eyes pop open, and she gives me a crooked smile, tilting her head in my direction. “Starving.”
I return the smile, even if it hurts, and bump her foot with my own. “Come on. I’ll make you some waffles.”
She stretches her full figure beneath the sheets, and I watch her in this stolen moment. If she wants every single one of my mornings for the next two months, I will give them to her. Even if they never feel like enough.
When she stands, the sheets are tucked beneath her arms, the sun shining, casting a soft morning glow on her skin.
Somehow she looks even more beautiful when the sun lets her be the main character of my life.
Everything is so much less picturesque without her being the one to catch the light.
God, I love you. My breath catches at the thought, my mouth parting at my need to say something I know I can’t. So I say nothing at all.
I hear Paloma grumble as she makes her way to the bathroom, the sheet wrapped around her body like armor she doesn’t know how to take off.
When the door shuts behind her I can’t stop the thoughts of what if.
What if I ask her to come with me? What if I choose to cancel the contract? Choose to stay here with her.
Maybe if she believed in things that were more than temporary.
Maybe if I was a better man. Maybe.
I run my hands over my face, huffing a breath that sounds more like a defeated laugh than anything else.
I love her, but it doesn’t matter.
If all she will accept from me are waffles, they’ll be the best damn waffles she’ll ever have.