Chapter 28
T he house was dark when we slipped in. The front door clicked softly behind us, air still scented faintly with salt and lemon and the kind of summer heat that clings to your skin like breath.
Jack and Jazz weren’t in the living room. No music, no TV, no midnight snack commentary drifting from the kitchen. Just shadows and silence and the sound of the old floorboards sighing beneath our steps.
Thank fuck. I was not ready to lie to my best friend.
Not tonight. Not with her scent still on my skin and the shape of her moans echoing in my goddamn skull.
I couldn’t stand there yucking it up with Jack and pretending I hadn’t just been so deep in his sister’s pussy I should’ve had my mail forwarded.
And I didn’t think I’d survive being caught red-handed with his little sister.
Even if she was the girl of my dreams. Even if we fit like something ancient and inevitable. Even if I’d just had the most mind-bending, soul-shaking, life-altering sex of my life—and I knew, with bone-deep certainty, that I would never want to take it back.
“Think they’re in bed?” Charlie whispered as we creeped through the kitchen toward the stairs.
“God, I hope so,” I said, and she snorted softly as we climbed the stairs. When we got to the top, she just turned to the right and headed for her room.
I waited two beats. Long enough for her to slide into her room, leaving the door ajar behind her.
Long enough for me to let myself think. I was left with my thoughts and a full-body ache that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with the way she kissed me after, like she didn’t know how to stop.
I slipped into her room a minute later—quiet as a secret.
She was by the window, hair down, peering out into the darkness.
She didn’t look startled when I walked in, like she halfway expected I would, but she hadn’t been certain.
The slant of moonlight coming through the curtains framed her like a half-finished painting—bare shoulders soft with shadow, eyes unreadable, lips parted like she was caught between desire and hesitation.
“I know you must be sore,” I said, my voice low as I closed the door behind me. Her mouth twitched—half a smile, half an admission. “But I’m not here for sex,” I added. “I just...want to be with you.”
I crossed to her, kissed the top of her head like I didn’t want anything else from her, then kissed her temple just to prove it. “I’m gonna run a bath.”
Her eyebrows lifted, amused. “You trying to romance me, Whitmore?”
I shrugged. “Just trying to take care of you.” And I meant it. For once, I didn’t want to prove anything or impress her or outwit whatever sharp thing she threw at me. I just wanted to keep touching the quiet.
The guest bathroom was warm with leftover heat from the day. I turned the water on hot, poured in the sea salt stuff she liked and that lavender oil that made her skin smell edible. I dimmed the light until it glowed like candlelight, and then went back to get her.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs curled under her, the hem of her dress riding high on her thighs. She looked up at me like she was still waiting for the punchline.
“Come join me. It’s ready,” I said.
She followed me, wordless. And when I helped her out of her dress, she didn’t blush or get weird on me. She just stepped out of it like it was nothing. Like I had already memorized her body from the inside out.
She climbed in slowly, eased down into the water with a hiss, then melted into it like sugar. I stripped down, slid in behind her into the tub, and pulled her back until her spine met my chest, her head settling in the curve of my shoulder.
We didn’t speak for a while. The water lapped at the porcelain. The scent of lavender rose in steam around us. My arms wrapped around her waist under the water, my hands resting on her stomach, just being there.
She sighed.
I kissed the top of her shoulder, and for once, didn’t follow it with anything clever. Just held her there, quiet and close—while the rest of the house slept and the world outside kept turning. While the secrets we’d built wrapped themselves like warmth around us and we didn’t have to lie—not yet.
“Is it different than you expected?” she asked softly. “Being with me. Or had you not really thought about it before?”
I let out a laugh—full and startled, cutting through the steam. She turned her head, one brow lifted, and I couldn’t stop the grin tugging at my mouth. “You’re fucking joking, right?”
She blinked .
“Charlie,” I said, dragging a hand down my face.
“You caught me jerking off to you a week ago. You’ve seen me flinch every time you walk into a room.
You’ve seen me kiss girls in front of you just to watch your expression change.
You heard me fuck Sloane because I thought I was listening to you with Thatcher and I couldn’t take it. ”
Her lips parted. I didn’t stop.
“You had me playing Frank Ocean and dancing with you barefoot on the side of the road when you were seventeen, like it didn’t break something open in me that night. In what fucking universe do you think I haven’t thought about this?”
I looked down at her, and my voice dropped.
“It’s all I think about. Touching you. Kissing you. Fucking you. Loving you. What else is there to think about?”
She stared at me for a second, lips parted like she forgot what breath was. Then she rested her head back on my chest, skin damp and quiet. “Oh,” she whispered. Just that. Like the word itself was enough to carry the weight.
“Oh?” I chuckled, brushing my nose against the damp curve of her shoulder. “Is that all you’ve got for me, Winslow?”
“Well, I mean—same.” She let out a breath that fluttered against my collarbone. “You’re all I ever think about. And it’s been fucking annoying, let me tell you, buster.”
“Buster,” I murmured, grinning.
She ignored me. “Because up until, like—hours ago—you’ve been a real pain in my ass. Well, not my ass. My head . You’ve done alright with my ass, so far.”
I laughed into her hair, but she kept going, her voice softening as she thought it through.
“I really thought you couldn’t stand me.
I mean—” She paused, choosing her words.
“I knew that day in the kitchen you were at least attracted —the boner gave that away. Not the lemon custard day, the other one. Although…” Her head tilted, thoughtful. “There was a boner both times.”
“Without question,” I muttered.
“But I thought it was lust,” she said, quieter now.
“Like you were just horny and things with Sloane weren’t working, and you figured you’d fuck with me for a little thrill.
Because let’s be honest—” she turned slightly in my arms, eyes searching mine, “you’ve always been just a bit sadistic about finding amusement in my emotional spiral. ”
I blinked, then gave a slow, helpless grin. “Only because yours are the most spectacular spirals I’ve ever seen.”
She rolled her eyes and smacked my chest. But she didn’t pull away.
“Seriously though, Charlie.” I angled my face toward hers, brushing a kiss to the hinge of her jaw. “How could you possibly think I couldn’t stand you?”
She opened her mouth, but I cut her off with a laugh.
“I mean—come on. The whole avoidance routine? That was me trying not to trip headfirst into this exact trouble we’re in now—which, come to think of it, makes me a fucking dumbass.
Because if I’d just given in a little earlier…
” I wiggled my brows at her. “We could’ve been doing that for years . ”
She snorted.
“All that immaculate sex,” I said, sighing like a man mourning a national tragedy. “Gone. Lost to time. Years of wasted potential.”
She turned slightly, water sloshing between us, and raised a brow. “You really calling it immaculate after one round?”
“Two,” I corrected. “Two and a half if you count the bakery chair. Which I absolutely do.”
Her mouth twitched, but she was trying not to smile.
“And let the record show,” I added, dropping my voice low against her neck, “you came very hard for a guy you thought couldn’t stand you.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Let the record also show: you just about came in your pants just from me touching you.”
“Touché.”
“So, Fitz,” she said, voice light but her fingers tracing slow circles over my thigh under the water. “How many years are we talking, here?”
“Of all the sex we’re going to have?” I pretended to think, doing some mock mental math with one eye closed. “Well, you’re about to be thirty, I’m thirty-three...if we eat our greens and stretch occasionally, we’ve got, what—sixty years of earth-shattering sex left in us? Give or take.”
“No, you dumbass ,” she laughed, smacking my thigh hard enough to make the bubbles jump. “How many years have you wished—” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.
I let out a breath, leaned my head back against the tile, water lapping soft around us. “I don’t know how to answer that without getting myself in trouble, even in my own head,” I said. “So I’ll just say this.”
She waited.
“That night—when we were dancing by the golf cart and you were crying, and you’d called me to come get you from that fucking creep—I have never wanted to kiss another soul that badly in my entire life.”
I glanced down at her, water glinting off her skin. “Until tonight.”
Her breath hitched, just slightly. “And as far as the sex fantasies go,” I added, deadpan, “I would’ve gleefully murdered that kid—what was his name? Taylor? ”
She grinned. “Tyler.”
“Right. Him. I would’ve buried that crunchy, guitar-strumming motherfucker in the dunes if it meant I could’ve had you naked, on your knees, sucking my cock in the outdoor shower instead of watching it happen.”
Her jaw dropped. “Fuck, I forgot about that.”
“I most definitely did not,” I said, casually. “That image kept my hand busy for years . You were bent down, ass on display, hair wet, like some goddamn beachside goddess giving it up to a guy who didn’t deserve your spit, let alone your mouth. I almost came just walking away.”
She covered her face, laughing and groaning all at once. “Jesus Christ.”
I grinned, kissed her shoulder, and said against her skin, “I’ve had you in my head for a very long time, Winslow.”
“I can play the memory game too, Whitmore.” She smiled, with a very naughty gleam in her eye. “Here’s one for you I bet you don’t know. So you and Jack were in college. I must have been at the start of high school.”
“Okay,” I nodded, already rewinding time in my head. I raised a brow, curious. “Hit me.”
“Remember the dune deck we used to use as a fort when we were kids?”
“Yeah, sure. Jack and I used to smoke out there all the time.”
“Oh, I know ,” she scoffed. “And I used to hide under the deck with a notebook and write confessional journal entries like I was starring in my own indie coming-of-age movie.”
I blinked. “Seriously?”
She shrugged, completely unbothered. “One night, you and Jack were out there. Smoking a joint. Talking. I was already under the deck with my notebook and couldn’t get out without giving myself away.”
That made me pause. “And then,” she said, twisting just enough to glance at me over her shoulder, eyes glinting in the low light, “you started talking about girls.”
I groaned. “Oh, fuck. ”
“Oh yes,” she purred, syrupy sweet. “There’s no backpedaling now.”
I closed my eyes, sinking deeper into the tub like I could disappear in shame from only the vaguest recollections of how I must have talked about girls back then.
“Jack said you needed a girl who could deep throat and name-drop Proust,” she continued, casually cruel. “And you ”—she jabbed a finger at my ribs—“laughed and said, exactly. ”
I dragged both hands over my face. “Fuck me.”
“Oh, I’m not done.” She was practically glowing now.
“You launched into the threesome story—two NYU girls, Manhattan Airbnb, Cartier ankle bracelet, et cetera—and then you went full literary porn mode. You described— vividly —how one quoted Simone de Beauvoir , while the other girl rode your face.”
“Charlie…”
“And you said, and I quote, the feminist dirty talk made you shoot your load—but good thing you had another couple rounds in you.”
I groaned again, possibly louder. She leaned back against me with an exaggerated sigh. “Do you know how many fucking high-brow feminist books I’ve read because of that night?”
I glanced down, already half-laughing.
“I’m talking The Second Sex, The Feminine Mystique, Bad Feminist, The Argonauts, Women Who Run With the Wolves, that one French one where I had to Google every fifth word, and a whole Audre Lorde phase—just in case you liked poetry with your pussy.”
I groaned in actual pleasure. “That’s so fucking hot. I’m getting hard right now just thinking about it—but don’t worry, baby, I won’t touch you. My dick will just... exist, extremely hard, against your ass for the next hour or so.”
She snorted, then moaned dramatically, throwing her head back against my shoulder.
“I didn’t breathe for five minutes after you left that night,” she said, suddenly quiet, honest, and devastating. “I sat there in the dark, face flushed, thighs clenched, wondering what it would take to be on that list—for you to say things like that about me. ”
I had nothing. Not at first. Just a chest full of heat and a throat full of feelings for her.
She turned in the water, looping her arms behind my neck, water dripping down her collarbones like light.
“So don’t think you’re the only one who’s been jerking off to memories,” she whispered.
“Because that night? It rewired my brain, Fitz. I have lived rent-free in your words for years. And now that I am on that list.” She kissed me—soft, devastating.
“I am wondering what things you’d say about me,” she murmured, lips brushing mine.
“Out loud. In the dark. In French, if you want. I want to be the one who ruins you for anyone else.”
I stared at her like I’d just been hit by lightning underwater.
Then I swallowed hard, heart hammering, and said—“There is no more list, Charlie. You already did.”