Chapter 20
MILES
I’m pulling on a T-shirt when Caroline rolls over, her sleepy little frown making me round her bed to crawl back in, big spoon style. Slipping my arm around her bare waist, I skate my fingers up over her ribs and palm her breast, squeezing gently.
“Morning, fancy girl.” I nose her neck, breathing her in.
“Mmm?” Caroline stirs, barely awake.
Fuck. She still smells faintly of her fancy lavender bubble bath, and the soft, clean scent brings everything back.
Soaking in the tub last night, we’d barely spoken as we slowly scrubbed away every trace of the fire—all the fear, the relief, the vulnerability.
She rested against my chest as I washed the smoke from her hair and kissed her warm, wet skin.
Later, she straddled my lap on her bed, never breaking eye contact as she sank down onto me and drew the air straight from my lungs. We kissed the whole time, hair dripping onto our still-damp skin as our tongues tangled in slow, deep strokes that were as unhurried as they were intense.
I held her tighter than I needed to.
She came so hard she sobbed, taking everything from me until we were both wrecked and shaking. Hell, maybe we were both crying. All I know is, for the first time, sex hadn’t been about some list. Hadn’t been about anything other than us.
“Come with me?” I whisper against her bare shoulder, then raise an amused brow when I remember uttering those exact words about eight hours ago—under much sexier circumstances.
“What? Where? What time is it?” Caroline’s disoriented questions have me nipping at her neck, kissing her skin with smiling lips.
“The gym. It’s about five-thirty, I think.”
The idea of leaving her here makes my chest ache. Our connection last night—not only physical, but emotional—rocked something deep inside me. Inside her too; I’d put money on it. And there’s no way it was just the fear factor or some kind of trauma bond.
Would that be trauma bonding or bonding over trauma? Is trauma superglue a thing?
Whatever you’d call it, there was already something real growing between us even before last night. The fire didn’t create it out of thin air. Only cemented it.
She rolls over to face me. “Aren’t you meeting Gus there?”
“Yeah, but you should come with me.” I kiss the confused furrow on her forehead, certain I’m clinging too hard, but unable to stop myself all the same.
I’m not sure at what point this inability to let her go becomes unhealthy, but that’ll have to be a later-me problem.
For now, I’m just grateful my gym bag was in my truck so I could stay here a little longer instead of having to drive home.
“Please? Promise to punch any jackasses who try to talk to you.”
“What about Gus?”
“Alright, Gus gets a pass. Unless he sings.”
“Tell you what: I’ll punch Gus if he sings.” Wiggling closer, she kisses my cheek. “To protect your honor.”
“Okay, deal.” I chuckle. “Buuuut”—feeling my dick start to get the wrong idea, I shift my hips back—“you’re gonna have to get less naked in a hurry, unless you want us to be late.”
Raising a coy brow, she drags her fingers down my chest to the waistband of my underwear. “Can’t you be my cardio?”
“Oh, don’t you fucking tempt me,” I murmur against her temple, then tear myself away, climbing out of the bed to grab my shorts. “Come on. We can grab breakfast after. Maybe the deli?”
She sits up quickly, her hair a fluffy, messy halo.
“Oh, that got your attention?” I smirk.
She squints as if she’s weighing the pros and cons. “And I get to watch you work out in your…”—she gestures at my lower half—“little shorts?”
I’m just pulling on said shorts, but I slow to inspect them. “What do you mean, my little shorts? They’re normal shorts.”
“I dunno. That’s, what, a five-inch inseam at most?” She lets out a long exhale, openly ogling me, then crawls over the bed to slide her palms up my thighs.
“You like my slutty little shorts, huh?” I lift her chin.
“Mm-hmm.” She nods, then presses a kiss to my stomach, her lips warming my skin through my T-shirt.
“See? Knew you were a big perv.”
She grins up at me, then slips her fingers under the hem of my shorts, sliding them up a bit.
Tracing her thumb over the tattoo on my left thigh, she sinks down on the bed to inspect it closer.
The entire design is about the size of her palm—a detailed honeybee, surrounded by wildflowers. “Why do you have a bee tattoo?”
“’Cause my head’s full o’ bees?” I draw back, dodging the subject. “Now c’mon. We gotta go.” I curl back down to kiss her, then force myself to tear away and wink. “Go get those slutty little yoga pants on.”
Amusement dances in her eyes, but there’s something more lacing her expression: a kind of cut-the-crap look I’m all too familiar with. She doesn’t move from her perch.
Honesty.
“Okay, fine.” I step toward her again and brush a frizzy curl back from her forehead. I attempt to tuck it behind her ear, then frown when it springs back. “It’s for my mom. She was big into gardening. Loved the bees.”
“It’s beautiful,” she says quietly. “I assume you’ve got one for your dad as well?”
I contort my left arm so she can see the simple semicolon on the back of my triceps—one of many in my hodgepodge of a collection.
“He was a high school English teacher. But it also means… y’know, I could’ve stopped, but I didn’t.
Didn’t give up.” When she’s silent for a beat too long, I add, “Anyway, congratulations, now you know my secret; I’m a huge dork with a punctuation tattoo for my dead dad. Can we get going now?”
Without speaking, Caroline climbs off the bed and tugs me into her arms. She kisses my neck, then my cheek, before nuzzling into my chest. Her voice is muffled against my T-shirt, but I can still hear the emotion in it when she says, “I’m so glad you didn’t give up.”
I’ve barely been home in three days, Caroline and I having come to some kind of unspoken agreement to spend these last few days before the election together.
Ever since the fire at Sonora, it’s like we’ve dropped every pretense of our relationship being fake.
I can only assume it’ll hurt more to pull the plug this way, but I can’t seem to get enough of her and I refuse to sleep at home unless she’s with me.
I think we’re both milking this little bubble of denial for all it’s worth, but staying at her place has also made practical sense, what with her needing to be around for her grandfather.
At least I finally got to meet the guy. Now I understand how Caroline got to be so kindhearted, despite the judgy, bullshit example her parents set.
“Smells great in here!” George shuffles into the kitchen with his walker.
“Hey,” I say, throwing him a grin over my shoulder.
“Almost ready here.” I turn back to my task, scooping steaming portions of spaghetti and meatballs onto three plates.
I’m not usually a fan of cooking for myself but, for some reason, it’s easier when Caroline’s keeping me company.
And I make a kickass spaghetti—when I’m motivated, anyway.
It’s one of the dishes Mom made sure Jude and I learned to cook for ourselves.
We survived off a lot of spaghetti in those early days after our parents died.
It’s like a weird mix of grief and comfort to eat it now, which is probably why it felt right to make it tonight, on the cusp of this thing ending.
Right now, Caroline is the source of all my comfort and, in a matter of days, she’ll be the reason for all my grief.
“Grandpa,” Caroline starts, turning from the sink where she’s washing a few dishes, “did Sadie ever let you know if she could pick up that extra shift next week?” She places a pan on the dish rack and stoops to dry her hands on a nearby tea towel.
“No, I don’t think she can. Sounds like that boy of hers is keeping her busy. Teenagers, y’know.” He raises his bushy eyebrows, settling into his seat at the table.
“How old is this kid?” I ask. I’d met Sadie in passing the other night; there was definitely an exhausted mom vibe behind her kind eyes, although it was obvious she has a great relationship with George.
“Thirteen, I think?” Caroline answers. “Fourteen, maybe.”
“A baby!” I say with a smirk. “I remember being thirteen. When Gus and I weren’t falling off our skateboards, we were just trying to figure out a way to see some boobs.”
Caroline pauses gathering cutlery from a drawer to nudge me, glancing toward George with wide eyes.
“Shit, sorry. I mean…”—I clear my throat—“or… dang, sorry.”
“Believe it or not, darling,” George says to Caroline as I place the plates of spaghetti on the table, “I was once a young man, myself.”
She takes a seat across from him. “I don’t believe you were anything but a fine, upstanding young man.” Twirling her fork through her pasta, she throws a pointed look my way.
“What was that for?” I ask, faking shock. “Are you implying you don’t think I was fine and upstanding in my youth?”
“Oh, please,” she teases. “You’ve got former teenage menace written all over you.”
“Wha—?” I scoff. “Me?”
She only lifts a brow.
“Yeah, alright.” I cave immediately, reaching for my water as I throw her a wink.
George swallows and wipes his mouth on a cloth napkin. “Appearances can be deceiving, Caroline.”
“Yes, I know, which is why Miles here isn’t fooling me for a second.”
“No, sweetheart,” he says, leaning closer to her. “I meant me.”
“You?” Caroline sets down her glass.
“You think I was born with white hair and a crossword puzzle in my hand?” At the amused tilt of her head, he adds, “I got up to mischief back in my day, like any young man.”
“What kind of mischief?” I ask, too curious not to press for a story.
“Well, I met my late wife when we were juniors in high school.”
A soft sadness takes shape in Caroline’s features at the mention of her grandma.
I reach under the table, gently stroking her thigh through the silky, billowy fabric of her skirt.