Chapter 43
Forty-Three
Imight hate Joshua Jackson’s face. It’s judgmental. As I stare at it, the sound of the front door opening then closing echoes through the house—Mom’s home—followed by a knock—with friends.
Muffled voices lead to Mom calling up the stairs, “Reese! Gavin’s here!”
Do I want to see him?
Yes.
Did he just let me stand in the rain doing the best mea culpa I could manage while saying nothing?
Also yes.
Loud enough for them both to hear, I shout, “Tell him go eat a glass shard salad and shove a blow pipe up his ass.”
The deep rumble of Gavin’s laugh reverberates its way through the old boards of the house. Dick.
My gaze meets Joshua Jackson’s. “Stop looking at me like that.”
The stairs groan under Mom’s ascent until the shadows of her feet pause under my door. “Ree—”
“No,” I snap.
Her heavy sigh could blow down the door. “You’re impossible.”
“Learned from the best.”
She mutters something I’m quite sure I don’t want to hear then her footsteps turn to the closing click of her bedroom door and dulled sounds of her TV. The lull in the rain picks back up, drops spitting like pebbles against my bedroom window.
I lie there in the dark with the noises of the house and my thoughts spinning around my skull like a blender.
Joshua Jackson’s stare gets more judgmental with every second that ticks by.
Like he got everything right with Katie Holmes the first time—it took a whole series for them to figure their shit out.
I groan then put a pillow over my face to block him out.
The rain taps against my window like the rapping at a door. Louder and louder—it must be hail.
Then the muffled call of my name—or ghosts.
“Reese!”
I jerk upright, my attention going to the window.
Where Gavin is standing.
On the roof.
In the rain.
Against my better judgment, I turn on the small lamp on my desk and open the window.
I do not invite him in.
Rain blasts against him before ricocheting onto me.
I fold my arms over my T-shirt. “Can I help you?”
He grins—sexy bastard—and wipes the rain from his face. “Were you worried we were done?”
I scoff. “We aren’t anything,” I correct him. “I was worried you were delusional. Judging by the fact you’re on a roof in the rain, I was right.”
The rain slows to a drizzle, allowing me a clearer view of the drops trickling down his nose and chin. He’s in a white T-shirt and it’s clinging to his chest. Rain-soaked Gavin is a hideous monster.
He places both hands on either side of the window and leans into them. “But you were worried.”
I let out an annoyed sigh. “Yes. For Addie because she doesn’t deserve to live with a madman. I’ve already informed the authorities.”
Gavin’s eyes catch the dim light of the lamp, making them dance.
“Bet the reindeer like this weather,” he says.
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “No.”
His lips twitch. “You gonna let me in or make me stand out here all night?”
Again, I scoff. “You mean the same way you made me stand out there?”
He dips his chin. “I was mad. I needed a minute. Plus, your apologies are kind of shit and I’m on a roof.”
“You could be on the fucking moon, Gavin. I’m mad.”
“Nah.” He smirks. “You’re happy I’m here. And I have something for you. Invite me in.”
I don’t care about gifts—I buy myself whatever I want—but I do care about gifts from him.
Wordlessly, I step to the side, my jaw shifting and knee bouncing.
The rain picks up, rivulets streaming down his face and body and skin and clothes, but he doesn’t budge. “You have to say it, Reese.”
“Are you a fucking vampire now?”
His lips twitch.
“You can come in.”
It’s pouring again.
He shakes his head. “Nicer than that. Tell me you want me to come in.” Then: “And say please.”
I glare at him but through clenched teeth say, “I want you to come in, Gavin.” At his raised brows: “Please.”
He grins, smug, then climbs through the window like a damn teenager.
Soaked and in my bedroom, he reaches outside to grab a paper bag from the roof then closes the window. He does a double take at my bare legs.
“I was in bed,” I say with a sneer.
His eyes drift around the room, landing on his application on the desk next to a towel and blow dryer. I reach for something snarky to say but come up empty. He knows I tried to save it because he knows it mattered to me. There goes that charade.
“You mean it?” I ask.
“You think I’d go through all this if I didn’t?”
I knew it as soon as I read the note he did, but the notion still sends a thrum of electricity from my toes to the crown of my head. Because it’s been six weeks to the day since I first saw him. That’s not enough time to have a baby with someone. “It’s too fast.”
“Hm.” A single droplet runs from his temple down his neck. “You know in the right conditions that sand can become glass in thirty minutes?”
I rub my sternum to make sure my heart’s still beating. This is illogical. Being with him is one thing—but a baby? With him? After six-weeks?
He adds, “Who knows what it would be in six weeks.”
“I’m not sand,” I remind him. “What’s in the bag?”
He hands it to me then wanders my room, studying the details like he’s in a Reese Conway Museum. He lingers at the corkboard, the photos of me and Amanda from high school. My life’s checklist.
I open the bag and laugh as I pull out a glass slipper. It’s ridiculous yet exquisitely made. Clear except the sole, which is covered in red swirls.
He’s in front of me now, and I gesture at him with it. “Thank you.”
He takes it from me and sets it on the desk next to his application then wraps his hands around my hips. “You lava me?”
My eyes bounce between his. “I don’t know.”
He pecks my lips. “You don’t know, or you don’t know how to say it?”
I swallow. “I don’t know.”
Because I don’t. Because I’ve never lavad anyone except my family in my life and having the first person be Gavin after six weeks doesn’t seem plausible. Or viable.
“I’m older than you,” I remind him, snaking my hands around his neck and into the wet curls of his hair. “Even if I do lava you, I might die first. There’s that to consider.”
He kisses my neck. “Then I’ll lava you when you’re a ghost.”
I believe he would.
“I need to know what this looks like. Very specifically.” Our eyes meet. “Not we’ll figure it out—not this part. I have appointments, and I need to know what I’m supposed to do when I sit down with the doctor and she explains the proce—”
“You go,” he says firmly. “And you listen because you need to hear every option. And when you’re listening—” He kisses me.
“I want you to know that I don’t care if it’s been six weeks.
I’ve been looking for you for years and just didn’t know who or where you were.
” His forehead drops to mine. “And after that, you figure out your job, which I’m really hoping involves you being here, and if you want to start a family—with me—I want that. With you.”
I try to find a reason to argue with him. To say no. But there is none. Because I can do that. I can go to my appointment, I can figure out my job, and then, maybe I can say yes to a family with him.
Maybe I am sand.
“Okay.” It’s me who kisses him. “But you’re dripping water onto the floor.”
His laugh sticks in his throat. “I can leave.”
“Stay.”
That one word shifts the energy in the room. We both know what that stay means. Stay in this room, in this bed. Stay with me. Lava me. All night, forever.
The rain falls again, and my heart matches its rhythm. I’m far from a virgin but this feels new. Him, me, us.
He toes his boots off and his eyes never leave mine. I peel his wet shirt over his head and toss it on the floor, swearing at the sight of his bare torso.
His body is the youngest one I’ve been with in a decade, and it shows.
Where the men my age have bodies softened with time, Gavin’s is made of defined lines, a happy trail I want to nuzzle, and the deep cuts of a V that all point to what’s waiting in his pants. My mouth goes dry and my vagina waters.
You don’t have a body like that and not know how to use it.
My lips hover over his. “Should I be shoving dollars in your pants?”
He laughs, pulling me close to him. His hands slide under my T-shirt, across my bare back, then down to grip my ass.
His mouth is on mine, kissing me like he’s drinking me. In an easy movement, my legs are around his waist, and he carries me the few steps to the very small bed that creaks when we drop to it.
“Shh,” I hush into his mouth. “My mom’s home.”
“Iris likes me,” he whispers.
Thunder rolls in the distance and rain spits.
I laugh too loud to be discreet, and he pins my hips to the mattress with his.
He gestures for me to raise my arms—I do. He peels off my shirt, tosses it on the floor next to his, then I’m on my back and my underwear come next. He looks at me—my body, my face, my soul—and says, “You’re beautiful, Reese.”
I feel his words all over me. Down to my bones. My marrow. The cells bouncing around my marrow. I’m naked—more naked than I’ve ever been—and afraid. Afraid this beautiful feeling won’t last.
Tears prick the back of my eyes that I fight to blink away.
Gavin leans down and kisses me gently, whispering, “You should know, I’ve been waiting for this since I was seven.”
It turns the tears in my eyes to a laugh on my lips. “Gross.”
He hums against my cheek, lying on his side next to me, his hands roaming with a gentle touch of his finger. From the divot of my throat, down my sternum, to my low belly. Lower. His touch isn’t reserved nor confident, it’s exploratory.
“Tell me what to do,” he says, low.
I laugh a little. “You like being bossed around in the bedroom?”
“Hm.” He kisses my shoulder. “I just want to make you happy.”
That truth warms me and pulls me to him. Makes me want to fall so deep into him I get lost there or stuck there or die there.
He starts to stroke and I nod. “That.”
His fingers move with my guidance, but he doesn’t need much, then his mouth is back on mine. Then my neck, then my chest. His teeth scrape my nipples, his tongue rounds the curve of my breasts. His hand leaves the spot screaming for more to toss me around the bed like a plaything.
“That makes me very happy,” I say through a breathy laugh.
He chuckles, then with my knees over his shoulders, his blessed face is between my thighs, and my fingers are tangled in his hair. The same mouth that eats community snacks like a barbarian tastes me like I’m caviar.
Gavin is a man of many, many talents, but “Yes” is all I can manage. Over and over. Yes, yes, yes.
He’s about to eat me to oblivion when it’s me who moves. Off the bed to unzip his jeans and slide them and his boxers off. At his look, I grin. “I can’t feel this good alone again.”
He chuckles darkly but doesn’t argue. Then he’s naked and I’m naked and I want my mouth and hands all over him. I want to read him like a book written in him-flavored braille.
From the foot of the bed, I take him in my mouth—I can’t not—and his moan hits my skin like a flame to paper. But it’s his gruff “Spin around” and hands maneuvering my body that nearly makes me combust. We find a rhythm of tasting and licking and muttering the dirtiest promises against each other.
I’m close, and this time I can’t stop it. With his face between my legs and mine between his, I am sideswiped by ecstasy, crying out and wrapping my hands around the backs of his thighs while pressing myself deeper into his mouth as it hits me. Wave after wave after wave of it.
I might black out from the pleasure—it’s so intense, I don’t know—but in a euphoric daze, I pry my hips from his face and position myself so I’m on all fours, looking up the delicious landscape of his body while he looks down at me. Our eyes connect, and like a lock clicked into place, they stay.
“I need you,” His voice is a whisper and plea as his hands reach for me.
And there, mixed with all the lust and want, is his need in his eyes.
And I can’t look away from it. Not as I take him in my mouth once more, him swearing with my suck as his salt hits my tongue.
Not as I work my way up the expanse of him, licking from his V line of muscles to the column of his throat.
And not as I straddle him, and his hands find my face.
He looks at me while I look at him, eyes burning each other up and echoing everything we need. We’re panting and reaching with mouths and I’m about to come again without him even being inside me.
This is a true eye fucking, and the intensity of it makes my chest ache.
“I don’t have a condom,” he whispers.
We still. Because I don’t have a condom either—at least not one that’s less than twenty years old—but we also don’t have a prayer of walking away from this. And if I end up pregnant…
“Okay,” I say.
The rain roars against the roof and window, and his serious “You sure?” is barely audible.
I laugh, breathy. “You asked what makes me happy, Gavin.” I lean down to ghost his lips with a kiss. “And that sure as hell isn’t you not being inside me.”
Then he’s at my entrance and I’m pulling him in. Every inch hurting so good.
I adjust to the stretch; he grips my hips. Now I’m grinding, folding over him so his mouth is on my skin while I’m gasping with every movement.
My eyelids go heavy, drunk on this feeling, but when they flitter open, his gaze is over my shoulder, and he stills. “Who the hell is that?”
I follow his attention to the ceiling and laugh. “Pacey from Dawson’s Creek.”
“I can’t do this with him watching,” he says, indeed not doing this.
Gavin is about to give me what I would bet will be the best orgasm of my life, and I laugh even harder.
He pulls out of me, stands on the mattress—naked and hard—and rips the poster off the ceiling, tearing it into two pieces.
I’m still laughing when he drops back to the bed, rolls me onto my back, and gets on top of me.
“I’m not sharing you,” he says against my neck. “Not even with a poster.”
I can’t even get my okay out because he’s pushing inside of me until our laughter fades. Through every thrust, every kiss, every slide of our sweaty skin, the rain falls, and our eyes stay locked.
The too-tiny bed moans with our movements, the screws seemingly coming undone along with us.
It’s me who comes first, screaming until he covers my mouth with his. When I’m done, any control he had is gone. He fucks me so hard I wonder if I might break. Over and over and over and I beg him not to stop. I never want him to stop.
And with a final and borderline painful thrust, his face contorts then he comes to the tune of quick breaths and grunts.
He crashes on top of me, breathless, both of us panting in a bubble of bliss. The bed crashes to the floor with a bang.
We look at each other.
And then, we laugh.