Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Danny
□ Have a one-night stand
? Get properly fucked, encores welcome
Christina rinsed off in my shower last night. She brushed her teeth at my sink. She plugged in her phone at my side table. She shimmied into my sheets. She laid her damp hair on my pillow. She fell asleep tangled in my limbs.
And now I know the worth of things like showers, sinks, side tables, sheets, pillows, and limbs.
I’ve been watching her sleep for longer than I care to admit.
She’s on her back, hair fanned out around her.
Her eyelashes rest so dark and long on her pale skin.
One arm is slung up on her pillow; the other is outstretched toward me, hand in mine, under the covers.
No matter how we shifted through the night, she always kept a hand or a foot or a knee against my skin, since I slept in only my boxer briefs.
My sweet muse—expressing connection through physical touch even in her sleep.
She sighs deeply, lashes fluttering, before opening her eyes.
They roam the ceiling, down to the sheets, like she’s confused about where she is.
Then she turns toward me, where I’m facing her on my side, and her expression instantly clears.
This dreamy little smile appears as she shifts onto her side to face me and flexes her fingers on mine, as if she would have reached for me and found we’re already holding hands.
“Hi,” she says, voice crackly with sleep.
“Good morning.”
I want to memorize everything about this moment—the first time she wakes up in my bed.
Possibly the only time.
I’m trying very hard to manage my expectations.
She wants to play things by ear; she doesn’t want definitions.
I respect that, and I’ll honor that. But I’m not sure my life will ever be the same after last night.
I won’t be able to live with myself if I don’t do everything possible to make this—to make us—feel right for her.
“It’s still so dark,” she says. “What time is it?”
“It’s actually past nine.” I point to the wide windows on the adjacent wall. “Look.”
She raises her head to peek, and then she swoons back into the pillow on a contented sigh. “A rainy Sunday.”
“Does that mean we get to be cozy all day?”
She nods. “You have to crack the windows open so we can hear the rain.”
I start to slip out of the covers to fulfill that request, but she grabs me with both hands. “Wait.” She looks a little surprised at her own objection. “We’ll open them when we get up.”
I tilt my head at her in question.
“You’re so very warm.”
That wrestles a smile out of me. I settle back in a little closer to her than before, our legs tangling and our hands joined between us.
“Did you sleep okay?” I ask.
“Mmm. Your bed is so comfy. I’m really glad I stayed.”
“Yeah?”
She nods. “And I’m glad I stole your address from Runzhou’s GPS.”
I sweep my thumb over her hand. She knows I would want confirmation that she’s not regretting last night, and she’s offering it to me freely. “Me too.” I eye her suspiciously. “You’re crazy good at sex, Christina.”
She snorts. “I thought I would be if someone gave me a real chance!”
“Indeed,” I laugh. “Although we did barely scratch the surface.” My voice drops. “That wasn’t even close to everything I want to do to you.”
I’m not a religious man. Many would even say I’m an anti-religious man. But having Christina come on my tongue and on my cock was as close to a religious experience as I can imagine. And by that, I mean there was something unexplainable at work. Something rapturous.
A blush flashes across her cheeks, but she shrugs under the covers. “Apparently I’m a natural. So bring it on.”
I’m so relieved to hear that she wants more with me—that she’s flirting and being silly about it—that I have to take a deep, steadying breath.
She bites her lip. “I don’t have a ton of comparison, but I think you might be crazy good at sex too. Like, ruin-all-other-men-for-me good.”
The shit-eating grin takes over me before I can help it.
She rolls her eyes. “I don’t know when our literal circle jerk became a circle jerk of validation …”
I laugh and kiss her hand.
“But you haven’t been with anyone in a while?” she asks. “Those test results were about four months ago, yeah?”
She let me fuck her without any barriers between us because she trusts me.
Christina trusts me. In that moment, any other achievement in my life suddenly seemed very small.
So very unimportant. And I felt some shift inside, some rearrangement.
Like if I’ve earned her trust, my every action must now revolve around keeping it. Honoring it. Honoring her.
“Right,” I answer. “It’s been closer to a year since I was last with anyone.”
“Oh? Your schedule’s not overflowing with one-night stands?”
I yank her earlobe and she yelps. “I’ve actually never had a one-night stand, either. I’ve dated here and there. Nothing too serious.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “The only occasion I really have to meet people is filming my documentaries. And women get confused when they discover after a few weeks that I’m not the easygoing person they met when I was filming.”
She huffs a breath through her nostrils. “Idiots.”
My chest constricts, but I have to move past it or I’ll end up doing something way over the top, like begging her to unpack all her books here. “It also just never felt right.”
The implication of my words, of course, is that she does feel right.
Her expression softens. Then it falls. She whispers, “Sometimes, I’m afraid that my ability to know what feels right has been silenced and buried for so long that I wouldn’t recognize it even if it were screaming at me.”
I rub the ends of her hair between my fingers, and I try to keep my anger at what’s been done to her at bay so I can listen. I can sense this is a clarifying moment for her, that something is shaking loose. Here in my bed, where she’s safe and comfortable and cared for.
She swallows. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you asked me last week.
Why TJL? Why now? I told you it’s because I wanted to live, and that’s true.
But I think it might also be because I don’t quite know yet how to live on my own.
I need the list—commandments, really—because I don’t know what feels right, or what I like, or what’s worth investing in.
I’m so scared to be defined or limited because I don’t trust I’m strong enough to get off paths if they don’t feel right; I don’t trust I’ll even know they don’t feel right.
I stewed in such a toxic environment with toxic relationships and toxic beliefs for so long, always beating down the little voice inside that told me something wasn’t right here.
” Her eyes are all grief and fear and sadness when they meet mine.
“What if that voice can’t be recovered?”
Heart aching, I pull her into my chest and wrap my arms fully around her. She tucks her head under my chin and softly nuzzles into me. I kiss her hair, over and over, as if I can kiss away the ugliness she’s endured.
Her raw vulnerability unlocks the vulnerability in me. “I know your inner voice is still there, Christina. I know because it’s inspiring me to listen to my own.”
She pulls back with questioning eyes.
If her inner voice was stifled by her toxic environment, mine has been stifled by my own relentless pursuit of more work.
I still believe in the efficacy of my documentaries—I believe it more than ever with every part of Christina’s story that we film—but I’ve slipped into a checking-boxes approach over the years.
I’ve been imprinting all the experiences on camera but not on myself. I’ve been stagnant.
“You agreed to do the trial run for the documentary because you listened to yourself enough to recognize this random but powerful opportunity to help people with your story.”
“I still wasn’t sure it was the right call,” she says.
“But you took a chance to find out.”
She nods, picking up on the direction of my thinking. “And I was able to say when it didn’t feel right. When it felt like being alone on the church stage.”
“Exactly. That’s when I knew stepping in front of the camera with you—something I’d never done before—was the right thing to do.” I gently caress her cheek with the back of my fingers. “Your courage gave me the courage to take that leap.”
By ticking off boxes, by hiding behind a charismatic facade instead of engaging with the world as myself, I haven’t allowed myself to grow or change. I haven’t allowed myself to recognize the life-changing opportunities when they might come calling.
Until her.
Charlie called her the girl I’m falling for.
Charlie’s rarely wrong.
She hums, a sensual turn on its end. “I did change direction on my plans for last night based on what felt right too.”
I smile, my chest expanding all over again. “I think both of our inner voices will get stronger over time if we keep listening for them.”
She finally kisses my chin. “Thank you.” Then she sighs, cuddling further into me. “Can we stay in bed all morning?”
I want to stay in this bed with her all year. “Of course. Look what I have.” I reach over to my side table and flash the cover of the most recent banned book we’re both reading.
“Hell yes!” she exclaims, light coming back into her eyes. “I left off where they just got to the cabin.”
I nod, flipping through the pages. “I’m a little ways past you.”
She grits her teeth. “Hey, Danny?”
I look at her in question.
“I have to pee so bad.”
I bark a laugh. She scurries to the bathroom, and I take the opportunity to open the window and let the soothing sound of the rain saturate the room.
She zips back under the covers in record time, and I prop up against the pillows with our book. I hold an arm up for her, and she giggles as she snuggles into my side with her head tucked on my shoulder where she can see the book too.