Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
CALEB
She’s kissing me.
Harper Tucker is kissing me.
The second our lips connect, everything about my world that has been so upside down since she walked out of my life ten years ago turns right-side up again.
Did some small part of me hope that she’d show up to the ten-year celebration of Helen’s life?
Yes.
Like a Goddamn idiot, I still hoped. I knew when I told Bane to tell Silas about it, there was a chance it could happen.
But now—her actually being here, suddenly throwing herself in my arms right when I thought she was about to pull another runner on me—I can barely believe this isn’t one of the many tormenting dreams that’ve kept me up at night the past decade.
And she just said she loves you.
She has a child with another man. A man I suspect has always been my greatest enemy.
I knew she had a kid with him. I’ve looked her up online. Of course I have. I would have chased her to the ends of the earth. I tried everything to find her right after she disappeared on me.
Her mother at the trailer park stonewalled me. The GPS on her phone led me to find it cracked on the side of the road, as if she’d tossed it exactly so I’d never find her.
I tried to take it as a sign she meant what she said in the note she left.
When she finally popped up on social media a few years later with her tattoo shop, and mention of a kid and a partner named Z, I tried to harden myself with the knowledge that our brief time together meant more to me than it ever had to her.
I tried to be happy for her. If you love someone, you let them go, all that.
But now I kiss her hungrily back, hands cinching around her waist and pulling her into me, knowing now it was all a fucking lie.
Just that bastard intentionally keeping her away from me. No doubt he tossed her phone himself.
She groans into the kiss, her lips working just as furiously against mine.
She never wanted to leave me. She would have stayed. I know she would have. She always wanted me back.
Holy fuck, it changes everything.
It’s going to get messy, if her son’s father hates me… But I don’t fucking care.
I kiss her harder, a desperate need rising inside me that feels wild and unrestrained in a way that would feel dangerous except for how her whole body loosens so she’s flush against me. Her lips feel fuller but so familiar at the same time.
In some dark part of my mind, I swore if she actually showed up at the memorial, I wouldn’t let her go without a fight.
And I didn’t even know the half of it.
Her leg lifts to wrap around my hip and my hand drops to massage her ass. Fuck, the feel of her in my arms. The way she kisses me just as furiously back—like she’s been equally desperate for me these last ten years.
I want to lose my mind with her, and give into the desperation of our bodies. For the first time in years, I’m not fighting for control of my thoughts. It feels so natural to just exist. Because touching Harper is as natural as breathing.
When her hands reach for the hem of my shirt, though, all systems freeze.
God knows it’s not that I’m not primed. I’m hard, all but bursting.
And the thing is, if it were any other woman, I’d let them continue without thinking about it.
All I have these days are one-night stands.
But that’s the thing. This is Harper.
Every time I look up at the night sky and see the stars, I want to map the constellations with her. When I’m alone on the vast emptiness of a mattress, I imagine her curled into my side.
Other women have touched me in the last decade, but all I can ever think is that they aren’t her. Not Harper. Not the one I want.
But finally it is Harper.
The only woman I’ve ever wanted is here, back in my arms, saying the words I’ve been dying my whole life to hear.
I can feel in her desperation that she wants this fast and dirty. And it feels just like it did back in high school, like I’m in some sort of time warp déjà vu.
Her wanting my body before she runs out the door.
Before I know what I’m doing, my strong fingers are wrapped firmly around her wrists, slowing her when she reaches for my zipper.
Her fingers flex against my abdominal muscles, and I groan—wanting nothing more than to give in.
Which only pulls a mirrored groan from her throat.
“Why? We both know you’re not a Boy Scout anymore.”
I’m still not sure if this is a dream or not. Her wrist straining in my fists isn’t helping me think any straighter.
“Don’t you dare pull away,” I whisper into the hair at the top of her head, wrapping an arm around the small of her back when she starts to wriggle. “I just need to take it slow.”
She half-laughs, half-groans into my chest. “You’re gonna kill me, Boy Scout.”
I run my fingers down the top of her hair, unpinning as I go, luxuriating in the feel of the thick, familiar texture between my fingers. So fucking soft. She was always so fucking soft.
“Fuck, Harper… how are you still the same ten years later?”
But she shakes her head beneath my chin.
“Everything’s changed,” she whispers, her breath warm against my chest through my shirt.
She tips her head back, eyes searching mine. “Except it hasn’t at all, at the same time.”
I know exactly what she means. Everything has changed.
Outwardly, I’m a completely different man than the boy I was at eighteen when she left—well, when she was tricked into leaving. The long years of grief have carved me into a different sort of being.
I’m all surface now. I don’t let anybody in deep. Even my best friend, Domhnall.
I keep to the shallows. I’m far more invested in all of their lives than letting any of them invest in mine.
“I think I’ve just been waiting for you…” I confess, only realizing how true it is as I say it out loud. “Treading water.”
She frowns, looking hurt by that thought.
“That’s not true,” she says. “You’ve really created something here. And all your friends—it’s so clear how much they care about you now.”
“None of them are you.”
“Caleb, I—”
But then she breaks off, looking at the floor. “We need to talk.”
She’s right. We do. But now that I have her so close, I can’t help curving my hand around the back of her neck and massaging her skull, so thrilled at feeling the shape of her again.
Her eyes flutter like it’s the closest thing she’s felt to bliss in a long time, and the next second we’re kissing desperately again, like we need each other to breathe.
Fuck, how have I lasted this long without her lips? Without her body underneath my hands?
And that’s when she reaches—not for the hem of my shirt this time—but for her own. She peels it off over her head.
I’m breathless when she’s left in nothing but her black bra and skirt.
The bra is ill-fitting and clearly worn. She didn’t mean for anyone to see it. She didn’t come here for this.
She really thought she would just come for Helen’s memorial, then sneak off again.
“Little fool,” I say, unclasping her bra quickly. I can’t make up my mind about what I want, fast or slow. I want everything all at the same time when it comes to Harper.
With the tips of my fingers, I caress the straps down her shoulders to reveal her to me. We both gasp as the fabric drops from her breasts.
Her breasts have changed. They’ve filled out, either from maturity or motherhood. She’s a mom. God, that still breaks my brain… and at the same time, seems so right.
Even when she was a wild teenager, she was still trying to take care of everybody.
Me. Mom. Z.
Always trying to make sure we were okay. Sacrificing her happiness for ours.
I can’t wait to meet her son, I think to myself. And become a stepfather. Because I will be in their lives. I will not give her up twice.
I vow it silently, even as she holds onto my shoulders to lift up and kiss me with another of her hungry, passionate kisses.
No one has ever kissed me like this—before her or since. Like it’s not just a gateway to sex,
but the kiss itself is the whole point.
Like she can’t keep her lips away from mine because staying away feels like an impossibility. She needs my kiss as much as every other touch.
I feel the same way.
As my tongue presses back against hers, lighting the whole world on fire, my pants grow tight to the point of discomfort.
When her hands trace down my chest, I don’t catch her wrists to stop them this time.
I think she needs to touch me to make this real, so she knows it’s not a dream, too. She needs the real of our bodies cementing what our minds and hearts have known all day.
The love never died.
Sometimes the animal in us needs to seal through touch what words can only echo.
It’s hungering inside me now too—that need to reclaim.
Her fingers have risen beneath my shirt to toy with the muscles of my abdomen, driving me even crazier.
It’s what she wants, isn’t it? She wants me in a frenzy.
She always did like it best when I was out of my mind for her. I’m happy to oblige and give in. Because with her my mind was always the most free.
So I turn, and, one arm around her back to protect her from the harsh grain of the wood,
I slam her back against my office door. My right hand slaps the wood beside her head, giving into my furious need.
I press my thigh between her legs, which immediately open for me.
Her mouth drops from mine in a deep groan as she starts to move down my throat, finding a throbbing vein and sucking furiously.
It drives me all but feral.
Her hands drop from my abs to my belt, and I pull back just enough to give her space to work, while still caging her in with both my hands against the door.
Harper is here in my arms, and Harper is mine. She always has been, and by God, she always will be. I swear it. I don’t know fucking how, but I’m never letting anything come between us ever again.
I only give her the time to shove down my pants and boxers before I’ve got her up in my arms, her back against the door.