Chapter 19
MILO
Iwent to her that night.
I stood outside her building at eleven o'clock and stared up at her dark windows, and knew with absolute fucking certainty that I was going to climb those stairs and hold her one last time.
The stairwell smelled like Pine-Sol and boiled cabbage, and when I got to her door, I could hear music playing from inside her apartment. It was a piece I didn't recognize. Simple. Haunting. The kind of melody that sounded like a person saying goodbye.
I knocked.
The music stopped and I heard footsteps, then the deadbolt turning.
She opened the door and I watched the recognition move through her body.
The slight lift of her chin as she caught my scent.
The parting of her lips. The tension leaving her shoulders and then rushing back as her jaw set, because she was angry and relieved in the same breath and didn't know which one to lead with.
"I thought you were dead," she said.
"I'm sorry. I texted you."
"That's your explanation?"
"No." I paused, searching for something that could possibly explain. "I don't have one."
Her hand found the doorframe. Gripped it. "Then why are you here?"
Because I might not get another chance.
"Because I couldn't stay away," I told her honestly.
Something cracked in her expression. The anger was still there, but underneath it was the reason I'd come here tonight.
She stepped aside.
I walked into her dark apartment, moving through her world the way I'd learned to. The world I'd chosen over my own the night I stopped going home.
She closed the door. The deadbolt clicked.
I stood in the middle of her kitchen. And for the first time in my career of masks and performances and dead-eyed grins, I didn't know what face to wear. Every version of myself felt wrong in this moment.
So I just stood there, responding to her when she softly said my name. And when she found me, her hand landing on my chest, fingers spreading over my sternum, her head tilting as she read my heartbeat, I pulled her against me and buried my face in her soft, dark hair.
"You're shaking," she whispered.
"I know."
"What happened?"
"I can't tell you."
"Milo—"
"I need you to trust me." My arms tightened around her. "Can you do that?"
She didn't respond at first. But her breath was warm against my throat. And her heart beat against my ribs, steady where mine was ragged.
"Yes," she said quietly. "But I'm still angry with you."
"I know."
"And you owe me an explanation."
"I know that too."
"And you can't just disappear for days and then—"
I kissed her.
Not hard. Not desperate. Slow. I kissed her top lip, then her bottom lip, then the corner of her mouth where it curved when she smiled at something only she could hear.
She made a sound against my mouth, quiet and wounded.
Her fingers curled into my shirt.
I pulled back just enough to rest my forehead against hers. My hands cradled her face, thumbs tracing her cheekbones, and I stared down at this woman who had so easily crawled beneath my skin, and I said the thing I'd been holding back from her.
"I love you, little bird."
She went still. Completely, utterly still.
"I love you," I repeated. "And whatever happens, I need you to remember that. Even if it doesn't look like it. Even if you can't see it. Even if you hate me."
Her breath caught. "Why would I hate you?"
"Just…please. Remember that."
"Milo, you're scaring me."
"I know." I kissed her forehead. Her closed eyelids. The bridge of her nose. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."
"For what?"
"For not saying it sooner."
She exhaled. A shuddering breath that passed through her whole body and into mine. Then her hands found my face, and she held me the way she held the music within her—with precision and tenderness and a certainty so deep it lived in her bones.
"I love you, too," she whispered.
My grip tightened on her jaw as the words hit my chest like a fist, and the air left my lungs in a rush that I couldn't disguise as breathing. My eyes burned with all of the overwhelming emotions bubbling up inside of me, and I kissed her again. Harder this time. Desperately.
Her mouth opened under mine and I tasted her—warm and real and alive—and the ticking clock in my head turned everything sharper, every sensation amplified.
The heat of her tongue against mine. The catch of her breath.
The sound she made in the back of her throat when my hand slid into her hair and gripped so she couldn't get away.
Without warning, I picked her up. Her legs wrapped around my waist, her arms around my neck as I carried her to the bedroom and laid her down on sheets that smelled like her.
This time I turned on the light.
And I undressed her slowly, wanting to remember this.
Not the way I usually did, tearing straps, ripping buttons, taking what I wanted because she liked it when I took.
Tonight I slid each piece off her body like I was unwrapping a most precious gift.
Her dress. Her bra. Her underwear. I traced the black lace with my fingertips before pulling it down her legs.
She reached for my shirt.
"Let me," I said. "Just…let me."
I started at her throat. Pressed my mouth to the hollow where her pulse beat and stayed there, feeling her heartbeat against my lips the way she felt mine against her fingertips. The rhythm of a woman who was alive and warm and here.
I moved down. Kissed the curve of her collarbone.
The place above her breast where I'd left a bite mark.
It was faded to nothing now. I pressed my mouth to the smooth, unmarked skin where it used to be, because the absence of the mark was worse than the mark itself.
It meant time had passed. It meant her body was letting go of me even while her heart held on.
"Milo…" She whispered my name as she threaded her fingers through my hair. Gentle. Searching for answers I couldn't give her.
I didn't answer. I just kept going.
I kissed the swell of her breast. Took her nipple into my mouth and rolled it with my tongue until she arched off the bed, a gasp tearing from her that brought an answering growl from the hungriest part of me.
I gave the other one the same attention, slow and thorough, while my hand traced down her ribs, over the plane of her stomach, over the curve of her hip bone.
The bruises from my grip were almost gone too. Faded to pale yellows she'd never see. I pressed my thumb into one and felt her flinch—not from pain, from the memory of pain—and I kissed that spot too. Held my mouth against the shadow of my own handprint and breathed.
"What are you doing?" she whispered.
Memorizing you.
"Loving you," I said.
Her fingers tightened in my hair.
I kissed lower, my tongue tasting her soft skin, memorizing the texture of her.
The crease where her thigh met her hip. The inside of her knee.
The delicate bone of her ankle. The arch of her foot.
Then I worked my way back up, dragging my mouth along the inside of her thigh, slow enough that I could feel the goosebumps rise under my lips.
By the time I stopped, she was trembling. I spread her thighs wide so I could see the most intimate part of her. She was wet and swollen and perfect.
"I need to hear you," I said against her skin. "Every sound. Don't hold back."
Then I put my mouth on her.
The first stroke of my tongue pulled a moan from her that I felt in my own chest. I licked her slow, tasting the salty-sweet of her arousal, flattening my tongue against her clit and then circling it with the tip.
She grabbed at the sheets with one hand and my hair with the other, her hips rolling into my face, silently begging for more.
I pinned her down with my forearm across her pelvis, pressing her into the mattress. She whimpered at the restraint, and this time the sound went straight to my cock, but this wasn't about me. Not tonight.
I ate her like I was starving. Like she was the last meal I'd ever have.
Tongue and lips and the careful edge of my teeth against her clit.
I learned her this way. Not with the urgency of every other time, but with a patience that bordered on cruelty.
I pulled her to the edge and held her there, backing off every time her breathing turned jagged, every time her thighs locked around my head, every time her voice pitched toward that shattered frequency that meant she was close.
"Please—" Her hips bucked against my arm. "Milo, please, I can't—"
"You can."
I slid two fingers inside her. Curled them. Found the spot that made her spine arch like a bow, and I stroked it while my mouth worked her clit in slow, devastating circles.
The orgasm tore through her in waves, her pussy clenching around my fingers, her voice cracking on my name, calling for me in the darkness behind her eyes like she was lost and I was the only thing that could find her.
I held her through it. Worked her through every aftershock. Kissed the inside of her thigh while her body came down, her legs shaking, her breathing ragged.
Then I crawled up her body and she reached for me, her hands fumbling with my belt, my zipper. I let her undress me this time. Let her pull my shirt over my head and run her palms across my chest, her fingers tracing the pattern of hair and muscle.
I settled between her legs, the head of my cock pressing against her entrance, slick with how wet she was, and, oh god, ever so slowly, I pushed inside.
One inch. Then two. Watching her face to see every expression.
Needing to commit to memory the way her lips parted and her brow creased and her chin tilted up like she was reaching for something only I could give her.
When I was all the way inside her, I stopped.
Held still.
And tried to breathe.
Her walls fluttered around me, tight and hot, adjusting to the stretch. Her hands found my face, cupping my jaw, her thumbs tracing my cheekbones.
"I can feel your heartbeat," she whispered. "Inside me."
My throat closed around a moan.