My room is upstairs, and though my parents could probably sleep through the apocalypse, I hear Tahoe and Gina’s rough lovemaking. I guess my brother needs the outlet, because they’ve been at it for a while.
I toss around in bed and everything reminds me of her. Everything makes me crave him.
I grab my phone and text him at 12 a.m.
I wanted you to stay.
I’d sleep in the tree house with you.
You’re missing out on cramped shoulders and a permanently injured back, boo.
My phone rings, and my heart leaps as I see his name on the screen. I answer and hear his voice, husky, though I’m not sure if it’s husky due to sleep or something else.
“I’m game if you are.”
I lie there and say nothing, praying my brother hasn’t scared him away. I don’t want to hang up. I whisper, “How about we sleep on the hill just past the house?”
“A night sleeping on a hill?”
I bite my lips, hearing the amusement in his voice. Please God, don’t let what my brother said scare this guy away. I say, “Yes. With you.”
“I’ll be there in twenty.”
“I’ll see you there.”
I leap out of the bed and take a quick shower, blow-dry my hair, pull it back into a ponytail, and slip into comfortable sweatpants and one of my sleeping T-shirts.
I leave a note on my pillow just in case Mother peeks into my room.
I simply say, I’m sleeping on the hill.
I grab a tote bag and go raid the kitchen, adding water bottles, two blankets, then tiptoe out of the house.
I walk up to the figure on the hill, his shadow making everything inside of me bubble with an odd longing I’d never before felt in my life.
“Hey,” I say fake cheerily, “I brought blankets. Two. One so the ants don’t get us, another for you and me.”
His shoes are next to his wallet and rental car keys and hotel key. He’s barefoot. Freshly showered, jeans hanging low on his hips, and a T-shirt that looks so soft and inviting, I want to nuzzle myself into his chest.
I pull out one of the blankets and he takes it from my hand, his eyes meeting mine in the dark before he whips it out and spreads it on the ground.
I sit on it and he drops next to me, the weather too warm to use the extra blanket for now.
We stare at the hills around us. “It makes me humble. Being outside. Nothing man can create can equate to this.”
Callan’s amused half-smile and the twinkle in his eyes appear. “Well, it took billions of years to become this, scientifically speaking.”
I smile. Him and his stats. I don’t think he’s thinking of stats, though. He leans forward and sets his hand on my back, pulling me close. I absorb the way he smells and the way it feels while we’re surrounded by all this stillness, the sights and scents of the woods.
He drags his nose over the back of my ear, scenting the spot where I dabbed perfume. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s only you.”
It feels so natural, and also primitive.
“They say new, unfamiliar experiences release dopamine in our brains and we feel happy. Am I the unfamiliar to you, Callan?”
“In a way. But you’re familiar enough I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. Wanted you before this life.”
Do you want me enough . . .? I want to ask.
I don’t ask it.
I just want to live for this moment without worrying about tomorrow.
He’s stroking his hand under my top as if he wants to feel my skin.
I lean a little into him and hook one of my legs over his. His hand spreads wider on my back as he drags his nose down my jaw to nuzzle me. He kisses my cheek, a sweet, almost chaste kiss. I sigh and lean in even closer, wrapping my arms around his neck and tilting my head up to his.
He touches his lips to mine. I’m so still, as still as the stillness around us, disturbed only by a little breeze. But my pulse is fluttering inside me as I let his lips open mine. I swallow back a moan and grip his T-shirt in my fists as I open my mouth a little.
His mouth tastes like mint and coffee and caramel, and his warm tongue strokes mine as if he’s never kissed me before.
I moan, and he inhales sharply in response. He holds my face with one hand and kisses me, hot and wet and deep and achingly tender.
His other hand slips under my T-shirt again and his fingers spread wide as if he wants to touch all of my skin, the touch warm and gentle as he rubs his tongue to mine.
He eases back, and I don’t know my name.
Olivia. Olivia Roth. Livvy. Is that me?
I look up at him and we are both silent.
His face is surreal in the moonlight. I blink, wondering if it’s really Callan gazing at me like this.
He’s breathing hard. A muscle starts working in the back of his jaw. His eyes shine with fierce tenderness and some emotion that I can’t place. My fingers are still holding fistfuls of his T-shirt, his chest expanding with every breath.
He shuts his eyes and lays his forehead against mine.
We stay this way for a couple of long, exquisite minutes, the air I breathe warm from his breath.
I stand up and pull my shirt over my head, then shuck down my drawstring pants.
Then I’m naked, and lowering to my knees as he sits up on his arms, his eyes heavy-lidded.
His irises have turned to pools of heat and darkness.
“I just want to be close and feel alive,” I say as I kneel back down on the blanket.
“Come here.” He takes me in his arms and pushes me down on the blanket, beneath him.
He frames my head with his arms folded and he looks down at me with those gold eyes.
We look at each other for a long, long time, until he reaches out his hand and rubs my lips with his thumb.
He’s so tenderly looking down at me—all of me. Even the boring spots like my neck and my shoulders and my tummy.
My throat feels tight. My vocal cords are tangled with words that I want to say but I’m scared to let out. I want to tell him that I love him, but it would make it even harder to leave Chicago in one week.
I don’t want him to be with me for fear of hurting me.
I don’t want to do that to him.
And something tells me that, even if he doesn’t love me, he cares enough he might do that for me.
So I tell him everything else.
I slip my hand under his T-shirt and am trying not to pant too obviously as I trail my fingers over his abs, teasing the little hairs near his waistband. “This line of hair from here, your belly button, disappearing into the waistband of your boxers. I love it.” My voice is breathy as I let my hand tease his erection over the fabric of his jeans, and his voice is rough when he replies.
“I love the ones here.” He dips his hand between my legs.
I buck a little.
He clenches his jaw when I do that, then he sits back and fists the fabric at the back of his nape and jerks off his T-shirt with one swift pull. He stands to unbutton and unzip his jeans.
I sit up almost instinctively to nix the distance between us as I watch him strip. Every line of muscle on his body shifts and ripples as he stretches back down to sit next to me.
My heart whacks madly at his nearness again.
Every emotion in my heart feels as if it’s squeezed inside there and it hurts to keep it in. It needs out.
We’re both naked and my skin singes in all the spots our bodies touch.
Callan reaches up to my nape and inserts all five fingers of his hand through my hair, and he holds my head still as he looks into my eyes as if absorbing me—his eyes tracking my features, one by one.
I’m breathless, memorizing how the moonlight kisses his face.
A muscle ticks in the back of his jaw before he presses his lips to my cheek, dragging them down my jaw, my neck, tasting me.
He lowers me down to the blanket.
“So beautiful.”
His tongue pus
hes back in my mouth and I’m disintegrating on the spot. His skin is velvet gold beneath my eager fingers. I can’t get enough of the feel of him. The scent of him.
He’s lean and athletic, and he looks even more rugged naked, with his hair tousled.
Crickets chirp nearby.
He cups and suckles one of my breasts. I gasp. The tug of his mouth on my nipple makes my back arch.
He parts my legs with one hand, and his fingers caress my inner thighs first. I stroke his jaw and press a kiss on his lips and he rewards me by swirling his tongue inside my mouth as he caresses my folds, gently with two fingers. He teases me with a fingertip.
I feel his fingers slide, first one, then two. Then he’s plunging deeper and slower.
“Ohhh. I . . . Callan.”
He starts kissing a wet path down my abdomen as his hands part my thighs. My eyes widen when he pushes my legs wider apart and then he’s tasting me. I gasp and press instinctively up against his mouth as his tongue probes. I moan, and he groans in reply and moves his lips in a hot trail up my abdomen, kissing my nipples again and then my mouth as he eases his fingers back into the place where I most ache.
He takes my breast in his hand and drags his tongue across the tip of my nipple, then covers it with his mouth.
I’m trembling, and he vibrates with urgency.
He looks at me and touches me at the same time, eyes coasting the swells of my breasts to the pink tips, which are puckered to the point of pain as I pant beneath him.
He winds a path with his lips down between my legs again. His hands remain on my breasts; he scrapes his thumbs over the peaks, then there’s the heat of his mouth at my sex, and I’m melting, pulling him up by the hair, wanting his weight on top of me and his skin against mine.
I writhe, and he curses softly when he realizes how much I need it, need him.
He leans over, and I hear the rustle of his slacks as he pulls out a condom and rolls it onto his hard cock. He leans over me, and I rub my legs against his thick, muscled, hair-dusted calves, then wrap them around his hips. And then he’s inside me.
That first thrust feels nearly orgasmic.
We’re not speaking.
But suddenly, we’re fucking a little wildly and making a lot of noise.
Without the walls to contain them, the noises we make seem to go on forever. Groans and moans as we make love, more like mating, a little animal and a lot hot. His hips rolling and his ass flexing, his back muscles bunching beneath my fingers, my thighs squeezing around his hips, my ankles locked at the small of his back.
“I’m in so deep,” he whispers. His hair falls over one eye and I brush it aside.
Adorable.
He’s so adorable.
My ruthless Chicago shark in the woods, as natural as if he’d been born here, from the earth, and me too.
“So fucking deep,” he grits out as he grabs my head and crushes my lips with his, never stopping his kiss, never stopping the rhythm, until I’m unraveling between him and the warm blanket beneath me.
We lie there sated for a little while, not even covered by the extra blanket. Our skin looks radiant in the moonlight, sweaty too.
He draws me to his side and brushes my hair back, then strokes his hand absently over my shoulder as he asks me, “You okay?”
Maybe it was the intense lovemaking, the intense emotions of the day, but something in me breaks loose, and I start crying from one second to the next.
He moans as if it pains him to see me cry and I bury my face in the nook of his arm, feeling him squeeze me. “You’ll be okay,” he promises, his lips buried in my hair and moving against my scalp.
“Yes,” I say, nodding, amazed by how much I needed to cry, how much I am not trying to stop crying because it just feels right to cry in his arms.
I didn’t bring tissues and just when I start to try to dry my face, he holds me by the jaw and licks up my tears, even the ones that trickled down my neck.
I clutch his hair and kiss the top of his head as his warm tongue laps me up, turning my feelings back to desire rather than loss, love rather than grief.
“Are you really going back tomorrow?” I ask him.
“I have to.”
I swallow. “Would you mind if I stayed a few days? I just want to support Mom and Dad.”
“Take as long as you need.”
“I will. Not too long. Otherwise it’ll be time for me to get back here again,” I say.
The thought of the end of my internship and my time in Chicago feels a bit like a mood killer. The thought of a ticking clock on my time with Callan is also an aphrodisiac, and I’m determined to binge on him before I leave, just like I can tell—by the way he starts kissing me and ravaging my body hungrily—that he’s determined to binge on me, too.
I visit Nana at the cemetery every day for the next few days. I am mad and sad and guilty and more. “I always thought I would be able to talk to you when I fell in love, Nana. Now what do I do?”
The next day I ask her, “Should I tell him I love him?”
The last day, “If I should tell him I love him, send me a sign.”
I hear rustling behind me, glance up at a tall oak to spot two squirrels fucking.
“What is that supposed to mean? Really, Nana!”
I’m mad again as I pack my bags, then I just want Chicago. It’s not that I love the city any more than I love Texas, but it’s what’s in it that I crave most.
Strange how homesick I was for Chicago. I hadn’t realized how much until I’m back and feel the warm wind in my face when I step out of the cab and I walk into my apartment building. I hadn’t told anyone I was on my way back. I even booked a ticket on a commercial airline and flew—on my own. I vomited only on takeoff and landing. I call that a small victory.
He’s the first one I call. I get voicemail, so I leave a message.
“Hey. I’m back. Just wanted to say hello. Call me later.”
He immediately texts me.
In NY
meeting
couldn’t pick up.
Back around 2 a.m.
When are you getting in?
I’m in! Left you a message. Though I’m probably turning in earlier than 2 tonight. I might be too tired to hear the door. See you tomorrow?
Looking forward to tomorrow
Miss Roth
Oh, Mr. Carmichael, you know, so am I.
I’m smiling when I lower my phone, but my smile soon fades when I think of how soon I’ll be leaving again for good.
Wynn’s the second one I call, because she left a thousand and one messages on my phone, apologizing for not being able to come to the funeral. The moment I tell her I’m in town, she tells me she’s coming over.
They say good friends never ask if they can come over, they just do.
It makes me happy to have found one in Wynn.
“Sorry about your grandma,” she says the moment she steps into my apartment and gives me a huge hug. “I had a gallery opening of a new artist, I couldn’t get away, everything was falling apart. My thoughts and prayers were with you. Are you okay?” she says as she pulls back to study me.
“Yes. And you?”
“Okay.”
“You look pretty. Where are you going?” I ask, eyeing her soft blue strapless dress.
“To have dinner at Emmett’s restaurant,” she confides.
“Oh! Did he finally—”
“Oh no! He doesn’t know I’m coming.” She grins, but her eyes look sad. “Maybe he’ll join me. Maybe he’ll just see me and . . . I don’t know. We can finally talk things out.”
“You’re not going alone.” Before she can protest, I head into my closet to change into a swirly black skirt and a black top. I still don’t feel like wearing colors, even though I know Nana would want me to.
Thirty minutes later, Wynn and I are at Emmett’s newest haute-cuisine restaurant, called Pear. I’m so famished, I could lick my plates dry—the food is phenomenal—but Wynn hardly takes a
bite. She keeps glancing around the restaurant. My heart hurts for her because she’s trying not to make it seem like she’s looking around.
We ask for the check, and there’s still no sight of Emmett. The waiter sets it down on the table and says, “The tab is taken care of.”
“I . . . oh, well thanks,” Wynn says, breathless. “Can I say thank you to the chef?”
“He’s terribly busy.” Obviously the fact that he doesn’t even hesitate means he was already given instructions not to allow this to happen.
My heart now aches for Wynn, but Wynn won’t have it.
Her eyebrows crease into an angry little frown as she signals at the spot where her plate had been resting minutes ago. “Well, see, I wanted to complain about the undercooked duck.”
I widen my eyes and barely keep from saying, You hardly ate the duck, and it was so good!
“I’m sorry, miss. I’d be happy to take your complaints to him.”
Wynn’s eyes spark in even hotter anger and she sets her napkin down. “Thank you, but since I don’t plan on returning, that’s quite all right.”
We head outside and start walking in silence.
Wynn is stewing.
I have no real clue about relationships—the only one I’ve had really has no definition at all. An affair. A fling. It’ll be over in days, once I finish my internship, and so what advice can I possibly give Wynn?
I stick with the usual. That if he doesn’t come back, or fight for her, or at least try, then he just doesn’t deserve her.
I worry about Callan and me. I worry about it hurting. Better to pull out right now than be hurt like this—
“He’s such a fucking— Do you know he just one day pulled back? One day, said he just didn’t want kids even when we’d talked about it before, when he’d asked me to move in—”
“WYNN!”
We hear a male voice yell behind us.
Wynn and I both spin around at the same time.
Emmett stands there in his chef jacket.
I wait for Wynn to do something, but she just kind of stands there and does nothing but stare.
“Fucking come back here, Wynn.” Emmett starts walking for her and I nudge Wynn.