There’s nothing more to say, so I let myself get lost in his kiss again. I raise onto my knees and guide him inside me. He looks into my eyes as I sink deep down onto him, and my breath goes out of me. He rakes his beautiful gaze over me, watching my face, my breasts, my hips as I ride him in a steady, unhurried rhythm. Outside the window next to us, the city is endless noise and light, but in here there’s only the sound of us together. Me and Reeve, against all odds.
Tension coils inside me, tight as a spring. I watch him sink his teeth into his lower lip, and I trace my thumb over the contours of his mouth, along his jaw and down his chest. His perfect features twist as his muscles turn drum tight under my hands. When I’m sure we’re both about to come, I lean down to bury my face in his neck, not wanting an inch of space between us. His arms wrap around my back, and I let out a broken gasp as pleasure overcomes me and he thrusts hard, losing himself inside me.
The tension melts slowly away as the acute ecstasy of orgasm mellows into contentedness. But Reeve’s arms remain tight around me.
“I was thinkingabout some of the things I said to you before I had any idea we’d end up together,” Reeve says later as wewash up in the shower, watching me tip my head back under the spray. “Shitty things.”
“Like saying I’m a total bitch? It’s okay, honey. When you’re right, you’re right.”
“I never called you a total bitch.” He licks his lips. “Out loud.”
I flick my fingers open, showering his face with droplets of water. “And here I thought I was about to get an apology of some kind.”
He wipes the water off his face with one big hand and then wraps an arm around my waist. “No,” he murmurs. “Things like how the more you know someone, the harder it is to worship them anymore. I don’t know if I really believed that or I just wanted to so I could go on thinking I was better off lonely. But I was wrong.” He reaches for my hand and squeezes so hard it hurts. “So don’t go leaving me, because if you do, I’m going to spend the rest of my life looking for someone like you who I fall harder for every time I see what you’re trying to hide from the world.”
I squeeze his hand back. Tonight I’ll go to sleep with a dozen new uncertainties about my future crowding my brain and the hundred questions that uncertainty will spawn, but none of them will be about Reeve.
FORTY-NINE
reeve
I don’t winthe Heisman.
It hurts, but it doesn’t crush me. Because even though I didn’t get my wish, I get to fly home from New York with something better.
After the winner is announced, Jade does her best to be sympathetic, but she hasn’t deflated in the slightest. She walked into the ceremony puffed up and glowing like she couldn’t be prouder of me, and she walks out exactly the same. I can’t match her enthusiasm, but the sting of the loss is dulled just a little by it.
When it’s all over, Cam and Lorenzo and Cash find me in the lobby and greet me with subdued smiles.
“Celebratory drinks in twenty minutes,” Cash tells me. “We already scoped out the spot.”
“Celebratory?” I shake my head. “Come on, man.”
“You’re at the fucking Heisman ceremony, stud. Yeah, celebratory.”
I get that I’ll be proud of this someday, but today’s not the day, and I don’t have it in me to pretend like I’m in the mood to celebrate. I want to sit alone in my hotel room for a couple ofhours and feel like shit and then get over it. “We can’t save that for tomorrow?”
Cam squeezes my shoulder. “We’ll give you ten minutes to go fuck up the pillows in your hotel room, and then you and your shitty mood are coming out with us. No excuses.”
Jade and I go upstairs to change. I take off my suit, and she comes up behind me to wrap her arms around my chest. “I’m sorry you’re sad, baby,” she murmurs against my shoulder.
“Yeah. It’s not what I hoped for.”
“But you know I don’t feel bad for you, right?”
I laugh in spite of my mood. “Why’s that?”
“Because all the winner has is a trophy.”
“And?”
“And you have everything.” She presses her soft lips to my back.
I watch in the mirror as she gives me a smile. She’s never been more right.
The next morningwe’re all a little hungover when we show up to the brunch Minnie organized, but even though Minnie’s never shown up anywhere looking less than fresh as a daisy, I think she might be hurting as bad as us. Cam says she’s got some man friend in the city who had his heart set on showing her the sights last night.
We order food; then Cam gives a toast that has all the women in the group tearing up. After he finishes, I look around the table at Minnie and my friends and my beautiful girlfriend. They might not make as much noise as a packed sixty-thousand-person stadium, but they’re here to celebrate me on the day someone else made the headlines. When they say family is forever, this is who they’re talking about.
