“You don’t have to do this.” I stroke her soft hair as she looks up at me.
“Open for me,” she teases, tapping at my thighs until I’m straddling her on either side. She runs her tongue over the tip before lunging down over me.
“Oh, shit,” I whisper.
Reese goes off on me like she’s been skillfully trained in the fine art of giving head. She dips in low, and I’m just waiting to hear her gag. Her cool fingers graze over my balls, and I suck in a breath through my teeth. Reese has got me going, she’s waking up all my senses, and it’s too damn good to not want to share this with her. I reach down and carefully pick her up onto the bed. I lie down opposite her and plant a kiss on the inside of her knee, and she groans. Reese puts her perfect mouth back over my cock while I meander kisses up her bare thigh, lifting her dress over her hips with a simple glide of my hand. I bury a series of kisses in that sweet spot of hers I was loving earlier tonight while she continues the most fucking fantastic blow job in the history of the universe. I flick my tongue over her until she’s scratching at my back again. Reese tastes like sugar, like fucking candy, and I can’t get enough. I wait until she’s hyperventilating before I explode, and this time she pulls away. Her body spasms into mine, and we tremble together as she clutches my neck in a chokehold with her knees. I kiss her thigh, and she quivers before pulling me up next to her on the pillow.
“That was unbelievable.” She leans in and nibbles on my lower lip.
“You’re unbelievable.” I wrap my arms around her.
Reese reaches down and pulls a giant comforter over us, light as air.
“Stay tonight. I want you to.” She looks up at me with those big silver eyes as the moon kisses her features, turning her skin the same beautiful hue as her eyes.
I want to tell her that I love her but hold back.
“Well, if you’re going to twist my arm.” I rumple her hair, and my chest thumps with a quiet laugh.
“Thank you.” She dots my lips with a kiss and twists into me until we’re spooning. “Ace?”
“Yeah.” I flick her earlobe with my tongue before kissing the back of her hair.
“What if everyone knew?”
I stop breathing for a second.
“Then we’d have to own it,” I whisper. “Then it’d be real.”
“It’s already real to me.” She shivers as she says it, and I warm her arm with my hand.
“It’s already real to me, too.” I plant another kiss to her cheek.
I hold Reese like that until her breathing steadies into long, shallow breaths. A seam of moonlight falls over her desk and illuminates a picture of her and Warren at the beach. His arms are firmly around her waist sort of the way mine are now. Reese can deny it all she wants, but after what happened tonight it’s pretty clear she and Warren are still a couple.
I try to fall asleep, but that picture keeps calling to me as the moonlight screams over it with a harsh glare. It saysyou could never be them. She never hid Warren.
I pull Reese in tight and breathe into her soft, silky hair. Our time together is running through my fingers, swift as sand. Summer is going to come to an end sooner than either of us realize. I only have a couple weeks before I have to get to Yeats. I wonder what she’ll do when she sees me there. Will everything really go back to how it was? Can it?
I don’t think so.
We’re either sealing our love or killing our friendship.
Either way, nothing will ever be the same.
Fireworks
Reese
On Wednesday, Ace was stuck down the hill helping Gavin gather firewood or whatever he has him doing. They had to spend the night in Sherman, which is at least four hours from here, and won’t be back until late this evening. All I know is, it was hell without him, and that was just one day, but tonight he’s all mine.
All last year I shed tears over my pillow because I missed his smiles, those insanely deep dimples you could dive into, the way he would wave from across the lake and, now, in a few short weeks, it all goes back to the way it was. I can only imagine those impossibly long, lonely nights without him will sting that much more—now that there are kisses to miss, his warm, strong hands roaming over my body, his amazing tongue. But tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and I’m going to spend it in the most special way possible with the boy I love.
I sigh into my pillow before reaching down and pulling out my mother’s letters. I shuffle them in my hands like a deck of cards, smoothing my fingers over each one as if it were her skin. God, I miss her. This is an indescribable ache that transcends physical pain. It hurts in a jarring way, like a Charley horse or a foot cramp that catches you off guard, and your world stops in that moment, and nothing exists but the pain. It’s that way all the time. Some days I wish I could pull my pillow over my head and never get out of bed, and, if it weren’t for these letters, I wouldn’t have made it through a single day.
I pluck out the very first one she gave me, the one she had me read the day after her funeral.
The fragile parchment unfolds in my hands, the outer edges already stained from a waterfall of tears I shed those first few months. I still cry when I read her letters, the only difference is they’re happy tears. Each time I open one, it’s like she’s holding me in her arms again, and, for a brief moment, the world starts up again, and everything is how it’s supposed to be—almost.
