When I finally sank into him, we both froze.
The sensation was overwhelming—heat and pressure and the impossible intimacy of being joined completely. Alex's eyes fluttered closed, his lips parted, and his fingers curled tight into the quilt on either side of his head. He looked like someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life learning how to take apart.
"Move." His voice cracked on the word. "Ben, please—"
I started slow, watching his face for any sign of discomfort, but what I found there was hunger. His legs wrapped around my waist, heels digging into my lower back, urging me deeper. He gripped my shoulders and pulled me down until we were chest to chest, breath to breath.
"Harder," he gasped against my ear. "I won't break."
I gave him harder. Gave him everything I'd been holding back for two weeks of almost moments and interrupted touches. The bed frame knocked against the wall in a rhythm that would have embarrassed me if I'd had room left for embarrassment. Alex met every thrust, his hips rising to connect with mine, his voice breaking around sounds that weren't quite words.
"Ben—I'm close—"
I shifted my angle, searched for the spot that had made him cry out earlier, and found it. His whole body seized, his fingers dug into my back hard enough to leave marks. I watched his face as he came—the way his expression cracked open, defenseless and transcendent—and that was what finally pushed me over the edge.
I shuddered as waves of orgasm washed over me. I collapsed, trembling in the aftermath.
At first, we didn't move. I was still inside him, both of us breathing hard as the sweat began to cool on our skin. Then Alex started to laugh again—quietly this time.
"What?" I managed.
"I just—" He shook his head against the pillow. "That was..."
"Yeah?"
"I've had sex before. Obviously, but that was—" He stared into my eyes. "I think that was the first time I've ever made love."
I kissed him—gentle and tender—then carefully pulled out, settling beside him on the narrow mattress. He turned immediately, pressing his face into the curve of my neck, one leg thrown over mine.
"Stay," he mumbled against my skin. "Just... stay."
"Couldn't make me leave," I said. And meant it.
Alex's head on my chest rose and fell with my breathing. His body had gone heavy against mine. His fingers traced patterns across my ribs, slow and aimless.
The quilt had twisted around our legs. Neither of us moved to fix it.
Then Alex spoke in a hushed tone. "I'm ready to read her letter, Grandma's."
I'd wondered about that letter since he first mentioned it—the envelope his grandmother had left with her will, still sealed. He'd told me he couldn't face it. He worried that the weight of her final words would be too much to carry.
I shifted, starting to untangle myself. "I'll give you privacy."
"Stay," he requested. "You're part of this now."
I settled back against the pillows. He remained pressed against my side, his heartbeat a steady rhythm.
Alex reached toward the nightstand, pulling open the small drawer with a scrape of wood against wood. The envelope had been waiting there the whole time—cream-colored, slightly bent at one corner, his name written across the front in the looping script I recognized from margin notes and Christmas cards and decades of correspondence with a woman who'd believed in him.
He held it for a long moment. Just looking.
Then his thumb slid beneath the seal.
Chapter twenty-one
Alex
The paper trembled between my fingers.
