Somehow, she found it in her to give me a devious smile. If she only knew what she did to me. “Do I?”
I hitched her knee to my hip and stared between us, watching her stretch around me. “Come the fuck on, honey. Can’t you see I’m dying here?”
I didn’t expect a serious answer to that. Or any answer. But then she asked, “Are you staying tonight?”
And I said, “I’m staying always.”
The rest was a sweaty blur of limbs and mouths andfuuuuck, and she came so intensely, so thoroughly that my body had no choice but to follow. When I collapsed beside her, my chest heaving and my head dizzy, I pulled her into my arms and dragged sloppy kisses over her collarbones and up her neck.
A moment later, she patted my chest and slipped away to the bathroom. By the time she returned, I’d done a mediocre job of straightening the sheets and blankets, and fetched most of the pillows she’d thrown. It thrilled me to no end that she didn’t waste time on pajamas or anything like that because I would rip it right off. After all this time, I wasn’t here to play around in pajamas.
We tangled ourselves together under the sheets, my thigh between her legs, her arm around my neck, my hand on her ass. I went back to her neck, running a finger along the delicate chain there. She hadn’t worn it at the wedding. I wanted to know if it was new. If it had been a gift or she’d picked it out for herself. She’d probably picked it out. It was elegant and sophisticated, and I didn’t get the sense she let anyone choose things for her.
“So,” she said, drumming her fingers against my chest. “Do you think you’ve gotten it out of your system yet?”
“That’s not how it works. That’s not how it’s ever worked for anyone.” If anything, she was deeper into my system now. She was my system.
“What if we had sex again?” Whit asked. “We might shake it loose.”
“Whit, honey, there is nothing I’d rather do than fuck you until I shook something loose and I’m open to testing that hypothesis of yours day and night until you finally succeed in stopping my heart?—”
“You know that’s very unlikely.”
“—but I can promise you that you’re in my system and you’re not going anywhere.”
Whit hummed like she was thinking this over and I let her do that because I needed the time to recover and there was no talking her out of anything. Instead, I asked, “What was the deal with those tarot cards?”
I felt her shrug. Her words were stiff as she said, “Pretty random, huh?”
“How…I mean, how could that happen? That we ended up with most of the same cards? Statistically, it’s?—”
“Yeah. I know.”
I ran a hand over the gentle curve of her belly. Another spot I loved. If she held perfectly still and didn’t giggle at all, it was a fine spot for drinking whiskey. She’d giggled. Back in Tahoe, she’d giggled the second the liquor landed on her skin and we’d made a whole damn mess. But fuck we’d had so much fun. I hadn’t known sex could be that fun and silly, hot and intimate. I hadn’t known.
But now I knew it wasn’t a one-time thing. I knew this was how it was with us and that realization made it hard to breathe because she was real. I’d imagined nothing. Exaggerated nothing. Whitney was real and we were electric and I could never go back to not knowing.
So, I kissed her forehead and shoved down all the things I wanted to say. It was too soon and this was too delicate and I was too much of a mess to get it right. Instead, I said what I’d wanted to say since the start of my transplant rotation. “I’ve missed you so fucking much.”
After a long exhale, she said, “I’ve missed you too.”
Never.I could never go back to not knowing.
Nineteen
Whitney
Rule Number Ten:
Don’t even think about going to the newlywed brunch, no matter how good the buffet looks.
I wokeup when the sun slanted in through my windows. Henry was sprawled on his stomach beside me, one arm curled around his pillow and the other across my torso. I studied the long sweep of his lashes, the mountaintop tattoo on his bicep, the way he was still tan even though he spent sixteen hours a day indoors. It was like summer lived inside him and refused to let go.
I was beginning to understand the feeling.
I managed to sneak away to the bathroom and did a quick job of tidying myself up. Nothing major, no makeup, just a fresh face and clean teeth. Still, this was mostly uncharted territory. I hadn’t woken up with a man—not on purpose—in a terribly long time. If it was possible, I was more nervous about this, about today and everything after, than I’d been about last night.
I snagged Henry’s button-down shirt from the floor on my way back to bed. It brushed my thighs and smelled like him, and there was nothing better.
