Water slides over my shoulders, my body tightening with every inch of her memory, with everything I’ve never been allowed to say.
Then who is she?
My head falls back. I stroke myself slow, painfully slow, breath catching in my throat. She doesn’t know what she does to me. Or maybe she does. Maybe she feels it too and it scares her just as much.
My thumb moves across the screen, dripping water, shaking slightly.
“She’s beautiful.”
Beautiful how?
My breath stutters.Beautiful like you.
Her typing bubbles pop up. Vanish. Return. She’s spiralling. I canfeelit through the fucking glass.
My hand moves faster without permission, hips rocking into the rhythm, need burning low and heavy. I bite my bottom lip to swallow the groan threatening to escape.
Memories blindside me her curled in my bathtub in nothing at all just her naked body skin wrapped around a broken soul, the way she shivered when I touched her wrist, the way she breathed my name like it meant something.
A hot, violent orgasm tears through me, knees almost buckling as I brace against the wall, water soaking the mess I shouldn’t have made but couldn’t stop.
My thumb shakes as I type the truth I’ve swallowed for years:
Beautiful like you, Penn… because she is you.
I slide down the tiles, water pouring over my face as my heartbeat riots in my chest.
Seconds pass.
Minutes.
A lifetime.
Then:
She’s me.
I exhale sharp and broken.
She’s you, Peach. You always have been her. And I’ve been trying not to want you for longer than I should admit.
No reply.
The water turns cold. My heart turns colder.
She’s pacing somewhere, wine in her hand, head full of self-doubt and old wounds I’ve just ripped open. And I’m not there to steady her. Not there to keep her from bolting back into that cage she keeps herself locked in.
I scrub a hand over my face, swearing under my breath.
I should’ve said it to her skin, not her screen. I should’ve held her together instead of letting her fall apart alone.
And now all I can do is wait in the cold, listening to the sound of her silence
One hour passed no message back. Two hours and I had packed my room stuffing shit into bags and the files into my laptop bag. Ringing a car service, I was in the car typing a message to her as I drove to the airport.
Penn….Can I call you?
Nothing….Eighteen minutes later, there was still nothing. Firing a message to my lawyer.
