As if anything could be answered so simply. Yet, I’d asked him the same damn thing only moments ago. There was so much to say and yet no words that I could come up with to properly express any of what was circling around in my head came out.
What I did know was that this feeling of contentment—of rightness—was exactly what I’d been searching for over the last decade. The pieces of the puzzle had finally fallen into place like they’d been there all along and I’d simply needed to look elsewhere to find them.
“Yes,” I murmured.
He smiled again, his shoulders falling from their slightly tensed up position that I hadn’t noticed they were frozen in before. With another kiss, he then said, “Good.”
“Go shower,” I said, shoving him toward the drawn curtain. “Hazel will whip me with that dishrag if I let you go over there smelling like sex.”
He snatched my wrist up into a firm hold. “Only if you’re joining me.”
I looked down at the towel wrapped around my waist, barely a second’s worth of hesitation between me looking back at him again and using my free hand to tug at the knot pressed against my hip. The towel pooled at my feet.
Avery laughed and tugged me with him. “Come here.”
CHAPTER 26
Avery
I couldn’t believehow fucking blind I’d been.
My whole life, I’d always felt like a stranger wading through the small twinges of envy that had constantly prickled at the back of my mind from being surrounded by couples and their happy endings while my own seemed to be nowhere in sight.
No matter how hard I’d tried to look for my soulmate in the faces of those around me, or believing the lies I told myself of it one day happening when I least expected it. I’d soon become resigned to swallowing the harsh pill of reality that my father had fucked me up too much—that I was too far gone in the bitterness he’d instilled in me—to believe in trusting and opening myself up to someone like that ever again.
I’d never been the type to believe in divine intervention or whatever it was that Hallmark loved to peddle to the hapless romantics of the generation before mine.
It was too cheesy for me to buy into. Too convenient of an excuse to hypothetically find myself going back to the same small hometown I grew up in, only to realize that my soulmatewas there the entire time and life had thrown so many curveballs that it was impossible to tell until it was far too late.
Funny that in reality, I was actually just too stupid to realize I’d been my own worst enemy the entire time. That my apathetic nature when it came to all of my past relationships wasn’t some by-product of being raised by a covert narcissist and, in reality, I’d been denying myself the inevitable.
I wished I could remember why I ever stopped writing to Brandon. Why I cut off contact and decided it was best for both of us to move on with our lives when all I’d felt since then was an impending sense of doom and melancholy.
Chalking up my indifference toward my life to finally shedding the shackles of my father had given me the excuse to float through life without caring about anything outside of the remedial pleasure that came with climbing up the corporate ladder and making an obscene amount of money in the process.
I’d detached myself, pulled on an aloof mask that only Marlow and Silas could see through. All for it to be fucking shattered the moment I stepped into Brandon’s body shop and was reminded that I actually did have a beating heart still left in my chest.
One that was sickeningly in tune with my former best friend and that longed to have him back in my life like I was dependent on it.
What did it mean other than the obvious?
Was I alone in this, or was Brandon also willing to drudge through the unknown with me?
Sex with Brandon last night had been eye opening. Way more than I thought it would be when he’d first invited me inside and had looked at me with that cautious gaze right before yanking me down into that first kiss.
Now that he was in my veins, I was sure that there would be no end to this. I’d always feel like I was starving until I had him back in that bed with the both of us naked and panting.
I was growing hard again, even reminiscing about it now.
We’d left his place to come back to mine right after we’d showered and gotten dressed. Him in his shop’s uniform and me in the sweat suit set I’d bought day two at the hospital after finally giving in to needing a fresh set of clothes that weren’t wrinkled with the remnants of sweat and other things from our almost-date.
Upon pulling up to the circular driveway outside of my family’s home, I threw the Audi into park and killed the ignition.
Brandon slipped his hand down between the console and his seat to unhook his seatbelt, turning slightly toward me as he did so. As soon as the belt moved across his chest to retract back into the door, my knee-jerk reaction was to bridge the small gap between us and cup his face in my hand like I’d been doing so often lately in order to bring his mouth to meet mine.
I couldn’t get enough of him. Of touching him and tasting him. Of the little gasp he made every time I pulled him closer to me. Of when that subtle shiver rolled through his body whenever my hand wandered.
I fucking needed him so badly.
