“I forgot to say the other part of it,” he said, wrapping both arms around her so that she was half lying on his chest. He pulled at her knees and elbows until she unfurled like a nervous hedgehog, limbs still tense. “There’s more.”
“More? If you had a bunch of shit figured out, you should have shared it with me,” she said unevenly.
“I always forget you don’t know everything,” he said into her skin. “But I think it’s important you hear this. Just psyching myself up. Ready? Okay. Here it goes. I won’t do it again.”
Rose hadn’t expected any specific words, but the short declaration still took her by surprise. “Do what?”
Tom exhaled against her neck, voice emerging rough and gravely. “I thoughtI won’t do it againbefore I even knew what. I just knew that whatever I’d done, I’dstopif it meant you’d take me back. But I get it now. I know I wasn’t there for you, and I should have been. If you let me, I will be. I promise.”
Her sinuses burned, because that might have been enough if he’d said it eleven years ago. If she’d thought he meant it. It might have been as easy as that.
But now she knew not just that they were capable of hurting each other but that they were capable of not speaking to each other for ten years. Now she had to forgive not just twenty-two-year-old them but the two of them that existed before the first of the year: two people who could have fixed things but hadn’t.
“Okay.” She couldn’t get any more words out.
But she meant,Okay, I’ll try to forgive us both.
Okay, I believe you mean it.
Okay, everyone was right, and I am thinking about getting back together with you.
“Okay?” Tom confirmed, wrapping an arm over her stomach.
She tucked her chin into her chest and nodded, her body still electrified and unsteady.
“What’s wrong?” Tom said when she didn’t relax.
She didn’t answer, but she squirmed. She was still in her underwear and bits of lingerie, and she needed to get changed and possibly take a hot shower of her own. She’d spent the entire day telling herself she was going to wipe all conflicted feelings about Tom from her mind by having elaborate sex with him, and now she wished she’d just taken him up on the straightforward orgasms and crying.
“Oh,” Tom said, finally realizing her exact emotional state. His arms wrapped her tighter against him. He trailed his lips from her neck down to her shoulder, then left them there as the hand he’d clasped over his own forearm brushed down over her hip.
His palm, pressed against her thigh, fingers pointed in at the seam of her body, was a silent offer.
Rose shifted to lean back against his chest and part her legs in silent acceptance, and he sighed again, finding a more permanent spot to rest his mouth as his fingertips ran once down her thigh in a soothing gesture before moving to the elastic of her underwear.
He didn’t take them off, just slipped his big, warm hand inside to cup her intimately. She didn’t know if this was meant as a compromise or an olive branch, but she didn’t plan to reject the gesture either way. Not after she was certain he’d done exactly as he threatened and jerked off in the shower—probably imagining her sobbing into his neck while she ground down on his lap. Or the kind of half-asleep morning sex you only ever had with someone you woke up with frequently. Tom had especially liked that, the mornings when Rose would tug hisheavy, warm body on top of hers before she even had her eyes open then gasp good morning after he’d pressed inside her.
Tonight he barely moved the fingers that lay against her core until she rocked against them, desperate for friction. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d been tentative, or even if he’d decided to play it a little cute, but as soon as she moved, he moved, sliding two fingertips in a delicate circle.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, lower lip hot against her neck. Rose relaxed at the implicit command, rolling her face into the warm muscle of his bicep where his arm supported her head. Nobody else would ever know her body as well as he did, because nobody else would have spent so many hours learning it alongside her. He knew how to touch her. He knew the exact tiny motions of his hand to have her arching her feet and whining within moments. He knew the precise moment to slip his fingers inside her body and stroke her tense and aching, the sound among all other sounds she made that meant he should still his wrist and hold her tight until the electric buzz of her orgasm had blurred into softness.
Rose closed her eyes hard against Tom’s arm, willing the moment not to be over even as he slowly slid his hand over her inner thigh before replacing it on her chest. He let out a shaky breath—he must have been worried things worked differently now, especially with all the bullshit she’d been saying about pulling her hair.
“Can I stay?” he said into her ear, sooner than she’d have liked.
And that was the question, wasn’t it? Could he stay? Would he?
“All these blankets are mine,” she deflected.
“I remember,” Tom said, making himself comfortable. “But since I just made you come, seems like I should get, like, a short-term sublease on them at least?”
He didn’t wait for explicit permission, just grabbed a pillow and stuck it between his chest and her back. This was how sleeping next to Tom worked: he put his elbow on the pillow so that his arm didn’t squish her boobs, and she put her feet against his shins so that her toes didn’t get cold. If he was holding on to her tighter than he ever had before, she couldn’t blame him for that.
“Okay,” she said one more time. He relaxed.
“Good night, Rosie. I love you,” he said softly.
She wrapped her hands over his and wished this had been every night.
