A sudden move and Oliver was nestling my face between his palms, his fingers coiling in my hair. I caught his forearms as if ensuring he’d never leave or remove his hands from me again.
I crashed my mouth against his. I finally had a name for loving undefinedly.
Just like before, our kiss burst onto us. We tasted each other, searched for more, holding on to one another with the despair of those who had been through war and were now left to lick their wounds.
We breathed and leaned our foreheads against each other, our hands holding each other’s nape, anchoring.
“You’ve had my heart all this time, all these years, Oliver. It was left shattered and bleeding right there, next to yours, and I never fully recovered it, because you took a big part of it with you.”
There was a glint of raindrops in those aurora borealis eyes. “You held all of mine, all the pieces, all the time.”
A visual of red and yellow broken pieces of plastic flashed in my heart. “Let me love you, Oliver. Oliforever.”
“I’m a mess, January,” he whispered, his forehead against mine.
I breathed him in. “Are you sure that’s a competition you want in? Because I may win.” I kissed him again, feeling his inaudible chuckle against my lips.
Oliver then wrapped me in his arms so fully that I felt like I could hide in them forever.
We stood there, not far from the bookcase, just holding each other, swaying a little on our feet, breathing together. My cheek was pressed against his chest, and I listened to Oliver’s heartbeat.
His beautiful, broken heart was mine to fix.
Chapter 28
Oliver
The dark copper curls I laced my fingers into were mine to caress, the beautiful mouth I lifted to meet my lips was mine to kiss, the voluptuous body in the red dress was mine to touch. The blue eyes that stared into mine told me even more than words did, that January was mine, that she insisted to be, despite my warnings.
I kissed her again, there by the bookcase, in the room where not long ago, my heart had suffered the first crack to its crust when she had unknowingly sledgehammered it just by reappearing again.
When our kiss turned from lovingly tender to scorchingly demanding, I lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around me. Walking to the sofa, I sat down with January in my lap, straddling me.
Without breaking our kiss, we stripped each other. She unbuttoned my shirt and pushed both sides out of her way to trace her palms and then her mouth over my chest, and I lifted her long dress to her waist and, from there, helped her take it off.
Breaths intermixing, hearts hammering in a whole new way, we gripped each other, my hands holding her in place above me, hers encasing my neck and face. We were frantic in the way we touched, exposed, devoured, reconnected. We both groaned at the sensation of me finally filling her again. Then we stilled, gazing into each other’s eyes, panting, our lips an inch apart.
I brushed her hair away from her face and gripped it at her nape. It was as if everything, not just us, had stilled.
This silence, this gaze, what we found in each other’s eyes had her bring her mouth down to mine, and we kissed as I thrusted up and helped her move above me. I trekked my hands over her bare back, her shoulders, burying my face in her neck, breathing her in, chest to chest, her whispers and moans exhaled into my ear.
“I love you,” I repeated, kissing her again. This expression, so foreign to me, was uttered unguardedly.
“I love you,” she echoed.
I held her tight and watched as she threw her head back, her eyes drifting shut, as she soared to the end on top of me.
We held each other tight for long moments after.
“Oliver?” January broke the silence and expelled breathily against my ear.
“Yes?” I prompted when she seemed to be waiting for a response.
She didn’t answer immediately.
I kissed her neck and breathed her in, leaving her the freedom to decide when she would speak. I knew firsthand, and maybe she had taught me that, that sometimes you don’t need questions, just the space to be silent.
Still straddling me, she pushed herself back a bit until we were looking at each other. “Fucking mess is one of my favorite catch phrases,” she said.
