He tenderly caresses the backs of his knuckles down my hair, tucking the loose strands behind my ear. “Hi back.”
Meredith’s fist pounds on the glass. “You better call me later!”
“She’s a little nosy.”
“You have no idea,” I reply. Needing to touch him, I let my hands roam across the breadth of his shoulders. “But it comes from a place of love.”
“Didn’t she and Trev have a thing back in college?” he asks, flattening his hands on the countertop on either side of me and leaning in, his beautiful mouth scant millimeters from mine.
“Yeah.”
Realizing things weren’t going anywhere with Trevor, Meredith started dating her dormmate Sara’s older brother, Bryce. And once Austin came into the picture, Trevor didn’t stand a chance. The two of them circled one another for years before they finally gave in to their feelings.
I bunch the hem of Fallon’s shirt up, exposing a peek of tanned skin and toned abdominals, and my mouth waters at the sight. Pressing my nose into the cotton of his shirt, I breathe him in. I remember how the pillowcase on his bed at the frat house smelled like lemon, ginger, and bergamot. His scent is different now. More spice and cedarwood than citrus.
“What are you doing?” he asks when I sniff him.
“Making a memory of how good you smell.”
After losing my memories of the first eighteen years of my life for over a year, I’m compelled to catalog everything: every sight, smell, touch, taste, and sound.
“I love how you see things,” he says, gently holding my face. “How you see me.”
His lips take mine with urgency, and it’s like I’m both falling and flying at the same time, a feather at the mercy of the wind. As soon as I open for him, his tongue slips inside on a quietmoan that could have been from me or from him, maybe from both of us. Fallon devastates me with every stroke of his tongue, and I moan at the loss of his lips when he pulls back.
“I love the way you kiss me,” I profess, entranced by him.
“Mom! We’re—oh.”
Pushing Fallon away, I jump off the island like a startled cat when Charlotte walks in, Grant right behind her.
Acting as if my daughter didn’t walk in on me and Fallon in what could be construed as a compromising position, I smooth down my shirt and hurriedly start taking things out of the refrigerator.
“I was thinking we could have a light dinner. How does a chef’s salad sound?”
I turn around, and Charlotte isright there, eyes squinted with narrow focus on my neck.
“Is that ahickey?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
FALLON
Stupid Love
Elizabeth picksup the next card from the deck and reads it out loud. “There’s nothing funny about…”
I’ve never playedCards Against Humanity, but the game is fucking hilarious. And a little raunchy, depending on the answer card you give.
Charlotte giggles as she sets her card on top of mine. Grant soon follows with his, but it takes Chris longer to decide.
“I don’t have anything good,” he says, dropping his card face down on the pile.
Elizabeth picks them up, and her cheeks turn beet-red as she silently reads them. “Three of you are going to hell.” She shakes her head in dismay and recites the prompt. “There’s nothing funny about…fiery poops…mouth herpes…half-assed foreplay—” She glares at Chris.
“That wasn’t mine,” he proclaims, looking accusatorily at Grant.
“What?” he says.
