“Zach—” My body goes off like a firework, bright lights flashing behind my eyes and heat zipping through my body as my tense muscles go limp with exhaustion.
I’m moving because of Zach, his hands guiding my hips back and forth.
He lifts me an inch off of him, like I weigh nothing before slamming me back down, bouncing me on his dick until his body goes rigid. I push through my exhaustion, taking over, riding him through his orgasm until he collapses back on the couch.
I ease off him, dispose of the condom, snag his shirt off the ground, and toss it over my head. His head tilts, a slight frown forms, and suddenly, I worry we’re not on the same page. He said he loves me, but it’s not an invitation to shove myself into every facet of his life.
“Do you mind that I keep wearing this?”
“I love it.”
A grin stretches across my face. “Great, because I also prefer you without a shirt.”
“I’m thinking I don’t want this to end.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“Don’t you need to work out?”
“Later,” I tell him. I gesture over my shoulder toward the door. “Want some pizza?”
Zach laughs. “Assume the answer to that question is always yes.”
I rush toward him, pressing a quick kiss to his mouth. “Be right back.”
There’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be than half-naked in Zach Briggs’s fairy-light–lit game room eating leftover pizza with him.
I return home later that night without Zach. It doesn’t matter that I’m a twenty-one-year-old woman and Gemma and Matt aren’t my parents, there’s still a high probability I’m walking into an interrogation. I need to do it alone.
I take a deep inhale before slotting my key into the lock. The security system welcomes me with a beep. The smell of Gemma’s delicious chocolate chip cookies smacks me in the face, and my stomach rumbles.
“We’re in here!” Gemma’s sunshine voice sounds from the kitchen.
I slip out of my sneakers and drop my backpack—secretly filled with gymnastics clothes beneath a load of heavy school books—by the staircase banister. Gemma stands in her domain, between double ovens and a subzero fridge, plating cookies. She wears an apron Matt bought her for Christmas a couple of years ago that reads,My Husband’s the Only One who gets to Kiss this Chef.
My brother sits on a stool at the counter beside Elodie’s high chair. He beams at the future baby model while she makes an absolute mess of her dinner, spaghetti sauce stuck to her face and strands of pasta in her hair. Gemma sends an air kiss over her shoulder in their direction.
I’ve walked into a damn Norman Rockwell painting. The two of them shine so bright, it’s exhausting.
“Hey Finley,” Gemma chirps, holding the plate of chocolate chip cookies toward me. She doesn’t step my way, which requires me to abandon my post at the edge of the room to retrieve one.Well played. “How was your night out?”
I wish she hadn’t phrased it that way, highlighting how long I’ve been gone. I take a cookie from the plate and stuff it in my mouth to give me a moment before answering. I refuse to look at my brother while searching for words so boring, no one will want to ask more. “It was good. Fun.”
Gem smirks. “You know you’re going to need to do better than that, right, Fi?”
“Where have you been?” Matt interjects.
I muster the strength to look at him, and yep, the smiling guy from a few minutes ago is long gone.
“The library, gym, Chipotle,” I rattle off. All true.
After Zach and I ate leftover pizza and had sex again, we watched a movie about a guy who got hit by a car, loses his memory, and mistakes a stranger for his girlfriend. The beginning of every great love story. Around noon, we finally roused ourselves for a workout at his apartment complex gym before I left to study and do a couple of hours of gymnastics. After, I grabbed Chipotle, and we ate in the car while overlooking the city, had sex again, then parted ways.
I’ve always liked sex—at least I did before my diagnosis—but I’ve never before needed someone so desperately inside me, again and again. No amount of closeness relieves my craving for Zach Briggs.
“And where did you sleep last night?” Matt presses.
“At a friend’s.” I casually take another bite of cookie. Nothing to see here. “How was—”
