I jerk once, twice—then go still, panting.
My pulse in my throat. My stomach slick.
I wipe myself off on the damp towel still hanging from the bedpost. Toss it toward the laundry basket and miss.
Roll onto my back.
Stare at the ceiling.
My hand throbs. My thighs ache. My chest hurts for reasons I don’t want to name.
But at least for a minute, my head is quiet.
Long enough to remember that I asked for it.
Worse—I wanted it.
3
Wyatt
Nina is already at the gate when I get there.
She’s in sunglasses, slouched into her seat like she’s trying to disappear into her oversized sweater. Her hair’s pulled back, loose curls escaping.
She still takes my breath away just like she did at New Years, when I saw her across the crowded ballroom. She’d been standing at one of the high-tops next to Callie, sipping champagne and staring back with a sly look like a cat who’d just spied its prey.
Mason and I were only attending to get close to the Senator for intel, but had already done our business and had the rest of the night to kill. It was moments later when Mason revealed he knew Callie already, but he wasn’t exactly spilling the details on how. At least it meant I had the perfect excuse to introduce myself to Nina. The rest, as they say, is history.
Though I really, really hope it isn’t actually history for us. Last night certainly didn’t feel like something people who’ve moved on would do, but last night may have been more of a drunken anomaly than a sign of what’s to come. Either way, we’re sharing a flight now so it’d be rude of me to just ignore her, despite my promise to give her space.
She doesn’t notice me until I’m almost beside her.
When she looks up, the weight of the last ten months hits me all at once.
The cute black party dress is gone. The bright red lipstick is gone. But the look in her eyes when she sees me hasn’t changed. The spark of true tenderness that I hope isn’t actually pity.
The spark disappears when she blinks, then pulls out one earbud. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey.” I gesture toward the boarding area where passengers are prematurely lining up for their group to be called. “I’m not trying to crowd you. Just… if you want company, I can sit with you.”
She hesitates. Her mouth opens, then closes.
She nods. “Okay. Sitting together would be nice.”
I pretend that doesn’t mean more than it does.
Boarding is smooth. No assigned seats so I lead us down to a row behind the wing. She takes the window. I take the aisle. Some kind of miracle spares us a middle seat companion. We don’t speak, but the weight between us isn’t silence, it’s memory.
At one point, I glance sideways, and she’s already looking at me. Not just looking, but studying, as if she sees a different man than the one she dated for the first half of the year. Though I suppose knowing I was bi and experiencing me actively acting on the other half of my sexuality are two different things.
Our eyes meet. It only lasts a second, but it hits like a full-body blow. I can see the night behind her eyes, Chris’s mouth on her skin, her hands in his hair, the sound she made when I pressed into him while she watched.
I look away first.
The way he’d looked at me last night... not during, but after... is still lodged under my ribs. That flash of something raw. Unguarded. Like he didn’t know how to be wanted without flinching.
It wasn’t just sex. Not for me. And probably not for her, either.
