“Ever think about writing something set in New York?”
He cocks his head at me. “Doyouwant me to write something that shoots in New York?”
“I’d like for you to get to the city more often.” I let myself express it without coyness or hedging.
“I’d like that too.” He hides his smile in his drink. Then he turns and looks out the window. “The dream ofliving here... never really left me.” His gaze meets mine again, his eyes raking slowly down my body. “You know, if I hadn’t gotten that letter from Jake, I would’ve stayed.”
Suddenly, I am nineteen again, watching the morning sun dance across Reid’s bare skin, wanting so badly to wrap my arms around him but telling him to go, instead. All at once, an alternate timeline plays out in my head: Reid never gets on a plane, we move in together, we are enormously happy, I never suffer the indignities of a low-paying job in a field that I hate, Reid finds a job he loves... and that’s where the tape falters and rewinds.
“But if you didn’t go back to LA, you might not have had the career you have now,” I say. I know I’m right, but the words are sour on my tongue.
“But I might’ve had you.”
My breath catches, but I force my next thought out. “But we wouldn’t have our girls.”
“I know.” His voice is hoarse. “Therein lies the rub.”
This is exactly where my own rewrite of history dead-ends every single time. If we’d both made different choices in the past, then the greatest miracles of our lives would never have come to fruition. And maybe we would’ve been happy in the alternate timeline, but we also might have crashed and burned, spectacularly—or worse, come to resent each other, slowly and then all at once. I shake my head at us, at this fool’s errand of editing the past like we’re in our own personal version ofSliding Doors.
I am here. Now, I tell myself.Better instead to make choices today that I won’t come to regret.I want to get over my fearof all the things that could go wrong, of everything I could lose. And I don’t want to talk about the complications of our lives anymore. I just want him.
I shift slightly in my seat so that I’m facing him head-on. I recross my legs. I’m in a black sweater dress that’s ever-so-slightly too short, with a slit that rides up when I’m seated. Reid’s gaze snags on that slice of bared skin on my thigh.
“It’s been a really long time since someone touched me like you used to.”
Reid gives me his upside-down smile—my comfort smile—and runs a hand down his face. “Fuck,” he says, under his breath. When he looks up at me again, his voice is steadier, more controlled, but it has a hint of grit to it. “I still remember everything you like.”
As if through his volition, my hand drops onto my knee and moves slowly up, a planchette on a Ouija board, coming to rest on my inner thigh. My skin is hot to the touch. I watch Reid’s fingers flex and release on the armrest.
Any shyness I might have felt is shoved to the side by the force of my need and the warmth of the whiskey. I want him urgently.
“I kept imagining your hands on me, after you left last night,” I say, “but I couldn’t make myself feel the way you did.”
I made myself come twice last night, and that did little to stifle the heat that’s been building inside me since seeing him on that sidewalk two days ago. Because this isn’t ambient lust. This is specific, personal. It’s the rare alchemyof the past colliding with the present. I need to capture it while I can grasp it.
“Will you show me?” Reid asks. When I hesitate, he gestures at my hand with his glass. “Show me how you did it.”
I drop my knees wider but shake my head. “I want you to finish what you started.”
Reid is already lunging for me, his drink abandoned on the coffee table. He scoops me up with one arm and pulls me into his lap, and I collapse on top of him, our mouths opening hungrily against each other. It’s less a kiss than a claiming, our tongues sliding against each other without finesse or technique, his hands scrambling up the back of my dress, both of us moved only by a desire to taste and touch as much as we can, while we still have the time.
XVI
Any lingering scraps of decorum vanish.
He pulls me closer until I’m straddling him in his chair, and that champagne-drunk feeling returns to me, the ecstatic lift, the promise of the drop. His hands roam my back, my neck, and finally drop down to my ass, sliding under my underwear and coaxing my hips to rock against him. A groan escapes his throat when I drag my nipples up the plane of his chest.
I stop for a moment and lean back, just enough to look at him. He has that hungry, glazed look in his eye. He moves to push the hair away from my face but stops to wrap a length of it around his hand.
“This hair,” he says, like he’s lost in me. “I’ve had dreams about this hair.”
He gives it a light tug, just firm enough to show me his control. Then he releases me and stands, and my legs wrap obediently around him. I feel the insistent press of his cock against me when he walks us over to the bed, my hands sliding down his back as he lays me down onto it. Like yesterday, I realize, before we were interrupted.
Reid lets out a low laugh, like he notices this too. “Been here before.”
I reach up to hook a finger inside the waistband of his pants. “Let’s do it right this time, OK?”
That’s all the permission he needs from me. With focused efficiency, he pulls the hem of my dress up to my clavicle, and I arch my back off the bed, helping him free it. He slides his warm hands over the sheer fabric of my bra, brushing his thumb over each nipple, as if to assure me he’ll be back for them later.
