He laughs now, pulls away and looks down at me. “Kristen. If you want us to keep going here, you’d better get that image out of my head.”
For a second we stay like that, smiling at each other like coconspirators in this trouble we’re making together. The moment is so easy and simple and happy, and then I realize that all I need to do with this overflowing feeling I have is to . . . hang on to it. To enjoy it and celebrate it like the holiday it is.
I reach down, tuck my thumbs in the edge of my plain cotton boy shorts, and push them down.
He leans back and watches.
“Better image,” he says, his voice rough, and then he’s tearing open that foil square, and it’s nothing like how it’s always been before for me—nothing like when I avert my eyes for this part, worrying that it’ll feel too routine, too pragmatic, something that will spoil the mood. Nothing like when I stiffen slightly at that first press between my legs, the intimacy of joining with another person always somewhat awkward for me. Nothing like those moments where a fleeting thought—about work, about bills or laundry, or, most often, about Jasper—will tug at my mind, distracting me from what I’m doing, the person I’m with.
With Jasper, I watch everything. I feel everything. I focus on everything.
And nothing,nothing, has ever felt better.
Chapter Eleven
JASPER
This time, I wake up long after five a.m. The sun’s up, the sky bright from the reflection of the snow, and I can hear a soft dripping, melting off the edges of the cottage’s roof. Outside, the air is still, and no snow is falling.
I’ll bet she can fly out later today. She’ll get to her family; she won’t miss their whole Christmas, and I’m glad.
I close my eyes again, breathe in the smell of her hair, feel the warm curve of her back against my chest, block out the sun and the day for a little longer. I’ve got a thousand feelings rushing through my blood: the hot, insistent desire that kept us up almost all night, finding new ways to make each other feel good once we’d used our one, blessed condom. The warm, settled assurance of my love for her. The creeping anxiety about what today will bring, when we have to face the Dreyers at their Christmas lunch, and when Kristen will get on a plane to her family.
But the thing I notice most is the absence of a feeling.
This morning, for the first morning in six years, I don’t miss her.
Instinctively, my arm tightens around her waist, and I feel her stir and stretch, a movement that presses her ass against my lap. “Careful there, darlin’,” I murmur. I feel like I can hear my dick cursing me out about the condom situation.
Kristen turns in my arms, her hair a messy tangle over her eyes and her smile sleepy. “You sound like a cowboy, calling me that.”
I smooth the hair from her face, kiss her nose. “Guess I used to be one, sort of.”
“I like it.” She leans in to kiss me—brief and close-mouthed, a holiday movie kiss, and there’s something to be said for a kiss like this. It’s a happily-ever-after kiss, the kind of kiss that assumes there’ll be a bunch more after.
Still, I stroke the backs of my fingers down her chest, over her stomach. Feel her shudder in pleasure and twist her body against the sheets.
Sometime in the middle of the night, exhausted and satisfied, we’d stumbled from the bed, gathered the rest of the linens and made it up properly, smiling goofily and getting into a ridiculous, good-natured argument about which side should face down on the flat sheet. It’d been strange, after all we’d done together, to have that single domestic moment be so crystallizing for me. But when I’d lain down next to her afterward, the sheets cool and clean, I’d made a decision. Today I’d do everything I could to get Gil to change his mind, to show Kris that we could still work together, be successful. To keep the firm together—us in our office, Carol our admin, all our plans staying on track. To make it so she’d never regret being with me, no matter what rules we’ve broken here.
It’s that determination that gets me moving.
I give her another brief kiss, roll over, and grab my phone from the nightstand. It’s later than I thought, only an hour before the lunch is supposed to start. “I want to look over some things from GreenCorp before we get over there,” I tell her. “You want to shower, or . . . ?”
She’s quiet behind me, and when I look over at her, she’s tugged the sheet up over her skin, turned onto her back. After a few seconds she shifts, keeping the sheet pressed to her chest while she sits up, her other arm reaching for her own phone. She clears her throat delicately. “You can go ahead,” she says. I open my mouth to clarify that I meant it as an invitation, something we could do together. But she speaks before I can. “I should look at flights for later, see what’s going on there.”
I don’t like the way her face has shuttered, the way she’s tapping away at the phone. I reach back to set a hand on her leg. “You okay?”
Tell me you don’t regret it.
She looks up at me, the light in her eyes dimmed but her smile in place.
“I’m good.” She leans forward to kiss me again, quick like before. It doesn’t feel sohappily ever afterthis time but I try to trust her, to trustthis. I can make this work with her. I can show her how good it’ll be.
When I come out of the shower she’s pulling clothes from her suitcase, holding them to her while she walks toward the bathroom. She smiles as she passes but also tells me she’s on standby for a flight out tonight. I tell her I’m happy, and Iam—but tension ratchets up inside me. If she goes tonight, and we don’t have this job settled, what’s she going to think about this, about us? About how we’ll be able to do the job and dothis, when this has only just started? What happens when Christmas is over and we’re back in Houston, the place where we set all those boundaries that have kept us apart?
While she showers I open my laptop, which starts up where we left it, credits rolling over a version of “Here Comes Santa Claus”—annoyingly on the nose. I read over everything I’ve got on GreenCorp, on Gil’s patent. I’m deep in it when she comes out, dressed in a pair of jeans and a heavy cream sweater, her hair down, no makeup. She looks over at where I sit on the bed in nothing but my boxer briefs, and I set the computer aside. I’d like to go over to her, or have her come over to me, feel the texture of that sweater all over my skin—
“Don’t put on your work clothes,” she says. “It’s a family meal. We don’t want to make them uncomfortable.”
