Then his control goes.
He thrusts hard, slamming into me all the way before he stills. He comes with a groan, his cum pulsing hot inside my pussy.
I'm still catching my breath when he pulls me against him, his body pressing the full length of mine. His mouth finds mine in a deep kiss.
We pull apart only when breathing becomes a necessity.
The valley is quiet now. The fireworks done, just the smoke drifting across the stars, the smell of it mixing with the sweetgrass and the night air and the faint ink smell of the Sharpie lines still on my skin.
Somewhere out in the dark a cricket starts up. Then another.
I become aware of other things. The quilt warm and bunched beneath us. The guitar propped in the corner, its job done for tonight. His heartbeat under my ear, slowing gradually.
“Did we smudge the lyrics?” I ask.
He glances down at my skin, tracing one line with a fingertip. “All good. But I wouldn't have forgotten them.”
“That makes one of us.” I let out a breathless laugh. “I think you just rewired my brain entirely.”
“Good.” He presses his lips to my hair, utterly satisfied. “Returning thefavor.”
I smile against his chest. Then I press my mouth to his neck and taste salt and warm skin. His arms pull me closer.
“Sadie.”
Just my name. Nothing attached to it. But the way he says it, hushed and undefended, like it means something more than just my name, makes me lift my head.
He's looking at me. Really looking. His chest still rising and falling, his green eyes dark and open in the starlight, all the teasing and the laughter completely gone from them.
“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for making music with me.”
I don't trust my voice. So I just press my lips to his chest, right above his heart, and leave them there.
We lie there for a while without talking as the stars wheel slowly overhead. The cricket is joined by a chorus of them now, the whole valley singing.
“I didn't know it could be like that,” I admit.
I mean the sex. I also mean the song. I also mean lying here beneath the stars, with his words on my skin and his heartbeat beneath my cheek.
It feels like floating. It feels like falling.
“Is it always like this?” I ask.
He looks at me for a long moment. His fingertips trace along my cheekbone.
All he says is, “You’re a first for me too.”
Chapter 32
Best Seat in the House
SADIE
Summer passes like a dream I don't want to wake up from.
Jonah and I catch crawdads in the creek behind the property and line them up on a flat rock to name them before releasing them back. We make strawberry shortcake at Rosemont with Daryl. Marianne’s recipe, he tells me. Jonah’s been campaigning for it since the Fourth of July when somebody beat him to the last slice.
When it's done and plated, Jonah sits across from me and his grandpa at the kitchen table and eats his entire portion in about forty-five seconds.
