He shook his head, swallowed, and tilted his face back to look at her. Shiloh was a whole head taller than him like this. She was out of reach. “Kiss me,” he said.
Shiloh waited a second. Her eyes wandered over his face. What could she be measuring—how much he wanted it? Whether he deserved it?
She kissed him.
Cary stretched his chin up to meet her. He moved a hand from her waist to the back of her head and held her there.
Cary thought of himself as someone with a lot of self-control, even before the Navy—but he was fresh out. He was done. HewantedShiloh. He didn’t want towaitanymore. He pressed her mouth into his. He tried not to press his cock into her thigh.
Shiloh’s hands were in his hair, like she was trying to find enough to hold on to.
He thought of all the days and nights they’d sat hip to hip in the front seat of his car with her elbow in his ribs and her hand moving like an anxious butterfly over his leg.
All the times she’d sat next to him in the darkroom, playing with his hair.
Shiloh in her dorm room, finally open to him.
Shiloh on the night of Mikey’s wedding, with her hands on his neck. Leading him upstairs. Her unmade bed.
Cary felt like he’d spent his whole life trying to close his arms around her and never quite succeeding. Even now... he had her on his lap, she was wearing his ring, and he still didn’t feel sure of the situation.
Was hethere?
Were they both finally there? At the start of something?
Could he stop trying to have Shiloh—and justhaveher? Be with her. Plan around her. Know she was his, even from ten thousand miles away.
Cary wanted to feel settled. He wanted to feel locked down.
Shiloh was a light in the distance. She was an ache he’d been feeling since he was thirteen. An itch. She was a finger hooked into every torn seam, tugging—and Cary was made of torn seams. Just a poorly stitched human being. He’d only known how to want Shiloh, never how to have her.
Could he just—
Could he finally—
Relax?
Could he push Shiloh down and hold her wrists? Could he put ringson all her fingers? Could he write his name and social security number on her body everywhere they fit?
Could he have a life here? Be a husband and some kind of father? Could he make a home between Shiloh’s legs and at her table, and on his knees if that’s where she wanted him... Could he rest? Could he finallyrest?
Shiloh held on to his face so she could pull her mouth away. “Do you want to go upstairs?” she whispered.
Cary almost laughed. He almost cried.
“Yes.”
Sixty-Eight
Her bedroom was cleaner than Cary was expecting, but it still smelled close, like she needed to open a window. Shiloh’s room smelled like incense and laundry and health-food store perfume. She’d worn patchouli oil in high school—Cary hated it then. Now it was one of a hundred things making him hard.
He pushed her to her bed. Pushed her down. Climbed over her. Held himself up with his hands by her ears, kissing her head back into the sheet. (Did sheevermake her bed?)
He fell onto his side next to her and unbuttoned her dress until he could see his dog tag. Such a dumb thing. Juvenile. He rubbed the skin beneath it, around it. Shiloh had perfect skin. He pulled the dress farther open. He kissed her clavicle.
Cary had always been making the best that he could with his body. He was built from spare parts, he knew that. He had moles and eczema. He’d gone eighteen years without eating a fresh vegetable and then spent too much time in the sun. He was physically what the Navy made of him.
Shiloh was something finer.
