I leaped into his arms and hugged him tight, dissolving into tears again. Only this time, they were tears of joy.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his hips. Neil lifted me and held me tight against him.
I could feel his heart beating.
His urgent breaths.
His soul softening and merging with my own.
My tears dripped down the bend in his neck, the same place where I’d found comfort in so many times of suffering but also in moments of ecstasy.
“You’re an asshole and…completely crazy!” I sobbed against him. Neither of us wanted the enchanted moment to end.
“Yeah…crazy about you, Tinkerbell,” he whispered into my ear, clasping me even tighter like he didn’t want to let me go. I slid along his body until my feet were resting on the snow but didn’t move away from him. I remained in his arms, surrounded by his blazing heat and his musk-and-tobacco scent.
I stared deep into his eyes and saw everything that he was feeling—I felt it too.
It was a painful, all-encompassing feeling, so powerful that it actually hurt. My head throbbed, and I couldn’t stop tearing up.
What would I have ever done without his madness, which had become my madness too?
Neil was the beginning and the end for me.
“I’m sorry, Babygirl. I’m so sorry. I was scared to admit to myself that I couldn’t be without you. I don’t know what changes you made inside me…” he cupped my face in his big hands and stroked my cheeks with the pads of his thumbs, “But I can’t let you go. I won’t. What would the shell do without the pearl? They were made for each other.” He smiled at me, and his eyes were so bright they looked like polished gold.
And then he kissed me. His lips, warm and soft, were gentle against mine. Our tongues danced in the darkness, in the falling snow, and in the glow of the streetlamp.
“Promise me you won’t run again. That you’ll stay with me,” I whispered against his lips. It was the only promise I ever wanted from him.
“I promise, Babygirl.” He kissed the tip of my nose and then my cheeks, my forehead, my chin, and my throat. He kissed me everywhere—kissedme completely—and stared at me with those glorious eyes so that I would know that this was real. We were finally together.
“But what about Chicago? Megan? Your job?” Reality crashed back in on me far too soon, but he immediately reassured me with a sweet smile.
“I’ll deal with that later. I spent this whole week in my apartment; I didn’t even go to work. I didn’t have the strength. The thought of not seeing you again was agonizing. I was sick. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat, and then, finally, I understood. I understood everything…” He kissed me again, this one rougher, more passionate, and more carnal.
It was one of his true kisses, neither sweet nor gentle but intense and devastating, the only way Neil Miller knew how to be.
He continued to contaminate me even though he had already invaded my heart and every other part of me. I tickled his neck, and he spun me around, backing me against the car door.
After so much suffering, our mutual desire and eagerness to be together was exploding. I could tell by his panting breath and the way his chest pressed into me.
We might have started making love right there in the street on his car, but fortunately for us both, my Disaster broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to mine. For once, he was gulping air just as much as I was.
I smiled at him, passing my hand over the manicured stubble that only made him look more handsome and masculine, before dropping another chaste kiss on his lips.
“Have you ever made a snowman?” I asked him. He gave me a confused look.
“No. Why?” he answered. I took his hand and pulled him over the snowman version of him. “Hey, that thing kinda looks like…” he muttered as he took a good look at my masterpiece. I gave him a cheesy grin.
“Like you! Look, he’s even doing the pout,” I said, pointing at the hard line of the snowman’s mouth. I was still holding his hand in mine, and, for once, he wasn’t pulling away from the gesture. He gave me a look so heavy with feeling that my heart leaped in my chest. Then, he reached into his jacket pocket and raised an eyebrow as he pulled out…a package of pistachios.
“There, now he’s more like me,” he said, tucking it into the twigs on one “arm” and smiling. While he was concentrating on perfecting my snowman, I stooped and gathered up some snow. I silently packed it into a ball and then lobbed it right at his head.
“What the fuck?” he blurted out in his usual curmudgeonly manner before turning to me and giving me a menacing look that immediately shut me up.
He narrowed his eyes challengingly, and one corner of his mouth lifted up slightly as he squatted down to prepare enough ammo for a veritable snowball war. Except that his were way too big and thrown with way too much force.
“Enough! You’re terrible at this!” I zig-zagged across the lawn, trying to outrun his missiles. One hit me in the face, another in my back, and one right on my left butt cheek—that one stung.
