I laughed into the kiss, the sound bright and real and bouncing off the tiled walls from every direction. Nathan pulled back just enough to watch me, blue eyes soft and possessive at the same time, the expression I now had a word for: his.
We stayed like that for a long time—making out like teenagers who’d just discovered how good it could feel, hands and mouths everywhere, water sloshing, cocks sliding together, fingers stretching and teasing. Hot and heavy and unhurried all at once, because we had the whole room, the whole evening, and nowhere else we needed to be.
Eventually the water started to cool, but neither of us moved to get out.
We still had the rest of the room to use for the next three days.
And I planned on using every inch of it with my boyfriend.
31
My body hurt in the good way.
Not the concussion way—that had been fading all week.
The other way. The way that came from multiple days of Nathan Cross having nowhere to be and nothing to manage and the full attention he brought to everything applied to—this. To us.
To being in love.
To the unhurried version of things that happened when there was a warm room and an open window and a jacuzzi tub.
I stood in the shower and took inventory.
Shoulders: yes. Neck: also yes. The general situation: significant.
Nathan Cross was thorough. This had always been true. I had understood it in training rooms and offices. I had not understood what it meant here, in this context, with this much time and this much intention.
I was understanding it now.
I turned the water off.
Got a towel. Ran a hand through my hair, which was doing the thing it always did, which was whatever it wanted.
I opened the bathroom door.
Nathan was at the window, phone to his ear, back to the room.
I didn't say anything. I sat on the edge of the bed and I waited, which was the thing I had been getting better at, and I listened to the sound of his voice without being able to hear the words, and I knew.
Not the specifics. Just the shape of it. The phone call that had been coming since the committee started meeting. The outside world arriving on the last day of the vacation because of course it was the last day, of course it waited until now.
Nathan said something. Listened for a long time. Said something else.
Then: "I understand. Yes. I'll be in touch when I'm back."
He ended the call.
Stood at the window.
I waited.
He turned around.
The professional face was gone. Not the wall—the wall had been gone for weeks. Just Nathan, in the last light of the vacation, with the phone in his hand and the thing he was about to say already visible in the set of his jaw.
"The review committee," he said.
"And?”
