Page 73 of When the Smoke Clears

My gaze slides along her face and its delicate features. “Everything,” I whisper.

“I think it’s just an illusion,” she says in a soft tone.

I wash down two pills with a big gulp of water and then set the glass on the counter. “The pain?”

She shakes her head while wiping water from my mustache with her thumb, warm palm pressed to my cheek. “Life.”

I’m leaving. Whatever I said to her on my way out of town no longer matters. Still, I clasp her wrist, keeping her hand on my face. “We’re an illusion?”

Another slow nod. Her gaze focuses on my mouth for a second before lifting to my eyes.

“Do you really believe that?” For some reason, I’m enamored of this woman’s every thought.

Her touch.

Her gaze.

Her breath so close to mine, it feels like my own.

I guide her thumb into my mouth, teasing the pad of it with my tongue before playfully nibbling it.

Everleigh’s lips part, and my heart pumps faster. Bringing her thumb to her mouth, I slide it past her lips while ducking my head and kissing the corner of her mouth, her thumb, her wrist. An insatiable craving for her takes over, dulling the pain in my head and the ache in my heart.

Our mouths fuse, her hands snaking around my neck as mine claim her backside, fingers curling into her skirt, hiking it up her legs. For eleven years, whenever she’s popped into my head, I’ve felt an unshakable anger because it wasn’t just that she didn’t tell me the truth. It was the sticky, vulnerable feelings I allowed myself to feel for her. The kind that felt like love.

With trembling hands, Everleigh unfastens my jeans. I nearly die when she slides her hand up my shirt instead of down the front of my briefs. Her other hand slips under the waistband at my back, fingers curling into my glutes. My pelvis rocks toward her.

I’m fucking dying, so I grab the back of her legs and lift her onto the counter. The water glass crashes into the sink, but we don’t pause for a second. My impatient fingers unbutton her blouse, and she helps me while our mouths devour each other.

Pulling away, I forge a path down her neck with my lips and tongue. Then I slide her bra straps down her arms and pull the white lace material away from her perky breasts.

I should send her plastic surgeon a thank-you. They were perfectly fine eleven years ago. They’re just more. More fine. More fucking perfect.

“Oh god,” she whispers, “this is happening.” Her fingers thread through my hair, and I swallow the moan of pleasure it elicits. I also grin against her skin as I reach the swell of her breast. It shouldn’t happen. But yeah, it’s happening.

On Monday, I’ll drive to Somers, and this will become a distant memory under the pile of rubble that will be my life when my father dies.

My stupid phone vibrates and chimes on the kitchen table, but I ignore it while sucking Everleigh’s hard nipple into my mouth and curling my fingers into the top of her panties to pull them down her legs.

My phone stops for two seconds and rings again. Fuck history for trying to repeat itself. I’m not answering it this time.

She shifts her hips to one side and then the other, letting me slide her panties past the edge of the counter.

My phone keeps ringing.

I’m getting laid. It could be a long time before I get the chance again, so even if it’s an emergency—

“Just get it,” Everleigh says through a strained breath. Her words crack open the door to the thoughts she planted just moments earlier.

Heart attack. Stroke.

What if my father is dead right now as I prepare to have sex with Everleigh?

“Goddammit,” I grumble, taking a step away from the counter, eyeing Everleigh’s bared breasts, blouse hanging mid-arm, skirt bunched around her waist, and her panties stretched at her upper thighs. I could orgasm from this image alone.

As I reach for my phone to see who was calling, it rings again.

My dad.