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Her words make me ravenous, bucking into her harder and faster than before, chasing down her moans desperately until we come together.

I ask her what poem she feels like when we have sex. The question barely makes sense, but I know she understands me.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “Let me think about it.”

I whisper, “I like my body when it is with your body,” so she’ll know. So she’ll maybe understand.

This time when she says she can’t sleep, her eyes are already closed, her body pressed to mine beneath the covers.

I watch over her for a long time.

In the morning, she grinds on top of me to wake me up. We make love, slow and sleepy. I make her come again under the shower spray, watching the way she unfurls from the warm water and the insistence of my fingers. I take my time, desperate to learn her every nerve ending. To perfect the art of pleasuring her. Of loving her.

By the evening, I recite lines of poetry in her ear when she lets me take her from behind, hand in her hair against the back of her neck, dominant but always gentle. Consuming her the way I want to so desperately. I swallow every cry of pleasure with my mouth.

The drive home the next morning is easy. We wind through the backroads with care as I drive slowly and deliberately. Adrienne Lanker plays on the radio.

I crack the windows to let Paloma feel the soft air flow. She takes turns pressing her feet beneath my thigh or laying her head on my biceps, which eventually turns to her sleeping on my arm. I’m even more careful as I purposefully drive slower not to jostle her.

I spend the ride just watching over her and feeling her skin always pressed to me in some way. It feels like a piece of her lives inside me now.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to let her go.

Chapter 46

NOW

Bennett

“I said I don’t want to talk about it,” I snap.

It’s the third session we’ve had that’s been tense, and it’s only gotten worse. But today I’ve hit my breaking point.

As usual, Dr. Anya has little to no reaction to my words or the harsh level of my voice—even if it is unusual for me. But I’m frustrated, enough that my knee is starting to ache as I keep bouncing it. “Paloma is good. She’s back in my life again. Everything is great.”

She nods. “Last time Paloma and you . . . broke up, I guess, you struggled severely. Enough that I think you need to talk about this, to imagine what it might be like, so that you have better control over your own life and situation if something does—”

“Nothing is going to happen.”

“What would it be like if Paloma did leave?” she asks again, and the question hits like a punch.

“She won’t,” I grit out.

“You can’t control everything,” Dr. Anya says, clicking her pen again and setting it down in her lap, uncrossing her legs. “You can’t control Paloma, or anyone else.”

My heart is thundering, blood roaring through my ears like a constant wave across the shore.

Everything is fine.

“Paloma is my girlfriend again. Things with my mom are fine,” I tell her. “My dad and I are . . . doing better. Rhys is back. Paloma is back. Everything is good.”

I don’t need this.

“Bennett,” she tries again. Her voice is softer but it still feels like something is shredding me from the inside out. “You got through this once. You could do it again.”

I’m standing before I realize it, fists clenching and unclenching as I stalk out and slam the door closed behind me.

I hear the sound of my dorm door closing three years ago. The sound of my childhood bedroom door when my dad left.