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It’s physical pain, intense, visceral. Her words crawl over my arms, almost like chains but stronger. I’ve never been able to hold on to this girl, but I could never let her go. Even if I wanted to—and I don’t. I never did.
“I’m still feeling real fucking possessive, Lil,” I say, like some last attempt to get her to turn around and go back. “You come with me, I don’t think I can be gentle.”
Her eyes flare, like lighting a match and it drives me insane. I take my jacket off then, slipping it over her slender shoulders, until she’s drowning in the fabric, buttoning it closed like that might help. I only brought my helmet, so I take it and push it over her soft auburn hair, letting myself touch a loose strand like a glutton.
I grit my teeth not to lean in and take a quick hit of her expensive perfume and lay my teeth into the silken skin of her neck. Like that might prove to her and myself that she’s real and mine and not leaving me behind.
Instead, I climb on my bike, letting her do the same. She doesn’t need my help; she’s done this move for years. Learned how to get on the back of my bike before she knew how to drive. It’s muscle memory.
“Hold on to me,” I say.
“Always,” she breathes. Another hit. Another shot to the heart.
The drive to her house is slower than it normally would be but having her on the back of my bike again is like a shot to the gut. The feel of her body against mine just as intoxicating as the first time I felt her slight weight behind me.
I always drove slower with her on. Now is no different. Still, it’s too cold for her to be out here in that silk, so, once we arrive, I’m quick to get her inside the warmth of her home. And then her room.
“Paloma’s not here,” she ponders aloud as I shut the door. She sits on the bed, and I kneel in front of her, sliding the silk length of her dress up to unbuckle her uncomfortable heels. Massaging each foot and ankle, I keep my eyes on her.
“She’s probably with Bennett. She’ll be fine.”
Lily worries her bottom lip but seems to trust in my words enough to nod.
Before I can stand, she cups my chin in her hands and tilts my eyes toward hers.
“One more thing.” Her thumb roves over my lips, against the scar that matches hers. “I’m sorry for what my dad did to you. I wish you’d told me more, when we were kids—”
“Hey, no—I’m sorry. I was . . . stupid, but I wanted to protect you.”
She shakes her head. “You were always trying to protect me, and no one was protecting you. Please, you have to let me protect you. Holden too.”
I smile into her hair. “All right.”
“And . . . and the Harrises too. I think they love you.”
I pull back and shake my head. “We can talk about that later, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She stands and I follow, her hands reaching to untie herself, but I grab her wrists to stop her. My body is hovering above hers, engulfing her in shadow.
“Keep the dress on. You wore it for me anyway.”
Her cheeks heat and she half turns in my arms, meeting my eyes then. Introspective, taking in every line of my face slowly. I can nearly see the gears in her mind turning.
And then the words spill. “Are we going to have sex?”
It’s like coming home, something light spilling over the heated now-sexually-charged anger rolling up my spine.
When we were seventeen, Lily led me through the gardens to the little shed that had been Lily’s playhouse. By then, it was overgrown with ivy, shuttered and abandoned. It was where we’d lost our virginities to each other.
Lily was always sexually intense. She was everything intense to me, like my senses were all dialed up to a thousand whenever she was near me. But she’d been asking the same question constantly for two months.
Are we going to have sex?
We did that day, the sunlight peeking through the weekend slats of wood. I’d complained over and over—“We should do it in a bed”; “It should be different”; “Let me take you somewhere softer”—but my words were breathless and roughened and my hands wouldn’t leave the supple softness of her skin.
It feels the same now. I’m following the road map to her body that I drew myself.
