Page 140

“Drew.” She was staring up at him. “What did you just say?”

He could take it back. Guys said all kinds of shit in bed, and girls knew it too. But he didn’t want to take it back.

“I said I love you. And I’m not just saying it ’cause of . . . this. I mean it, Nicole. I’ve meant it for a long time.”

“You love me?” she said.

He brushed her hair back off her forehead with his thumb. “I really fucking love you.”

She put her hand on his shoulder and pushed. He went right over—he’d have gone anywhere she wanted him. She rolled them so he was on his back in the middle of her bed and she was on top of him, and she didn’t let him slip out of her once.

She leaned down until her forehead was on his, and her hair fell around both of their faces.

“I love you too,” she said.

She said it again, quieter, right against his mouth, then kissed him before he could say anything—slow and deep, with both hands on his face. When she started to move, she took him all the way in with this long, slow grind, lifted up until he almost slipped out, and sank right back down. She knew exactly what that did to him, and she kept doing it, taking what she wanted, her mouth right on his and her eyes on him the whole time. He was done thinking.

Fuck the speech.

Nicole had never taken a bath with a man before.

Her bathroom had a big, deep soaking tub, the first thing she’d fallen for when she walked through this house with her mother in August, and in five months it had never once had six feet four inches of quarterback in it. It didn’t fit him. His knees stuck up out of the bubbles on either side of her, and he’d banged his elbow on the faucet getting in and cussed so loud she’d laughed until her stomach hurt.

But he’d done all of this himself. While she was still lying in bed trying to catch her breath, he’d gotten up and gone through her house, and when he came back for her, every candle she owned was lit. The ones from that night in November when they’d made love on the floor were lined up along the edge of the tub, and the rest were crowded on the counter by the sink, and he’d found the bubble bath her mother had tucked into her suitcase and used about half the bottle. The whole bathroom smelled like vanilla, and the mirror had fogged over. He’d even turned off the lamp in her bedroom, so the whole house was dark except for the candles.

She was sitting between his legs with her back against his chest and his arms around her middle. His chin was on her shoulder. Every so often he kissed the side of her neck.

He loved her.

She kept turning it over. He loved her. He’d said it when he was inside her with his eyes on hers, and he’d looked about as surprised as she was. Drew Kiernan, who didn’t call girls, who’d never stayed overnight at anybody’s place before her, loved her.

She’d been fighting hers since Thanksgiving. At that breakfast, her dad had skipped right over the falling part and called it love, and she hadn’t corrected him, because she already knew he was right. She’d just told herself it was way too soon, that nobody fell in love in a month.

She found his hand under the water and laced her fingers through his. Then she felt him take a breath against her back.

“I’m not doing April.”

She went still.

April. They’d made that deal back in November at her kitchen table, over oatmeal, with Cedric’s flowers still sitting by the sink. They’d take the time they had, and when he left for the draft, they’d let it end. It had been her idea as much as his, and at the time she’d thought it was the most grown-up thing either of them had ever said.

“I mean it,” he said. “I know what we said. But I’m not doing it, Nicole. I’m not gonna get drafted and fly off somewhere and act like this was just some shit that happened in college. I tried picturing it. I can’t.”

She turned her head so she could see him. His hair was wet and pushed back off his forehead, and there was a streak of bubbles on his jaw, and he looked so cute and serious she almost laughed.

“Okay,” she said.

He stared at her. “Okay? That’s it?”

“Drew.” She reached up and wiped the bubbles off his jaw with her thumb. “I’ve been done with April since Christmas.”

“Since Christmas?”

After New York, that deal was the one thing she’d been sure of. Then he skipped Boston to come home with her for the holidays, and somewhere between watching him clank a free throw in her dad’s gym and then act a fool when the next one rolled in, and watching him eat his third plate of pork chops at Mama Gussie’s table, she quit counting the weeks until April.

“Yeah,” she said. “I just didn’t want to say it first.”

“Why the hell not?”