Page 73 of Every Heartbeat After

She tastes like sunshine and sweetness. Like the whipped cream Jenna sprayed on strawberries for us to have as dessert. Tess’s body is so warm, so perfectly soft everywhere I grab her. She clenches around me, already approaching the precipice. I want to take her there now, and once she’s had time to rest, again. To drive her mad with desire. As mad as I feel inside.

“Fuck, Kit!” she cries out, digging her nails into my shoulder blade. “Don’t stop.”

“Never,” I groan. I keep my rhythm. Stroke her cheek with my thumb. Draw each exhale of hers deep into my lungs like a drug. As she loses herself to the pleasure, I lose myself in her. Soon we’re both free-falling into oblivion, where there is nothing but this intangible feeling between us. Satisfaction and desire and something else, something so much deeper, that I’ve felt since the very moment we met.

As soon as I collapse, I crush her to my chest and roll. We land with me on my back, head sunken into her plethora of extra pillows courtesy of a staff that dotes on her. Her curtain of shoulder-length hair falls just short of my face, shielding me from the lightning strikes and even cocooning me from the noise of the storm overhead. She is all I can see. All I ever want to see.

This is going to hurt a lot more than I thought it would.

“Tess,” I breathe, reaching up to stroke her chin. I pinch her there and draw her lips to mine, something gentle to rectify the bruising kisses from a moment ago. “How am I supposed to let you go when this is over?”

She stills on top of me like she’s bracing for a blow. “What do you mean?”

I stroke the hollow beneath her cheekbone, savoring the soft warmth of her skin because, with a confession like this, it may very well be the last time I get to feel it. “I don’t want this to be it. Not for us. And I can’t leave here on Monday and walk away without knowing I tried my damnedest to show you that I can be a part of your future, no matter what that future looks like. I’d fight for my place. Be whatever—whoever—you need.”

A fresh sheen of tears coats her blown pupils. The corners of her eyes crinkle. “Why would you want me messing up your life, Kit? Your stable, perfect, figured-out life.”

My laugh is harsh. Scalding. “My life is nowhere near figured out. Who the hell’s is? I’m telling you I don’t care about the uncertainty. It doesn’t scare me because I’m certain about you, and that’s what matters.”

Hard breaths are rattling her shoulders. Then her weight is gone, and suddenly she’s sitting up on the edge of the bed facing the window. She tilts her head toward me but keeps her gaze low. “What changed?”

I hook an arm around her waist and, using a firm grip on her leg, turn her to face me in the bed. “That’s the thing, Tess. I don’t think anything’s changed. I think I’ve felt this way, known this was how it’d end up between us, since the second I spotted you at that airport. I just had to wait for it to be the right moment. And I’m pretty sure this is it. This is our shot.”

She shakes her head so sorrowfully, so surely that a piece of my heart splinters, but at the same time there’s hope gleaming in her eyes. She’s scared, but she wants this. I’d bet my life on it. The realization brings with it a bone-deep ache in my chest, so strong that it steals my breath away.

“Kit, I?—”

Over the cacophony of the downpour and the warbling of Tess’s voice, the ringtone I specifically assigned to my parents sounds. Tess starts, letting her words falter. I keep waiting. Urging her to continue with my gaze, with my touch, even when I’m terrified that what she’s about to say will hurt like hell.

I ignore the call until I can’t anymore, because Tess is scooting off the bed and marching over to the pile of clothing on the floor, where she plucks my cell from a pocket and tosses it to me. “It’s your parents.”

“I’m not answering this right now.” I reject the call and set the phone aside.

Following a brief silence, the ringing starts up again.

Tess gathers her dress and pulls it over her head. She perches on the edge of the bed, as far from me as she can, and nods toward the screaming phone. “Just pick it up. They wouldn’t call unless it were important.”

“You’reimportant.”

“Kit.” Her voice contains a warning. It’s protecting something fragile, something so close to breaking. And I realize then that she’s stalling. “Answer. The. Phone.”

We’re locked in a battle of wills, both of us too stubborn to break, when the phone falls silent. Moments later it starts up again.

“Goddamn it.” I rip the phone from the bed and slide my thumb across the screen to answer. “Hello?”

“It’s Gage,” my dad bites out, voice fraught with panic. “We can’t find him anywhere. Have you heard from him?”

“Not today, but”—my brow furrows—“it’s not unusual to go a while without talking to him.” My parents know that. So why the panic? “Is something wrong? Why are you looking for him?”

“There’s a warrant out for his arrest.”

My entire body stills. Tess’s gaze roves my face like she can measure how bad the news is by what’s reflected there.

“Kit? Are you there, son?”

I picture my brother’s text from a new number. The one I left unanswered, more focused on spending time with Tess than once again being tagged in to clean up his messes. “What are the charges?” I croak while mentally preparing myself to break the news that this is my fault. That I covered for my brother, thinking he’d be scared straight. At least for a bit.

My dad’s sigh sounds more like a freight train’s approach. Thunderous. Exhausted from a long haul. “Hit-and-run, on the interstate a few days ago. He nearly killed a woman and her small child, then left them to rot.”

---