Page 55 of What If It's You?

“I feel beautiful when I’m with you,” I murmured, and the slightest frown creased his forehead, the same drawn-curtain sensation flickering in his eyes. The tiniest wisp of dread went through me, a more toxic smoke off the conflagration of the two of us together. “Ollie…is something—”

“Shhh,” he said, drawing my mouth down to his, “the only thing I want to think about right now is this.You. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, the word dissolving into his kiss, more aggressive now, still tender but with a distinct undercurrent of ferocity. Ollie released my cheek and moved both hands to my ass, directing me over him, and the feeling of him sliding along me, parting me, drove all other thoughts out of my head. I slid over him slowly, then faster, pressing down harder each time, until the throbbing between my thighs was just a constant thrum of need, every nerve in my body alight with it, my skin growing hot, each movement of Ollie’s hand—a squeeze, a caress, fingers trailing up the furrow of my spine so delicately it felt like his skin whispering to mine—heightening the sensation, until I thought I might explode with it.

“I need to be inside you, Lo.Now.” Ollie’s voice was a growl, his expression twisted between pleasure and pain as he wrapped a hand around himself and guided his length into me, moaning as he thrust to bury himself deeper. “Fuckyou feel so good,” he said, breaths growing ragged as he pushed into me again and again, the sudden fullness inside ratcheting things up so far I couldn’t even speak, could barely form thoughts.

I threw my head back, steadying myself with both hands on his chest, too lost in my own mounting pleasure to worry whether I was hurting him, whether he couldbreathe,because all I was was this feeling, and every time I rocked my hips over him, harder, faster, itgrew, and grew, a storm gathering on the horizon and me helpless to avoid the oncoming deluge. I started to whimper, biting my lower lip against the tsunami of feeling overtaking me, trying to hold myself together, and then, with one final jerk of Ollie’s hips, I felt my borders dissolve, the distance between him and me collapsing in the joint spasms of our bodies, the rush of feeling so intense I started to feel dizzy, lips tingling, nails digging into his chest to keep myself from floating away to somewhere else altogether.

It took several long seconds for the storm to pass, the waves growing slower, and gentler, and then fading away entirely, leaving behind a calm, washed-clean shoreline. Shakily I swung my leg over him and collapsed into his waiting arm, my head fitting perfectly in the crook of his shoulder. I pressed my palm to his chest, rubbing back and forth slowly with my thumb, content to simply feel the warmth of his arm around my naked back, to watch the slow rise and fall of his chest, to luxuriate in the scent of his sex-heated skin.

“What am I gonna do with you, Laurel?” he murmured, turning to press a soft kiss to the top of my head. I frowned, not quite sure what he was getting at.

“More of this?” I ventured. Ollie’s laugh vibrated through his chest.

“Touché,” he said, ruffling my hair with his hand before he rolled over to face me. Seeing him stretched along the bed, body limned in golden light, literally bared to me, made my heart swell with bruised tenderness, a nostalgia for something I wasn’t sure I’d ever had. He was so completely at ease, so totally comfortable in his own skin, that I felt almost jealous.How?How could he be so sure of what he wanted, of who he was supposed tobe? How could he keep going after his dream when—despite all his hard work and his talent and the endless times he’d started over, re-formed himself, tried again—the world wasn’t granting him the success he absolutely deserved? And where did I fit into all this, the girlfriend with the eminently buttoned-up day job, a would-be writer without the guts to actually do the thing, and just as chickenshit when it came to us? Iwasn’t wondering about Drewspecificallyanymore, felt more sure that what I had with Ollie wasn’t just habit, it was special, precious even…but the idea of slipping the ring Ollie had tucked away in his drawer onto my finger terrified me even now. I needed to figure out how to stay here, how to stay with him…but then what?

Ollie’s eyes narrowed, almost as if he could read the ticker tape of anxiety unspooling behind my eyes.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he finally said, voice cooler, but not distant, hand still resting on my hip, connected to me.

“I just feel like…I need to make a change,” I said, tentative. I didn’t rehearse full-on speeches for every casual interaction, but if we were talking about something a little deeper, I usually liked to have a sense of my message before I started talking. Now, though, I felt totally lost, alone in a dark forest without a map, or even a light.

“What sort of change?”

He hadn’t pulled his hand away, but I could see the tension in his body, the wariness circling the dark pools of his eyes. Part of me was dying to tell him the truth,a change to a program that I don’t fully understand but that is literally pulling me out of my life for unknowable amounts of time.But that felt…heavy. And wrong, somehow. And like it might make him question my sanity.

“Honestly, I’m not even sure,” I finally admitted, smiling weakly. It was all too much to process, let alone share. Disappointment briefly tightened Ollie’s eyes, then he shrugged.

“In that case, I’m gonna shower. Want to join?”

The look he flashed over his shoulder was sparkling with something I would have called intimacy before, a naughty inside joke of a look that let me in on the punch line, but I realized with a start that that wasn’t what it meant at all. The playfulness wasn’t pulling me in…it was keeping me at arm’s length.

“Uhh…no, you go on. I’m good.” I blinked, trying to process the new information. It was like I’d been seeing the image through a slightly warped lens and had only now pulled it out of theaperture. Ollie was here, he was smiling, he was asking me for aformof closeness, and yet all of it seemed meant to keep me away.

“If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” Waggling his eyebrows, he left the bedroom, leaving me in a tangle, both of sheets and of thoughts.

I’d always been so sure Ollie was an open book, and he was…mostly. So what was he hiding now? And how could getting so close that I could still taste him on my tongue actually feel like a step in the wrong direction?

I crept out of the apartment just as the sun was starting to paint the sky in washy streaks of pink and orange. It wasn’t a guarantee, but very early mornings tended to be dead zones at the Pixel office. Most people didn’t show up until somewhere around ten, especially on a Monday, and the coders, devs, and engineers might not make an appearance until noon or later, the culture of the all-night coding binge baked into the company’s hours.

It was possible one of the Lightning team happened to be a lark, not an owl, but if that was the case, I’d just tell them that Drew had asked me to pop in and flesh out my user profile whenever I was able. It wasn’t even a lie.

Luckily, by the time I swiped open the now familiar frosted doors of the Lightning offices, the room was still empty, early morning sunlight from ceiling-level windows shattering over the metal surfaces of the quantum computer.

I ran through the entire sequence again, tugged the cap onto my head, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t manage to get further than I had before. If I tried to delete the profile, the little AI voice spat out an error message. If I tried to finish the calibrationsequence, I wound up stuck in the same loop I had the first time,Would you like to continue with user setup for AltR?sounding more and more like a taunt every time I encountered it. Desperate, I asked to experience the program as a guest, which led straight to:

Excellent. I’m eager to show you how immersive AltR can be!

…and then it sent me to the cornfield sequence. It was vaguely interesting to notice what changed if I acted differently. I’d thought it was a more or less fixed experience when I’d gone through it before, just based on Drew’s telling me where to go, but clearly the user input determined the ultimate result—but learning that didn’t solve my actual problem. Finally, frustrated and slightly jittery from caffeine on an empty stomach, I tugged off the headset and made my way to the nearest café station to scrounge up breakfast. If there was a technical solution to whatever the hell was going on with me, it didn’t seem like I was going to be able to find it on my own.

Once I’d refueled, I took my laptop to the “cone of silence” conference room—our smallest, which meant it was rarely occupied—and opened an email to Dana.

SUBJECT: Snow Bombs, a million-dollar baking idea

Dana—

First off, I applaud any food innovation that hinges on pop rocks. Clearly you’ve always swung for the fences, and when (not if) you and your sister finally get around to fulfilling yourrealpurpose in life, please allow me to be investor 1 on the project.

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