Page 61 of It's a Love Story

“Yes,” he says, mouth on my neck. “This feels like something I’ve never done before.” His hands clutch my hips and my legs wind around his back. Another current moves through my body and I take a sharp breath. This feels different in every way. This feels like something there’s no coming back from. He rests his forehead on mine, his breath jagged.

“You are just . . .” he starts again. “I had this feeling, the day when we fought about that stupid movie, that I’d lost something I didn’t even understand.”

“Stop calling my movie stupid,” I say, tightening my legs around him.

“Well, it was,” he says.

“You talk so much for an introvert.” I keep my eyes on the place where his chest meets mine. I run my hands down the sides of his ridiculous stomach. He takes in a breath, and I feel wild with power from being wanted like this.

“Everything is different with you, Jane. I feel like I never shut up.” My fingers curl inside the top of his boxers and his breath hitches. It might be my new favorite sound. His mouth grazes my ear, my neck, my breasts. My mind blurs at the sensations, his hands trailing up my legs, liquid heat everywhere. My pajama shorts are at my ankles, then someplace with his boxers, and there is no turning back. The want I am feeling has consumed me, and, like fire, it’s turned me into something light enough to blow away. I forget to be terrified by how easily I’m slipping into this moment and how easily it can be taken away from me. Dan rests his forehead on mine and steadies his breath. I can feel how fast my heart’s beating. His eyes scan my face and the length of my body like he’s making a digital print, and tears prick the back of my eyes. I’m going to have sex with this intense, beautiful man, and nothing is ever going to be the same. He has been unstitching me since we met—my rules, my pretending, and now my heart. His eyes settle on mine. “You’re just . . .” he starts again, but then kisses me so deeply that my mind gives up listening.

There’s a condom just out of reaching distance and a moment when we nearly roll off the bed. He asks me if I’m okay as we right ourselves. I’m exceptionally okay and wonder if this is the first time I’ve ever been in bed with a man without my mask. I am unconcerned about how I look or sound; I’m just a mass of nerve endings, falling into this thing with Dan. Tonight I felt what it is to want someone else’s happiness more than anything. I felt what it is to lend someone else your bravery and then to be brave yourself. I want to tell Dan that I think this is what love is. I want to ask him about it as we move our bodies together, but then my thoughts quiet and I am nothing but my senses. His hands gripping at my hips, cupping my backside, the softness of his lips against my ear sending electricity straight to my core. As the intensity builds, he whispers my name, and I feel as if the last stitch in my heart has been snipped, and I unravel in his arms.

*

“I’M TOTALLY PASTthe fourth date,” he says after. We’re lying on our sides, facing one another, legs entwined. His hand makes a lazy path up and down my back.

“Let’s see. We went to the beach, the crab shack, and then the museum. The party. Yeah, I think you made it.” I reach out and try to organize his hair. It pops back in all directions, and it makes me smile. I have this thought bubbling up that I’ve gotten to the place I was trying to go, but without trying at all.

“Yeah, this was a good date. And you’re acting exactly the right amount bored,” he says, and I laugh. My arms rope around his neck and my leg creeps back up over his hip, in the place, it seems, it was designed to stay forever. I am having an avalanche of thoughts: that I’ve never had fun during sex before, that I want every moment of my life after this to be the same exact perfect mix of intensity and fun, that I understand why this is better than insta-love. It’s the time spent digging that makes unearthing the treasure so satisfying. I desperately want this to be the end of the story. We feel like this and it just stays. I can’t even imagine how awful it would be to lose a person like Dan.

And then I think of my mom. And all the pretending.

“What?” he asks.

“Are you reading my mind again?” I scrunch my face up to hide what’s there.

He laughs. “Don’t be conflicted, okay?”

“This just isn’t a thing that I do,” I say.

He runs his hands up my hip and along my side, and I shiver. “It is now.”

“Don’t take it back.”

“I won’t,” he says.

CHAPTER 27

THERE’S KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR. THAT’S WHATI think when I wake up in Dan’s arms and the first rays of sunlight creep through the little window. Dust particles fly around in the light, and I have a sense of being in the upside down. I have spent a lifetime being on guard. I have worked so hard mastering how to be, and here I am flipped inside out. All of my raw bits are on the outside, and lying here with Dan, I am sleepy and sexy and playful. I rest my hand on his chest and memorize the rhythm of his beating heart. I have the strangest feeling that I want to protect him while also climbing inside of him for safety. It makes me think of Reenie and Cormack; it makes me think ofTrue Story.

These are my thoughts as the knocking gets louder and the talking starts. It’s the brothers.

“He’s locked the fucking door,” one of them says. Dan groans and tightens his grip on me.

“Knew it,” says another.

“Well, obviously.” Knocking turns to banging. “Danny, get up, we’re going surfing. Ten minutes.”

“He’s totally whipped. He’s not coming.”

“Get your ass up, Danny.” Banging. This sounds a little like Connor, but honestly, they all blend into one.

Dan kisses me. “I am in hell,” he says. “They’ll never leave and never shut up.”

“Go,” I say.

“You want me to go?”

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