Page 75 of Until You Found Me

“It won’t. It won’t.” She feels something hard against her hip, squirms a little, and reaches down to fish out an acorn from his pocket. “You keep it with you.”

“Good thing too. All of this might have gone worse if I didn’t have it.”

There’s not an ounce of tease in his words. He fully believes this tiny token provided him with much-needed good luck,and she smiles, closing her fist around it.

Oranges and pinks from the setting sun illuminate the room before fading into oblivion. The blueish tint left behind promises darkness soon enough.

“Can we turn the TV on for some background noise?” he asks.

“Mhmm.” She grabs the remote and flicks on a food network show, keeping the volume at a low rumble. It’s the perfect decibel to keep the demons and ghosts lurking in the halls at bay. “I did that too when I was here. It helps.”

“You help more,” he admits, squeezing her tighter.

They drift off into restless slumber, awakened every few hours by dropped clipboards, panicked machines in other rooms, or squeaking doors across the hall. It all reminds them they’re stuck in this daunting realm of liminal space until sunrise. This time, at least they have each other.

Tonight, her dreams are an awful mashup of her first time in this clinic, the daughter she’s already lost, and the man she’s in the process of losing.

When they wake up, Audrey is there to greet them with two fresh coffees and the news that their blood types are compatible.

* * *

They haven’t talked about it since this morning when Logan emphatically refused again to accept her kidney. It’s not something they could handle now even if all the stars aligned, so Tessa’s decided to pick her battles.

After picking up the dog from Arthur, they return to thetrailer around lunch time. It feels good to be home and the stress of the past couple days melts away at a steady pace as they putter around, cleaning and fussing, showering the anxiety off themselves under a hot spray. He lets her go first and while she wants to invite him in, she refrains, assuming he wants space after she’d been hanging off him like a needy koala since he collapsed in the woods.

It’s not long before the door opens and he hesitates behind the curtain, unwilling to move it without permission. “Can I come in?”

“Of course you can.”

They’ve seen each other naked but always in the heat of passion, spurred on by lust. It’s never been like this, under bright lights, fully exposed, no rucked up t-shirt to hide her scars. No soft lighting to smooth out every imperfection. They’re on display now and some part of her wants to shy away at first, seeing that same hesitation mirrored back at her.

He breaks the tension by grabbing the shampoo bottle. “Lemme soap you up?”

She lets out a slight laugh. “If I can do you after.”

“Deal.”

She turns her back to him, shutting her eyes as he works the shampoo into her hair. He’s careful and focused, taking this job seriously when she thought it might only be a precursor to sex. Soon, the shampoo is set aside and rinsed out in favor of soapy bubbles from the vanilla wash she loves so much. His hands carry it across her shoulders and over her collarbone, down past peaked nipples to cup the weight of each breast. He lingers only for a moment, reverently caressing her with both thumbs until she pushes her chest into his palms beforefollowing the slope of her belly and the curve of her hips.

When she turns, he’s painfully hard between them, though he makes no move to join them together, and so she doesn’t either. She tends to him the way he did for her, soaping him up with that slick vanilla across the dips and valleys of his stomach, his cock twitching hopefully between them.

He would never ask her to touch him. Never assume that she would. If all she wanted was to get clean in this shower, he’d accept that without complaint. Luckily for them both, she has other intentions. In the past, he’s been jumpy at first contact, but today he melts against her when she wraps a hand around his shaft, letting out a sigh of relief.

All that matters is helping him feel good, and she puts every ounce of affection she has for him into the slow twist of her wrist and plush chase of her lips that capture his. When he steps closer, the swollen tip nudges against her belly as she strokes him, her hand trapped between them. He nuzzles his face in the curve of her shoulder and relaxes into what she’s offering, jerking his hips slightly toward her palm, pulsing hot in her grip.

It’s a slow and lazy process. She sucks at his pulse point, whispering a string of muffledI love yousthat trigger the splash of his release to paint across her lower belly and a cry of her name seared into her skin. The water has run cold, but they linger a moment longer, his weight heavy against her body as he recovers.

She isn’t surprised when his fingers rub between her legs, but she hums out a sound of disagreement, speaking into the shell of his ear. “Not yet. I don’t wanna come until the next time you’re inside me.”

He mutters a curse and poorly timed joke about how she’strying to kill him.

“Not funny,” she scolds, but it’s half-hearted.

She aches for him but is content to give him some small escape from the reality of their situation. It’s never far behind, though, and as they dry off and head to bed, bypassing lunch in favor of tangling up under the sheets, that heaviness returns as if it never left.

“So damn tired,” he slurs, curling up against her side with his head on her chest. “It’s the middle of the day and I’m about to nap. That’s not normal.”

“It’s okay to rest. You need it. We both do.”

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