Page 119 of If Not for My Baby
“I was so mortified,” Tom admits with a half smile. “Itchin’ to go put on a feckin’ shirt, but terrified of coming back out and findin’ you’d gone to bed. So I just stood there like a half-naked eejit.”
“I thought you looked like an underwear model, so…”
His incredulous laugh soothes the stress across my body. I can’t believe how much I misunderstood. I think back to Melograno—the tears in his eyes. Not because he was still in love with Cara or Eden or anyone else, but because of a senseless tragedy. One he didn’t want to drown our dinner in, when I was already so skittish. A dinner where I accused him of—
“Oh, God, Tom,” I say with fresh horror. “I said you loved to be heartbroken…How could you have let me get away with that?”
“You didn’t know. Which was my fault.”
“It was still a nasty thing to say.”
“I’m not sure you were entirely wrong, though. I think at some point I allowed my grief to become a defining quality. Itold myself I was worried about what it would do to her memory if I were to allow myself to move on. The truth is some part of me feared even more what it might do to my music.” It sounds as though he’s never admitted it out loud before. “At one point I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to write anything if I wasn’t miserable.”
Fury ignites across my body. “Jen made you believe that. She was wrong, Tom.” Jen, who capitalized on his grief when he was still freshly in it. “Your work is about so much more than loss.”
“It’s all the same now. None of it mattered once I met you.”
This would be easier if I’d listened to him ages ago and gone inside. We could have been warm and dry and better aligned than we are now as we stand face-to-face. But I’m not waiting another minute. When I reach up on my toes to push his wet curls from his forehead, he sighs out sheer relief. The noise sends sparks skittering through my limbs.
For a man who’s told me to slow down more times than I can count, tonight Tom kisses me voraciously. His lips find mine through the curtain of rain with an exhale so raw I choke on emotion. He kisses me like he hasn’t breathed a day since we’ve been apart. I see the entire night with perfect clarity now: the full-body discomfort he sat in waiting to tell me everything. Waiting for this moment to finally arrive.
Tears prick my eyes as we kiss. I wish I could say I’m grateful the rain will mask them, but I’m learning lessons in love in real time these days: when you feel about someone the way I do about Tom, there isn’t much room for shame. To be loved is to be known—the worst of you, the best of you.Maybe that was what I was hiding from all along, and now I can’t understand why.
We’re melting into each other, his teeth tugging at my lips, his hands unable to hold enough of me at once. He lifts me from the ground and I lock my ankles around his back.
“Now, for the love of Christ,” he breathes against my mouth, “can I please get you inside?”
He stomps us through the grassy marsh, careful not to tumble into wet puddles. Conry’s long since gone inside, and he’s tracked mud across the hardwood.
“I’ll clean that later,” Tom tells me.
I wipe some of the rain from his face with my damp sleeve. “You can put me down now.”
His fingertips dig into my ass. “I don’t think so.”
He carries me through a hall filled with simple framed drawings and I know they’re his. Small birds on a tree branch—kingfishers. A city rising from a tranquil sea. The sun setting over the Hollywood Bowl. Long, slight pen lines and thick smudgy charcoal.
“I love those,” I say. “Who forced you to hang them?”
He chuckles roughly. “My mam.”
“Promise you won’t take them down. They’re”—his lips press hotly under my ear—“so beautiful.”
Tom’s voice is gruff. “Like you.”
The bed he deposits me on is chilly and I shiver twice, one rolling into the next like an ocean wave. I’d fantasized about his bedroom, but it’s even better than I imagined. The exposed wooden beams across the ceiling are dark, but the walls are a soft off-white. There’s a thickly woven blanket beneathme, and creamy curtains slouching around the many windows. A dog-eared book on his bedside table, an acoustic guitar laid lovingly on the dark settee. It’s serene. Intimate. And in the corner, just as he’d said, is his small black suitcase from the tour, stuffed to the brim.
Tom kicks off his shoes. Through his soaked sweatpants I can see the entire outline of his length. He walks into the bathroom and a minute later I hear water pour from a faucet into the tub. When I shiver again, it’s the good kind.
“This is the only way to really get warm,” he calls. “I’ll take one with you”—when he comes back out, he’s shirtless—“every day, if you’ll let me.”
“Yes, please.” I yank off my shoe with a wetsquelch. The other one remains suctioned to my foot until Tom helps me defeat it. “At least until I go to New York in a week.”
“What for?” He presses his warm mouth to the cold skin of my ankle.
“I’m going to theWest Side Storyaudition after all.” I pull my socks off and then my sweater, both equally soaked. “Turns out it was worthy of my cheers.”
“That’s fuckin’ fantastic, Clem.” His eyes are all lit up. “Can I go with you?”
