Page 96 of Into the Mountains
Neither of us says anything else. Our eyes just rove over each other, like we are expecting the other to disappear and we’ll wake up from whatever dream we’re in. When we don’t, we close the inches between us and when our lips meet, there’s nothing stopping us.
In sync, I lift her as she wraps her arms around my shoulders and puts weight on her arms to secure her legs around my waist, ankles locking at my lower back.
When we get to the bed, neither of us hesitates to get to where we want. I push into her and while we both have immensely enjoyed the demanding sex we’ve been having, this is different. This is slow and passionate. Not that the other times haven’t been filled with it, but this is different. It’s…love.
And it’s Charlotte Monroe. And dammit she is beautiful underneath me.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you.”
Our hips grind against each other, my cock completely filling her as she rocks back and forth, her hands digging into my back. Our moans fill the small space of my bedroom until we climax together and fall in a tangle of limbs on my bed.
After a few moments, we lie side by side staring over at one another, our hands wandering at our sides, whispered “I love you’s” filling the night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHARLOTTE
Ihave no idea what we are going to find when we get to the house. I don’t even know what I had planned to do with it, only that it was a future problem. And now I want to strangle my past self for her stupid decisions.
If I would have just dealt with it all then, I wouldn’t have to do this.
“I don’t want to do this,” I say out loud, voicing the one thought I know Eli doesn’t want to hear.
“I know you don’t.”
My head whips toward him, putting an ugly crick in my neck. “You do?”
“You’ve been overthinking since we got into the car. You’ve been wringing your hands together so much, I’m almost certain the skin on them is raw.”
Sure enough, when I look down at my hands, my skin is red and angry. “I’m just…” I search for the right word and come up short.
“Nervous?” he offers.
“Nervous? Not only that. I’m horrified at what state the house might be in? Guilty I let it sit for so long? Wondering what my parents would think if they knew I left.”
Before I can wreak more havoc on my hands, he reaches over the center and separates them, lacing his fingers in-between mine. “It’s okay to be nervous. It’s also okay to be scared. But what you’re not going to do is create fake scenarios in that head of yours to make you think your parents would be anything but proud of you.”
That surprises me. He doesn’t wait for me to question him, he just continues. “Do you think for a second they’d have been happy that you took care of everything in that house when you weren’t ready to do so? To put yourself through even more pain when you just buried both of them? I think they’d be insanely proud of their daughter for putting herself first and leaving it all behind for a little while. For future you to deal with when you felt like you had time.”
I sit in his words for a minute. Let the heat from them seep into my skin until it’s been so long, they’re lukewarm. “You don’t think it’s horrible I let the house sit there for fifteen years?”
“Were you ready to face it five years ago?”
“No,” I answer.
“Ten years ago?”
Again I answer no.
“What about last year? Were you ready to face it then?” I shake my head.
“Then, no,” he says. “I don’t think it’s horrible. I think it’s honorable. Honorable because you honored yourself in the way you felt. Took it seriously and decided you were going to come back one day even if it was fifteen years later and that’s okay.”
It’s then I start to cry. It starts as a single tear sliding down my cheek, cold and alone on its journey. But soon it’s followed by others as sobs shudder through my body recreating its trail, joining it in the fabric of my jeans. And all the pain from losing my parents so close together, one expected and one not, comesout in one fell swoop. One painful swoop that feels like I’m being torn in two. Almost worse than the day I found Dad.
Almost.
