Page 66 of Love.V2
“Poor thing.” His lips pressed hot against my skin. “We can’t have that now, can we?”
He rose, carrying me across the room and down the hall. I snuggled into his chest, my legs wrapping around his hips. I loved this. Feeling so small and safe. His fingers squeezing into the soft flesh of my butt. It was everything I’d been missing for the last few weeks.
I used my teeth to scrape the skin of his throat.Remember me? Us?
Later, naked and panting, he gathered me close, squeezing me into his chest like I was precious.
“We should go for a walk in the morning. It’s supposed to be nice.” I broached the topic I’d been hesitant to bring up all week. But he was here now, with me. Not just sitting with me, but actually thinking about a spreadsheet.
He grunted. I could feel him already slipping into sleep, arms growing heavy around my stomach.
“We can walk over to that new coffee shop that just opened up,” I whispered. “They have something called a lavender latte.”
“Sounds gross,” he muttered, breath shifting a few strands of my hair.
I pinched his arm, and he grunted again, pulling me closer to bite my shoulder.
“I wanna try it so bad.”
“Then we’ll go.”
When I woke later that night to the sound of Dylan’s phone, I shifted, watching him rise and answer the call.
“Is everything okay?” I asked when he came back into the room.
He bent, placing a kiss on my forehead. “Issue with one of the UK clients.” The next morning when I woke, he was already gone.
***
Two weeks later
Dylan
“It feels great out there,” I told Tess, coming in from grabbing the mail that had been piling up our mailbox. Bills. Coupons. More bills.
I dumped all of it on the counter.
Tess mumbled something affirmative, curled up in her favorite squishy armchair by the window, soaking up the puddle of sunlight with a book in her lap.
Winter was just beginning to melt into spring. The air was warm without being hot. The kind of day that brought people into their yards for the first time in months to mow and have a beer with their neighbors.
And I, somehow, had a pause in the incessant deluge of work, calls, and emails that consumed my life. I wanted to take advantage of it.
I studied Tess for a few more moments, bare feet crossed, legs hanging over the arm of the chair. She looked warm. Comfortable. Like home.
I rubbed my chest, suddenly guilty about all the hours I’d been putting in at the office. She hadn’t complained, but she’d started asking more and more for me to come home at a reasonable hour, or grab dinner together. I’d probably said no too many times over the last few weeks.
A vague, sleepy memory surfaced.Lavender latte.
“Hey, didn’t you want to go to that coffee shop a few streets over? We can go for a walk. See if that farmers' market has anything good for dinner?”
Was it my imagination, or did her shoulders hitch up a millimeter? Her brow furrowed. “I’m not really in the mood.”
“You can finish your chapter, then we’ll go,” I tried again. I hadn’t had a day to myself in…too long to think about. I wanted to hang out with Tess. Feel the warm air on my skin. Hold her hand. Hear about what she’d been up to for the last few weeks.
I saw her every day, but she felt distant right now, like we were orbiting around each other and never quite connecting.
“No, thank you.”
