Page 32 of The Last Kind of Kiss
“What song?”
“My song! I don’t—fuck, I don’t have my song.”
“Breathe, Lils. Talk to me,” he begs, his voice barely audible above the wind shuddering through reeds of cattails.
Calm down, Lila. He can’t help you if you don’t allow him to. Forget all about the hate just for a single moment. Remember what it felt like when you were with him…how easy it was to breathe, how light your heart felt.
“It’s…there’s this song that I always listen to before every photoshoot. It helps me calm down. It’s a song my mother used to sing to me. It…it reminds me that I don’t have to be scared of the cameras,” I explain shakily, keeping my head bowed, and refusing to give him my shame—not after the crushing blow of my weakness.
He doesn’t stop prying, even when he knows there’s every possibility of me lashing out at him. “What song was it?”
I can feel the control slip through my fingers like particles of sand, just as easily as our relationship escaped my desperate grasp a year ago.
I shake my head vehemently. “You’re going to laugh at me.”
“Never in a million years, angel,” he whispers.
I don’t know why I’m so hesitant to accept his help, but the silence is airborne for an excruciating minute before I reluctantly give in, unofficially re-signing my heart over to the man who I still can’t seem to let go of, even after all the damage he’s done.
“‘Beautiful’ by Christina Aguilera.”
With no cameras and no audience, he wraps his arms around me, stroking the back of my head with his hand while abstaining from messing up my hair. And then, Bristol doessomething that I never expected him to do—he starts humming the melody of the song to me under his breath. He holds me tight—as if he’s the one with everything to lose—and each syrupy rumble transports me back to late nights with my mother when she’d wash dishes and sing over the running water, filling our tiny apartment with a chorus crafted from love.
“You’re okay. Just breathe,” he whispers.
I block out the maelstrom of noises all competing for my attention, dialing my focus in on the steady beat of his heart, on the way his throat vibrates against my head with each soothing, rhythmic suspension. His voice doesn’t sound anything like my mother’s…but it’s not a bad thing. This version is raw and gravelly, a thick-chested lullaby that nobody could ever replicate—like the bare bones of an acoustic cover. Nothing else exists except for him. I’m safe. I’m at peace. I’m…loved.
But as always, that L-word has a way of complicating things, and a little voice in my head questions if love was ever on the table in the first place.
I wrench myself away from him, stamp down the spiraling panic, and grit out a “Thank you.”
Shit. I can’t believe I just let my guard down with him. When Bristol and I were seeing each other, I never told him that I’d sometimes get panic attacks before high-stress situations. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, I just…I didn’t want him to see how weak I was. And, I mean, telling him the truth about my father was already enough of a vulnerability overshare—which he clearly didn’t reciprocate.
Bristol blinks a few times, dumbfounded by my sudden change in mood, then slowly retracts his hands since I practically teleported away from him. “Yeah, of course.”
We both walk back over to the hub of things—thankfully spared from interrogation—and resume with the photoshoot as planned. Bristol has no trouble getting himself situated on thelounge chair, his half-sitting position making his stone-cut abs pop. I shuffle slowly over, walking a fine, death-defying line between pleasure and pain as the contents of my stomach rush into my throat.
Under the watchful eyes of the crew, I climb on top of Bristol, being hypervigilant not to brush my cunt over the bulge in his swim trunks. I hover over him—definitelynottaking the photographer’s advice like I’m supposed to—and my arm shakes while I accept the amber-colored perfume. Even from my suspended pose, I can still feel the dizzying heat rolling off his body, inviting me to come closer, inviting me to take a hearty drink from the poisoned chalice.
“Uh…a little closer,” Stephanie advises.
I lower myself an inch.
“Closer.”
Another inch.
“Body to body,” she reiterates exasperatedly.
Shit, shit, shit! I should’ve never agreed to this. The attraction’s still there. The feelings are still there. I’m not going to survive this. Mydignityisn’t going to survive this.
Finally, I relent and give Bristol my full weight, close enough to hear the tiniest of noises rasp out of him, and I can tell he’s just as apprehensive as I am because he doesn’t know where to place his hands. The oil concoction on both of our bodies smears disgustingly together. I can feel every bulging hill and valley of muscle underneath me, can feel the twitch of his belly and how it expands with an uncertain breath.
I adhere the fakest smile to my face, rest my head on Bristol’s chest, and hold the fragrance in the hand closest to the cameras. There’s a barrage of shutter clicks and small snapshots of light that smother me like a seismic mudslide. Between the heat trampling me and the overworked nerves waiting in the wings to completely floor me, I’m seriously overestimating how long I’mgoing to last before croaking on the spot. I need to focus on looking sexy while simultaneously trying not to looktoosexy that I raise Bristol’s flagpole.
I need to maintain control. And the only thing I can think of doing is getting lost in the chemistry still in (unfortunately) perfect service between us. Since my ear’s directly over Bristol’s heart, I listen to the surprisingly unsteady way it pounds and cries for help, which surely has to be some first-time modeling jitters.
Right?
