Page 98 of The Weight Of Falling
He draws a ragged breath, looking at me as though I’m everything to him. “I knew it would be like this between us. I knew I should stay away, but I can’t...and I hate myself for not being stronger.”
I rise onto my toes and kiss him. I don’t have the right words to soothe whatever he’s wrestling with, so I give him what I do have. I show him how much he matters to me and how much I want him in my life. I want there to be no doubt who I’m choosing.
Him. Joel Adams.
The man who’s stolen my heart. The man I’m praying won’t break it.
39
“On a scale of one to ten, how mad were you that I said Bobby’s name after our kiss in the storeroom?”
“Let’s just say I was off-the-charts angry.”
“You hid it well.”
His fingers trace lazy circles on my arm. “I hid a lot of things well.”
You’re still hiding, I think, but I keep the words inside. I don’t want to ruin this moment.
Joel is stretched out on my living room couch. I’m lying half on the couch and half on him, my head resting on his shoulder, exactly where I belong. After the bar fight, he drove me straight home. I texted Hannah to check that she was okay, and she replied with a thumbs-up emoji, followed by a single water droplet. The droplet baffles me. Is she referencing our earlier “what’s in the water in Brown Oaks” joke? Is she...drinking from the well? I quickly block the thought. That’s not a road I want to travel tonight. I’m just relieved she’s okay.
“I think I knew deep down I wasn’t kissing Bobby,” I murmur.
“Deep down, huh?”
“Verydeep down.”
With one swift motion, he rolls, bracing above me, and I’m pinned beneath him. “Why are we talking about your ex-boyfriend when you’re with me?”
“Jealous?” I ask, quietly thrilled.
“Insanely so.”
My nerve endings flare to life. I can feel all of him against me, hot and hard and hungry.
“I like you on top,” I whisper.
He groans and dips my head back to trail a path of soft kisses down my neck to the pulse beating in the hollow of my throat. “You are driving me insane.”
His mouth returns to mine, and I join him in the most delectable kind of madness, one that invites no thought or logic or reason, only pure sensation.
After a while, he lifts his head and brushes back a strand of my hair from my cheek with a tenderness that undoes me. “This is exactly how I used to picture you. Your eyes...so blue they take my breath away. Your hair...” He gathers a fistful and brings it to his nose, breathing in my shampoo. “I love your hair.”
My fingers skim along the back of his neck and I arch into him.
He sucks in a sharp breath. “You have no idea how wild you drive me.”
His voice, raw with hunger and restraint, slides under my skin, lighting up my nerve endings even more.
“Then why don’t you show me?” I murmur.
He laughs, and it’s a beautiful sound. A little rusty, but beautiful.
And just like that, I want a life for him where that sound comes easier and more often.
On Monday morning, Tess walks in balancing a cardboard tray of takeout coffees. “Okay, I’m here. I’m under-caffeinated, over-committed, and need praise.”
I don’t respond. I’m staring at my desk, holding a glue stick above a watercolor test sheet, my mind full of Joel. Joel pushing through the bar crowd to get to me. Joel kissing me like he’sthought of nothing else for weeks, Joel staring at me like he can’t bear to lose me.
