Page 87 of Cut Off
He looks down at me, eyes gone dark and wild, and I realize he’s been edging for minutes, maybe longer, holding it back for my sake. There’s a sweetness in that, so vulnerable, that I want to burst into tears and laugh at the same time.
“Jonah,” I say, voice gone to sand and static. I want him to know it’s safe. I want to tell him it’s okay, but all that comes out is a tiny “please.”
That does it. He slams deep into me, groans, low and rough, and then he’s gone, too—hips stuttering, whole body rigid over me, and I wrap my arms around his neck and just hold him there, pulsing inside me. He shudders once, twice, then stills, breathless and stunned, and we stay like that for what feels like a year.
He holds himself above me in the aftermath—doesn’t collapse, doesn’t even move. Just stays, forehead to mine, eyes shut, one giant hand splayed against the side of my face, like he thinks letting go even a little would break the spell. I kiss him because I need to touch him, and I don’t have words for any of this.
He opens his eyes, and they’re so blue, even in the half-dark. He runs his thumb along my eyebrow, pushes my hair back, and I can feel him trembling, not from effort but from something else: the way it’s all too much, all at once, for both of us.
He eases his weight off me but doesn’t break the connection, just rolls to the side so we’re still tangled together, skin to skin. He looks at me, so open it burns.
I rest my head on his shoulder, my leg thrown over his, and try to memorize the way this feels, the way his hand cradles the back of my neck, the way his pulse kicks under my cheek. I don’t know how to want anything but this, or how I’m supposed to give it up, and the thought is so terrifying I almost push him away on principle. But I don’t.
I stay. I let it happen. I’m not a coward, except for maybe being with someone who makes me feel like this. He follows me with his forehead pressed to mine, jaw tight, breath caught, and we hold there, breathing through it.
I trace a pattern on his ribs with one finger. Idle. The freckle there, then up along the line of bone, then down again. I feel him breathe beneath my hand. His other hand is in myhair. He stares at the ceiling, and even in the dark I can see the look on his face—the look of a man who knows exactly what kind of trouble he’s in and has stopped pretending he isn’t.
“You okay?” he says. Voice rough.
“Yeah.” I press my mouth against his chest. “You?”
A pause.
“Yeah.”
He stays. Long enough that the room goes warm around us, that my eyes get heavy. Long enough that I can feel his heart slow and even out under my ear. He kisses the top of my head. Then again. Then he eases himself out from under me, careful, and finds his clothes in the dark.
I don’t watch him dress. I close my eyes and listen.
Before he goes, he leans over me. Brushes my hair back from my forehead. Presses his mouth to the spot between my eyebrows—the crease, the one he notices when no one else ever has.
“Sleep,” he whispers.
The door clicks shut. His feet shuffle down the hall.
I lie in the dark with the sheets warm around me and the smell of him on my pillow and the slow, terrible knowledge spreading through my chest.
I’m in love with him.
I’m in love with him, and there’s a nine-year-old asleep upstairs who’s lost too many people already, and I told this man on the day I moved in that he wasn’t allowed to fall for me.
And I’m leaving.
I press my hand flat against my chest, where my heart is doing its traitorous thing.
I have absolutely no idea what to do with that.
Outside, somewhere, a car goes by. The heating vent clicks on again.
I don’t sleep for a long time.
24
The Neighbor
JONAH
The next morning starts with a text from Zoe teasing me about my taste in sleep shirts, which has the Dickens’s Beaver mascot on it, and the absolute certainty that if I don’t talk to my neighbor, Gwen’s going to find a way to screw me over after all.
