Page 115 of Then You Happened
The door opens quietly and then closes with a thud.
But I’m standing in my hallway, staring at an image I love and hate all at the same time.
Today is the day I own my wild.
42
TATE
The water sluices over my skin with each stroke.
It’s cool and refreshing and therapeutic.
One after another.
Again and again.
I count each one as a measure of time.
My head tilts to the side so I can draw in a ragged breath.
I’ve settled into a cadence to try to put distance between our fight tonight, the truths I finally told him, and the pain I caused him.
The exertion doesn’t take away the sting that Jack hasn’t answered my texts.
The emotions ate at me, every single one of them.
So, I came to the one place I used to use as my meditation to get through my every day. The place I haven’t returned to since the first night I slept with Jack.
The sun is setting, and the pool is getting dark, but I don’t get out to turn the lights on. I’ve done this enough times to know the length by heart. I’ve found solace here enough times that sometimes the darkness feels so much more inviting.
No one can see my shame then.
No one can see me wear the guilt.
No one can hear my screams underwater.
I do a flip turn and push off toward the other side, still trying to shake Jack from my mind.
When someone jumps into the pool in front of me, it’s the last thing I ever expected, and it startles me so much that I choke on a swallow of water as I find my feet beneath me.
But the cough dies on my lips when I look up to see Jack in the pool with me. His body may be naked, but it’s the apology and the regret and the love in his expression that holds me hostage.
There are no words as we step toward each other or as he pulls me against him or before our lips meet in a tender kiss laced with desperation. His hands roam over my body as if they are mapping every single curve.
We speak in actions. His kiss to my neck, my palms running up the plain of his back. His hands digging into the flesh of my hips, my wrapping my legs around his. His fingertips pulling aside my bathing suit bottoms and skimming over me, my teeth sinking into his shoulder in reaction. His cock slowly pushing into me, my accepting every single, thick, hard inch of him.
“Jack,” I moan.
“Uh-uh,” he murmurs when his lips find mine again. “I don’t want to talk, Tate.” He uses the buoyancy of the water to push my hips back so his crest slides over the rough patch of nerves within me. “I just need to feel you.” He pulls me back against him roughly so I’m forced to take the pleasure. “Feel us.” Another tantalizing withdrawal that has every part of me begging for him to fill me again. “Just this.” And he fulfills my desire by thrusting back into me. “Just us.”
We continue this slow, methodical pace until our nerves are as assaulted as our emotions were earlier, and our actions are as devastating to our senses as our words had been. Until we’re left wanting to be together instead of wanting to be apart.
And so we make up.
And so we make love.
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