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The kiss is desperate, needy, and I’m not sure who moved in first—only that nothing has ever felt this right. There are weeks and weeks of memories poured into that kiss, long nights and early mornings and road trips that never led us back to where we started. Arguments and truces and theories. I lose my hands in his hair while he holds me tight against him, arms around my waist. Anchoring me.
I part my lips and swirl my tongue with his. He is heat and sweetness and hope, and I love the way he sighs against my mouth, this low hum that makes my limbs go weak.
I drag my hands along his shoulders, down his back. “Why is your coat so fucking puffy,” I mutter, and he laughs, unzipping it as quickly as he can. And—there he is, chest waist hips pressing against me. Wanting me. I loop my thumbs through his belt buckles. Learn he’s ticklish when my fingers brush his waist.
He brings his hands to my face and then into my wet, matted hair. “Barrett,” he says on an exhale, and wherever that sentence was supposed to go gets lost in the stunning groan he lets out when I use my mouth to map the contour of his jaw, all the muscles that used to prevent him from smiling. His neck. The hollow of his throat. He grips me tighter, one hand drifting to my lower back, under my jacket, as I taste the rain-salt of his skin. Miles, apparently, likes being kissed just about everywhere.
There’s too much of him I want to get my hands on. To see. But for now, in the dark, I can be content with just touching. Feeling.
“Better than the first time?” I ask when we break apart, breathing in time with each other. Quick. Slow. Quick, quick, slow. His hair is a mess, his eyes half-closed.
“There’s no comparison.” He tugs me closer, as though he can shield me from the wind and rain, and then gets a better idea—bringing me up against his chest, and then attempting to zip his coat around us both. I’m about to tell him I’m certain I’m too big for this to work and it’s probably going to end up being awkward for both of us—but miraculously, it does. It might be the warmest I’ve ever been, zipped up in his coat like this.
I run my hands along his chest, his shoulders. As though I need to keep making sure he’s real. Against my cheek, I can feel his heart racing. “God. I like you so much,” I say. “Everything and nothing about this moment feels real.”
Even in the dark, I can see his full-wattage smile. “I hope it is. Because I’m kind of head over heels for you, if that wasn’t already clear. I’ve had the most helpless crush on you for weeks, and I’ve probably done an abysmal job showing it, and—”
I pull his mouth down to mine again.
I’m not sure how long we stay out there, bundled inside his coat, the stars and ocean making the night feel endless.
Two lonely people with the entire world at our fingertips.
Chapter 35
ONCE THE RAIN BECOMES A downpour, we can’t get back to the inn fast enough. Anxious, eager hands fumble with key cards until finally we get the door open and he pins me against it in a kiss that tastes like the ocean.
“Oh my god, the rose petals,” I say. “I swear this wasn’t some long con to get you into the honeymoon suite.”
“I don’t think I’d mind even if it were.”
I throw off his coat, and when we kiss again, it’s even more frantic, tongues and teeth and greedy hands. We struggle with our sweaters and our shoes, every moment my lips aren’t fused to his feeling like a wasted one. It’s only when the backs of my legs bump against the bed that it hits me: we are alone in a hotel room with no one to answer to and no curfew, and it’s a heady, intoxicating feeling.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he says, eyes fixed to mine, hands lost in my hair. “Can I say that? Because I kind of can’t believe this is happening.”
“Yes,” I say with a laugh, even though hearing it makes me dizzy.
I drag him down onto the bed with me, on top of me, skimming my hands up his back beneath his T-shirt and then ridding him of the T-shirt entirely. A few moments later, mine joins his on the floor. Warm skin and sharp inhales and—god, there is just no part of him I don’t like. He gently takes off my glasses and places them on the table beside us. His mouth travels down my neck, scorching the same path he did on the beach, only backward this time. On the beach it was anticipation. Now it’s agony.
“I think your ears are excellent,” I whisper. He lets out a low, rough sound as I kiss one and then the other, gently sucking on his earlobe and discovering this is something he really, really enjoys. “Just felt like you needed to know that.”
Then I press my lips to the crescent scar beneath his left eye, and along my ribs he traces the bruise that shouldn’t exist. “Does this hurt?” he asks.
“Not anymore.” I find a similar patch of reddish skin on his abdomen, a fading reminder of that night that almost broke us. It makes me kiss him harder.
When I push my hips against his and he pushes back, I see stars. I can’t remember ever wanting anything the way I want him right now, and I absolutely love it. I rock against him, finding a rhythm, and he groans into my ear before he bites down on it. I love that, too.
“I know we’re in a hotel room, but we don’t—we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he says, breathless, his words crashing into one another. “Or—what do you want?”
I consider this. It’s not that I want to erase my past, the way I might have before. It’s that I want him, completely and definitively, in any way I can have him. And even if this day is stuck on infinite repeat, tonight feels tinged with an electric, precious urgency.
I don’t want to hold anything back.
“You. Everything.”
A pause. A persistent thudding of his heartbeat. Then a rush of breath as he exhales, “Me too.”
“You want to make love to me,” I say, a teasing lilt to my voice, remembering the way he said it back in our ice-cream truck. I try not to fixate on the word love, and yet it slides past my lips without stumbling.
