Page 42 of Blueline Baby

I set her down next to the tub. It’s steaming, fogging the huge window that looks out at the black lake water. I climb in first and hold my hand out to steady her while she steps in after me.

She settles back against my chest, the water up at her neck. For a while, I don’t do anything at all, which is new for me too. I’m always reaching for the next thing. Right now there’s nothing I want except her weight against me. I press my mouth to the top of her wet shoulder, just because I can.

“This okay?” I ask.

“Better than okay.” She tips her head back onto my shoulder with her eyes closed. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

“I’m putting it on the Jumbotron.”

She laughs, and I feel it move through both of us in the water, and I would stay here exactly like this until the lake froze solid.

She goes quiet for a bit. Then she weaves her fingers through mine and holds them up in front of us. “Can I ask you something without you turning it into a joke?”

“...Yeah.”

“What happens to me if you get traded to another team?”

There it is. I’ve been waiting for a question like this. She doesn’t ask questions she hasn’t already run the worst-case numbers on, which means she’s been carrying this one around for weeks, probably folding it up smaller and smaller so it wouldn’t ruin the trip. She’s got two more years of undergrad and vet school after that. I’ve got a job that can pack me up and ship me across the country on somebody else’s whim.

“I don’t know,” I say, because she’d catch a lie before it finished forming in my head. “I don’t get a vote on where I go. Not yet.”

“That’s what I figured.” She starts to pull forward, away from me. “It’s fine, forget I brought it up.”

“Hey. I wasn’t done.” I tighten my arms and keep her right where she is, her back against my chest. “I don’t know where I’ll end up. But I know what the plan is. You finish your degree, you go to vet school, and that part isn’t up for discussion. I don’t care if I’m flying back on every day off to see you.”

“You can’t fly back on every off day.”

“Then it’s a different plan. Chloe.” I take her by the chin and turn her head until she’s looking at me. “I’m not going to be the reason you don’t get to be the thing you want most. I’d give up a whole lot before I gave you up, and school isn’t even on the list of things you’re giving up. We’ll figure it out, because I’m not letting any other version happen.”

She stares at me for a second, and I watch her blink back tears.

“That was dangerously close to a speech,” she says.

“I’ve been practicing in the shower.”

What I don’t say, because it would terrify her, is that I mean every word. Somewhere in the last few months, I decided she’s the one I’m building the rest of my life around. Sitting here in a going-cold bathtub with her wedged between my legs, I’m not scared of it anymore. I’d have my agent circle whatever city she ends up in, and I’d pack my bags grinning.

Then she turns in the water to face me. She settles over my lap with a knee on either side of my hips, water sloshing between us. I get both hands on her wet back and feel her shiver even in the heat. She kisses me like she’s still trying to say the thing she couldn’t get out before, and I kiss her back like I heard every word.

And then, for once in my life, I take my time. I let my hands wander over every part of her I can reach under the water until she’s the one getting impatient. She makes a low, frustrated sound in her throat and presses up against me, chasing the friction I keep not giving her.

“Jack.” She whispers my name, and it’s half a warning.

“I know, baby.” I drag my mouth down her throat. “I’ve got you. I’m not in a hurry. We’ve got all night, and I intend to use it.”

I slide a hand between us. She gasps and grabs my shoulders, and I get to watch her careful composure come apart piece by piece. There’s nothing in the world I like better than that. I work her slow and steady, kissing every sound out of her mouth while she shakes and swears at me under her breath, a fist in my hair, chasing her release against me.

When I’m about two seconds from gone myself, the careful part of my brain reaches for the edge of the tub. For the condom I’m sure I left there. My hand closes on nothing.

I could go get it. I should go get it.

But my brain latches onto a different option.

“Let me have you like this. Just this once. With nothing between us.”

She goes still over me, pulling back just enough to stare. I brace for her to be the sensible one, because one of us always is, and it has never once been me.

“We shouldn’t⁠—”