Page 152 of The Difference Between

My eyelids go heavy, drunk on this feeling, but when they flitter open, his gaze is over my shoulder, and he stills. “Who the hell is that?”

I follow his attention to the ceiling and laugh. “Pacey from Dawson’s Creek.”

“I can’t do this with him watching,” he says, indeed not doing this.

Gavin is about to give me what I would bet will be the best orgasm of my life, and I laugh even harder.

He pulls out of me, stands on the mattress—naked and hard—and rips the poster off the ceiling, tearing it into two pieces.

I’m still laughing when he drops back to the bed, rolls me onto my back, and gets on top of me.

“I’m not sharing you,” he says against my neck. “Not even with a poster.”

I can’t even get my okay out because he’s pushing inside of me until our laughter fades. Through every thrust, every kiss, every slide of our sweaty skin, the rain falls, and our eyes stay locked.

The too-tiny bed moans with our movements, the screws seemingly coming undone along with us.

It’s me who comes first, screaming until he covers my mouth with his. When I’m done, any control he had is gone. He fucks me so hard I wonder if I might break. Over and over and over and I beg him not to stop. I never want him to stop.

And with a final and borderline painful thrust, his face contorts then he comes to the tune of quick breaths and grunts.

He crashes on top of me, breathless, both of us panting in a bubble of bliss. The bed crashes to the floor with a bang.

We look at each other.

And then, we laugh.

Forty-Four

Gavin fucks me stupid on a broken bed all night long. If it weren’t for the sound of the rain to drown us out, my mother would have pounded the door down and grounded me.

The morning’s new light, warm and ethereal, stretches through parallel slots of the blinds to paint the scene of us naked and twisted in blankets. With my leg slung over him, he strokes circles on my back, his eyes closed as we exist in the afterglow of the last hours.

My head on his chest, I count his heartbeats. He has a class to teach today, and I have to be at the vineyard, but neither of us rush to move. This might be what it’s like to wake up with him every single morning.

My gaze drifts around to nothing until it lazily lands on my desk. The glass slipper, my life’s checklist, the old pictures of the girl I used to be.

“Amanda and Greg waited longer than I expected to have kids,” I say.

“Not on purpose,” Gavin says, his voice vibrating my cheek. “They had a couple miscarriages.” That explains the difference between Addie’s age and Amanda’s pregnancy at Dad’s funeral. “Took a while. Finally had Addie. Took years to get pregnant again.”

“I didn’t know.” It’s hard to imagine her going through all that and managing so much loss. She always wanted kids. And I know she wasn’t alone—she had Greg, she probably had loads of friends—but I wish I would have been one of them. That I would have answered more when she called or hit a pause button and picked up the phone myself.

“Hm.” Gavin’s strokes on my back turn to tapping fingers. “Life happens. People grow apart.”

“It was me. I got busy. Too busy.”

My attention moves from the photos to the glass slipper, my thoughts shifting from me working too much to a time Gavin’s days weren’t so different. He forfeited his dream career to be here with people who needed him. I came home to help Rue and Mom earlier in the summer—but I worked the whole time—and even as guilty as I felt about missing Mom’s surgery, I’m only here now because I was forced.

I wonder if I’m the worst person alive for that. If I looked in the mirror long enough if all I would see is that ugly truth. I choose work over everyone, constantly.

Why?

Money?

That’s part of it, a big part, but it’s also because I don’t know how to stop. I like being good at something. And needed.

A baby will need me. If Gavin and I are together, he might. And Addie. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone.