“I don’t think I like that girl,” my mom says as we drive into the parking lot of Sunset Acres.

I knew it was coming, just from her silence on the way over. Of course the one thing my mom remembers of today is that she doesn’t like someone.

“Darcy?” I ask, just to remind her of that girl’s name.

“She’s rude,” my mom says, frowning slightly at my car’s windshield as I slow, looking for a parking space. “And she has a dirty mouth.”

I can tell she doesn’t remember why she thinks Darcy’s rude, but apparently Darcy made an impression. Probably by sprinting into the middle of my brother’s funeral.

My mom can think whatever she wants. She clearly doesn’t remember the actual event.

But I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see someone. Fuck that it was at a shitty funeral with a terrible minister in the hundred-degree heat, and fuck that no one came because my brother didn’t have anyone else who wasn’t in prison.

She came. I said something fucking terrible to her and then disappeared, and she sprinted across graves anyway. It’s better than I deserve and I know it.

“I know, Mom,” I say. “I like her anyway.”

“I don’t think she’s right for you,” my mom goes on as I swing the rental car into a parking space. “Don’t you think she seems kind of damaged?”

I shut the car off, the lights still shining at the building in front of us, and I think: whatever I say, she won’t remember in fifteen minutes.

But then I look over at her, and she looks back at me. She looks twenty years older than she is, a slight dent in her skull on her left side, her right hand shaking very slightly in her lap, and whatever horrible thing I could have said to her flies right out of my head.

“Yeah, she’s kind of damaged,” I say. “And I love her anyway.”

I turn off the headlights, undo my seatbelt.

“Well—”

“You stayed married to Dad for twenty-five years, and now you’re in assisted living at fifty-six because of what he did to you,” I say, my voice deadly quiet in the dark. “I think you’re a pretty shitty judge of character, and I don’t care what you have to say about Darcy.”

That pisses her off. She gets out of the car, shaky but furious, and walks slowly to the front door of Sunset Acres.

I shouldn’t have said that, I think. I should have let it pass. She just buried Eli.

I get out. I follow Mom in, nodding at the nurses and their sympathetic faces. When we get to her suite, she lets me walk her in, then sits in a chair and turns her head away from me, giving me the silent treatment.

It’s the brain damage. I know it is, because she didn’t use to be like this, so I kiss her on the head, which she ignores.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mom,” I say, and walk out of her suite.

Silence, but God help me, I don’t care.

* * *

Outside room one-forty-one at the Holiday Inn, I lean against the frame and pause for a minute. My day is swirling through my brain, and I try to gather my fragmented thoughts together into some semblance of... something.

I should say something, do something after she showed up and practically rescued me even after I treated her terribly, but I don’t know what. Every inch of me is tired, every bone in my body, and I don’t want to think or talk.

I’m lost, adrift, and all I want is to be there, with her. I’m broken and she makes me feel whole. I’m wandering through the dark and she’s my North Star.

Finally, I knock on the door. Darcy opens it, and I still don’t know what to say to her.

Instead, I kiss her. In the doorway, in the hall of a Holiday Inn in Bakersfield, California, I kiss Darcy like my life depends on it, because it feels like it might.

I put everything I have into it, because suddenly I understand that this is it, that Darcy is it. All the shit that happened today, all the shit that’s happened the past weeks, the past month, my whole life and what I want is her, plain and simple.

She pulls back, breathing hard, looks at me. The door’s still open, so I nudge her inside, let it close behind me.

“Trent,” she says, as I slide my fingers down her back, then lean my forehead against hers.

“I’m sorry,” I say, eyes closed.

I have no plan, no outline, so clue what I’m about to say.

“It’s okay,” she whispers.

“I didn’t mean it,” I go on. “I should never have said it. I know you’ve got a heart because it’s all I’ve ever fucking wanted, Darcy.”

I kiss her again, just to make myself stop talking for a moment, before I pour my soul out right here in this hotel room that smells like disinfectant and air conditioning. She wraps her hand around the back of my neck, her fingers every bit as hard and desperate as I feel.

“I shouldn’t have said that about your brother,” she gasps, the next time our lips come apart. “I wasn’t thinking, I can just be an asshole sometimes—”

“I know,” I tease, and nip at her lip. I’m pushing her slowly back toward the bed, our bodies practically melded together. “You’re an asshole sometimes, you swear too much, you’ve got spikes a mile long, and I love you anyway.”

I kiss her harder, forcefully. The backs of her knees hit the bed and I can’t believe I just told her I love her, but it’s true, so fuck it.

I do, and I have, and I think I probably always will.

Darcy’s knees buckle and then she’s sitting on the bed, her hand closed around the front of my button-down shirt, tie and jacket long gone, and she pulls my face down to hers.

“I cried for a day because I thought you were gone,” she says, her voice low and rough, like it’s hard for her to say. “It was fucking pathetic, Trent. I was fucking heartbroken because since forever it’s always been us and then, suddenly, it wasn’t.”

She drags me in with more strength than I knew she had, kisses me fiercely.

“It’s us, Darce,” I say. “It’s us and that’s all. That’s it. The end.”

We kiss.

“Me and you and that’s what matters,” I promise.

She looks up at me, eyes wide and hair wild, lips just barely parted, and there’s something vulnerable and tender in her face, her heart right there on the surface, alive and pounding and more delicate than she’s ever let on.

And in that moment, I fucking need her. I need her more than I’ve needed anything, more than I need oxygen. I need her skin against mine, need her fingers in my hair, need her shouting and raking her nails down my back, because I’ve handed Darcy my heart and all I can do is hope she doesn’t break it.

I push her backward, climb between her legs. She unbuttons my shirt, shoves it off me, drags the rest of my clothes off as I pull her out of her dress and she writhes under me.

We kiss again, Darcy up on one elbow, pushing herself against me. I push her back and taste her throat, kiss her neck. I nip at her collarbone and she gasps, my face buried in her.

More. I need more, Darcy so intoxicating that I’m lightheaded. I take one nipple in my teeth and she growls at me, sinking her fingernails into my shoulder, pinpoints sending streaks of electricity through my body. My cock so hard it might just explode off my body.

I kiss Darcy one more time, and she wraps her legs around me, reaches down, and grabs my cock in her hand. I moan into her mouth and she bites my lip, stroking me hard. I know she’s trying to guide me in, lifting her hips and pulling me down, but I resist for half a second.

“Don’t fucking tease me,” she whispers. “I need you, Trent.”

In one movement, I push her hand off my cock, push her legs off me, roll her over onto her stomach. She looks over her shoulder, saucy, grinning, as I slide one hand up her spine, push her knees apart, and kneel between them.

“Good,” I say in her ear, running my fingers over her slick entrance, making her shudder. “Because I need you and I need this.”

And I push myself inside her, slowly. I want to savor every fucking inch of this heaven, want to let this erase the hell of Low Valley and North Delano State and funerals and brain damage and I just want to be here, inside her, with the one person I’ve ever really loved.

She curls and arches underneath me, brings one knee up, grabs the bedspread with her hand, and she moans with this slow, breathy moan until I’m buried inside her, our whole bodies lined up skin to skin.

There’s nothing else. Nothing else at all.

“This what you needed?” I whisper in her ear.

“Fuck yes,” she whispers back. “Fucking just like that, Trent, please.”

I do it again, just like that, and with her other hand she reaches back and grabs my hair, pulling my head close to hers. We’re intertwined, over and under and in each other, and it’s everything I needed.

She’s everything I needed.

I don’t speed up, I don’t slow down, I just fuck her slow and steady and deep. It might be a minute or an hour, marked in sighs and whispers, in the way her body moves under me, in the way she flutters around me.

I think I’m falling apart, pieces coming off me, like I’m flaking to bits, and I don’t care. I just keep going until Darcy’s flutters get harder, tighter, until her gasps become moans. Until her breathing gets ragged, and she’s suddenly pushing back against me harder.

And then I push myself into her as hard as I can and she comes around me, clenching and jolting and crying out, and seconds later I lose control too, burying my face in the back of her neck and just letting go.