CHAPTER THIRTY—SIX DANNY
Neither of us turn our heads to watch Alec disappear into the bathroom. We just sit. Holding each other. It’s everything I never knew I wanted from Christine, but these new feelings for Alec—the ones I’ve started to accept but haven’t had the chance to fully embrace yet—feel unfinished.
For both of us.
“We need to do something,” I say, still playing with Christine’s hair.
“Yeah.” She sighs. “We do.”
“We should go in there. Join him.”
But she shakes her head. “I don’t feel like it.”
“Why not?”
“Because this feels good.”
Yeah, that’s the problem. But I don’t say that. Christine has been through a lot these past few years. Hell, her whole life has just been one fucked-up misadventure after another.
“We have to make a decision. Are we three? Or are we two?”
“Three,” she says softly. “We are three, for sure. But it all feels so impossible. He’s never going to forget that I took up with Lars. That I was the cause of all the bad things that have happened to him these past few months.”
I kinda laugh. Not because it’s funny, just because it happens to be... ironic. Fucking irony.
“Why are you laughing?”
“You forgot,” I say.
“Yeah, but…” She huffs out something that might be a laugh too. “That was a head injury.”
I turn her in my lap so she has to look me in the eyes. “Look,” I say. “We’ve built something here and it’s about to fall apart. And this moment, right now, is the time to put it all back together.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“It just feels… unimaginable. Everything feels very unimaginable right now.”
Which makes total sense. I get it, I do. This is one fucked-up situation. But then again, the answer is so easy.
So I make a decision. I stand up, forcing her to stand as well.
“What are you doing?”
I don’t answer. Just drag her jacket down her arms and toss it on to the couch.
She smiles. Again asks, “What are you doing?”
But she knows what I’m doing. That’s why she’s smiling.
“Danny?” she says, her smile turning into one of those playful smirks.
“Shhh,” I say, lifting her t-shirt up over her head. “Stop talking.”
She giggles a little but doesn’t object or speak again.
I drop the shirt on the floor and take a moment to appreciate her body and the black, lacy bra she was hiding underneath the plain black t-shirt. Her stomach muscles are cut like diamonds. Hard and edgy. She has always been a diamond. Unbreakable, brilliant, and beautiful.
And I have not had enough moments with her like this. All to myself. A quiet one between the two of us where we both know where we stand, and how we feel, and what comes next. Maybe... Maybe on our way here. On the boat. But that was something else. Fueled by something else. From somewhere else.
Up until now it’s been adrenaline, and passion, and maybe lust.
But that’s not how I want this night to go. So I don’t rush when I let my fingers drop to the button of her dark jeans and pop it open. I take my time dragging down the zipper. Looking into her brown-green eyes as she looks up into my blue ones.
Then I bend down, still looking up, and pick up her foot. She places a hand on my shoulder to steady herself, still smiling as I pull off her sneaker and toss it behind me. I tap her other leg and she presents her foot. That sneaker goes behind me too. Then I grab the waistband on her jeans and drag them down her legs, getting hard as her matching black panties present themselves right in front of my face.
She smells like the sun, and the wind, and there’s still the scent of saltwater swirling around her too. She steps out of her jeans and kicks them aside.
I press my face up against her bare belly. My lips kiss their way up her body as I stand and place both my palms flat against her face.
“I love you,” I say, looking down at her now.
She gives me a sad smile but says nothing. Perhaps waiting for my kiss.
But I don’t kiss her. I reach around her back and unclasp her bra. It falls loose in the front and when I drag it down, she brings her arms in front of her, pushing her breasts together as we let the bra slip away and fall to the floor.
I smile and she smiles back. And then I reach for her panties and bend down again, taking them with me.
The whole process is slow, and seductive, and a little bit unnerving if I’m being honest.
I have never seduced Christine. The sex we had before, with Alec and without, was never about seduction.
And she is far too important, too beautiful, too loved—to not have a night of seduction.
It’s probably naïve of me to think that sex can fix us, but I’ll take my chances.
I press my face up against her belly again, dragging my tongue up her body as I stand. Stopping midway to squeeze her breasts and playfully bite her nipple.
I place my hands on her face, just the way I did a few seconds ago, and we stare into each other’s eyes like a moment on repeat.
Only this time she’s the one who says, “I love you.”
And I say, “You smell like the ocean. You smell like salt, and yachts, and tropical paradise.”
She smiles and starts to say something else, but I place a finger over her mouth to stop her words. Because I’m not done. I have had her to myself for months. And even though I liked it—definitely enjoyed it—we were never really meant to be together. Just us. Not like that. So I say, “And that’s something we need to wash off you.”
“What?” she asks. The hum of her question filtering past my hushing finger.
“Because that smell belongs to us.” I nod my head toward the bathroom. “And we belong to him.”