Chapter Five

GEORGINA

 

 

I shivered, partly from nerves and partly from the cold of Blake’s house as we walked inside, well past midnight. A chill had set in, making stepping into the unheated rooms feel like stepping into a freezer. It was like a sign, the cold, trying to drive me away, telling me what I was doing was wrong. Me being there, being with Blake at all, was sending him all the wrong messages and making it harder and harder for me to turn away.

It wasn’t the cold that made goosebumps break out up my arms and down my back. It was being close to Blake—close enough to touch him. Everything about him tugged at my heartstrings, and at my body. It was infuriatingly ironic that I had this amazing guy, the guy I would have made up out of thin air if anyone had asked me to create my perfect man. And I couldn’t keep him.

Blake asked me a question, but I didn’t hear it. I was staring at the sofa and remembering the night I lost my virginity to him, and how tender and indescribably special it had been. I wished I could go back to that moment and change it all, say to him, ‘I don’t care about The List—all I want is you’.

Because it wasn’t just the cancer holding me apart from him; it was all the things I had done. I wasn’t ashamed of my list. I just regretted that those things, some of them, anyway, had hurt him, and badly. I had behaved horribly.

When I wrote out that list I’d had nothing to lose. Then that all changed. Blake cared about me. He kept trying to prove it to me and I just kept wondering what it was he saw in me.

My old enemy, insecurity, had come back to haunt me. It was funny, in a way, because Blake and my list had made me feel so confident. Right then, though, looking at his gorgeous face I felt like the same girl I had been back in high school—chubby, bald, sick, and lonely. I felt like the same girl who’d cried in the bathroom because a boy had pulled her wig off in the middle of class, the same girl who’d thought she’d always be alone.

What would I look like a year from now? Would Blake love me if I had chemo and lost all my hair? If I lost both of my breasts? I mightn’t even still be here for him to love. That’s why it has to be only one more night.

My mom had written something on a napkin before she died, a single line in flaming red Sharpie. She’d had a very bad day, or so my dad said, and she’d scrawled out the words, ‘Pain is too beautiful to hate when it comes with the gift of one more day’.

I’d kept that napkin and held onto it through my own treatment, although I’d never fully understood it. Now, maybe I knew exactly what she meant.

I just wanted one more day. Just one more day with Blake. Or one last night.

I was truly, deeply, painfully in love for the first time in my life, and I couldn’t bring myself to hate that.

I am in love …

I hadn’t admitted it to myself before. But I could feel it was true.

Blake was staring at me, concern written in every angle of his beautiful face. He was probably wondering why I hadn’t answered him, why I was just staring at him with an intensity that could bore through steel. In response to the question I never heard, I stepped forward and pressed my mouth on his.

Blake put his strong arms around me, and I felt a deep, long sigh escape his lips. His body held mine up, his hands stroked my hair, and his lips brushed against my ears and my neck. He felt so good there, so right.

My heart gave an anxious flutter, like it had broken free from my body and fled like a frightened rabbit. This will only hurt him more when you leave him again, the dark voice inside me said. I closed it off. I’d been clear with Blake that this was our last night, and when it ended, we were over. Even if it hurt him. Even if it hurt me.

I ignored the churn of my belly that rose every time I thought of Blake being hurt, and lost myself in the taste of his mouth, the feel of his hands pressing against my back, and the spicy smell of his skin.

Nerves shook my hands as I led Blake to his bedroom then to the bed. It felt like my first time all over again, scary, intense, and full of wonder. Blake seemed hesitant, but I didn’t let him stop to ask me if I was sure. With breathless confidence I took control, showing him this was exactly what I wanted.

I undressed before him as he watched, slowly dragging my shirt off, then peeling down my jeans. I pressed my chest to his as I undid my bra, then turned away to take it off and bent low as I slid my panties down. He placed his hands on the cheeks of my ass as I straightened up again and moved away from his hot touch.

It left him panting, desire clear in his eyes as he looked my naked body up and down. Then I knelt before him, treating him like the Norse god he was. I lifted the hem of his shirt, dropping tender kisses across his abs as I unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly. I could feel the hardness of him as I freed him from his clothes. My whole body felt heated through as though by an internal wildfire, the coldness of the room forgotten as lust rampaged through me.

I used my mouth on Blake as I had seen in the videos I’d once watched. I started slow, exploratory licks and strokes that elicited moans and gasps from Blake. My lips tingled as they slid across his skin and I plunged his shaft deeply into my mouth, suddenly desperate for him, trying to drink him in like he was my only source of water in a parched desert. He grasped at my head, his fingers tangling into my hair as he groaned through gritted teeth.

I writhed with longing as I sucked and massaged, enjoying the way he shuddered in my mouth, how he cried out my name.

“Fuck, Georgie, you’re the sexiest thing I have ever seen,” Blake rasped out from a hoarse throat. He withdrew from my mouth, kneeled with me on the floor. He whipped his shirt off over his head and kissed me hard as he pushed his jeans down a bit farther, grabbed a condom from the nearby bedside drawers, then pushed me back on the carpet. There was a growl in his voice and a sharp intensity in his gaze, but when he entered me, it was perfect—slow, sensual, and caring in a way that brought tears to my eyes.

I tempered myself, fighting against the urge to slam Blake into me, to fill myself with him in ramming, passionate desperation. I moved slowly to make every second count, make this night last as long as it could.

Blake seemed to have the same idea, and we washed against each other like a constant tide, each careful thrust matched by a soft and deep kiss. Each movement sent soft pleasure sparkling up from my tailbone to the base of my neck, gentle and warm and slow. I grew drunk on that contentment, letting it roll on and on, never wanting it to stop.

Caught in a haze of desire, we moved from the floor to the bed. I moved on top of him. He shifted behind me. Each change in position came fluidly, prolonging the cloud of passion we floated on.

It was so sweet, making love with Blake like that. There wasn’t the urgency that came with ticking an item off a list, just the pleasure of our bodies becoming one, of both of us trying to make the experience last forever. Every part of it, from the first kiss to the last, to the slow-building climax that took my breath away, and the way Blake then curled around me with one hand wrapped around my hip and his body snuggled into my back, was incredibly touching and tender. It was the perfect night. The perfect final night.

The warmth of sunlight had begun to show through the edges of his closed curtains when we drifted off to sleep, his mouth pressed close to my ear.

“I have another present for you,” he muttered just before he nodded off.

Nothing could have been a bigger gift in my life than he had been. When we said goodbye, I knew I would love this time we had together, forever.