Chapter 18

The ground of the spit wasn’t smooth and sandy but a mix of slippery seaweed, ankle-slaying stones, and pebbles that slipped and slid underfoot. To either side of them, Puget Sound undulated in their peripheral vision, bringing vertigo in waves.

They’d calculated the tide correctly, which meant that it was still going out, and there was enough beach for walking, but not an abundance of it, and what beach existed was canted ever-so-slightly downward to the left.

She’d forgotten how much being out on the spit felt like being at sea in a boat. She felt unmoored, unprotected—but also utterly thrilled by the wind whipping around her, the ocean air moving in her hair—very much as she imagined a traveler setting out on a long ocean voyage must have felt.

Hunter took her hand. The girls had run on ahead, and then stopped to examine the beach detritus, repeating the pattern again and again to keep their distance from the adults. Which was fine with Trina, who squeezed Hunter’s hand tighter and tried to think only of how happy she was in this exact moment in this exact place. If you tucked yourself tight enough into the present, the past and future could go screw.

“So. The infamous first kiss. How did that come about?”

Not the safest terrain, when her own feelings had begun their free fall.

She wanted to ask him what the hell they were doing. What they’d been doing last night, kissing like that, touching like that. What they were doing today, playing at courtship in the face of her departure. What they were doing.

But he didn’t know the answer any better than she did. She knew that. All she could do was tell the story and hope.

“We each, separately, took the girls to the same sleepover party. By that point, we’d had a few charged moments, but we’d agreed nothing was going to happen. For all the aforementioned reasons. You were leaving, you didn’t do love, it would confuse the shit out of the girls if they found out, blah blah blah. I pulled up to drop off Phoebe, and I saw you there with Clara, and I decided not to get out of the car because I didn’t trust myself. I already had enough experience to know that my resolve was nonexistent when it came to you and that no matter how good my logic was, if I got within a couple feet of you, it was dead. But you came over and leaned down and peeked in the car window. I could feel—”

She hesitated and he turned, his eyes quizzical.

“That buzz, you know?”

“This buzz?”

He stopped walking for long enough to bring his face near hers and sure enough, there was the electric thrum that always leapt between them.

When she drew back, she saw that his eyes had darkened and his lower lip softened. Her body softened, too, an echo.

“It was a warm summer night and probably a full moon or something. It was the kind of night when things happen, whether you want them to or not. And I did. I wanted things to happen. I’d been wanting it day and night for days and days, and—”

She felt heat roll through her at the memory.

“So yeah,” she said, recovering the power of speech with some effort. “You leaned down. And all you said was, ‘I’m feeling like grabbing some sushi. Wanna come?’ I knew I should say no. I sort of even tried to say no. But you convinced me it would just be a quick dinner. I knew what was going to happen, I think. We were both just waiting for a chance to do the wrong thing, but I went anyway. Maybe because it was that kind of night. Where everything is more intense. All your senses. Everything feels like sex. The air is charged and the food is foreplay—you watched me eat like you couldn’t take your eyes off my mouth, and I’ve never thought sushi was sexy, but it was that night. I will probably never eat salmon nigiri again in my life without thinking about sex.”

He laughed.

“You paid for me. I tried to refuse, but you insisted. I kind of knew right then that we were going to blow right by our own rules, but I kept lying to myself for a while longer. Which is why it seemed totally reasonable for me to go back to your house for a drink.”

“And…?”

“There might have been some kissing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And it was pretty good.”

“Just pretty good?”

She knew he was going to kiss her before he did it. Deep, his palm strong on the back of her head, till she was having trouble catching her breath. Then he let her go.

“Couldn’t let the other guy get the upper hand?” she teased, because it was either that or fall into his arms and beg him for—for something.

“You just looked so sexy. Talking about it. I could see it all over your face. You get this kind of—dazed look. Your cheeks get pink and your mouth gets soft and your eyes get—sleepy.”

He’d caught her between the reverie of memory and the intensity of the present—his hand had moved from the back of her head to her arm, but it still felt like a strong magnet—and she felt that bone-deep craving move down her gut and between her legs.

“But okay, yeah, maybe I didn’t want the other guy to be your gold standard.”

“The other guy’s toast on the kissing front,” she said. “He was toast last night. Everything else is just icing. Or butter, I guess.”

“Booyah!” he said, and they both laughed. “And then what happened?”

Oh. Right. This part of the story.

No point in sugarcoating it.

“That was when you said it was a mistake and you couldn’t do it again—for all the reasons we’ve talked about. So we called it off for a bit, and for a week or so we avoided each other. Or I avoided you anyway. I did a couple of pickups and drop-offs from the car, we didn’t talk, we didn’t email—and then Phoebe got the stomach flu while she was at your house. Actually, both girls. I couldn’t take her home because she was violently ill, and you offered for the two of us to stay until Phoebe was more stable. And—”

She tripped and he steadied her, an arm snaking around her waist and drawing her close, so it was harder to walk but she didn’t protest because he felt so good. Warm and strong, sturdy and familiar.

“I loved watching you with Clara. I loved that you didn’t avoid her like she was plague-stricken. You held her head when she was sick and you sat by her bed and you brought her sips of ginger ale. And—you must have felt the same, because after the girls were both asleep, you came down to the guest room and—”

“We had sex?”

She snuck a peek at him and saw the slight tilt of his smile grow. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, dude. First you explained to me why you were so gun-shy.”

“Because of Dee.”

“You told me that you’d followed your dick—”

He shot her a look and she grinned. “Your words, not mine. And she’d gotten pregnant, and you had to get married. You said you couldn’t regret Clara. And given Clara, you knew you’d done the right thing. But—”

“But it wasn’t what I would have chosen. I trapped myself.”

“Yeah.”

He held her gaze for a moment, and she saw the same pain there she’d seen when he’d told her the story that night. Regret, and something else. Something she couldn’t quite name.

And just like that other night, he turned away abruptly, closing down her access to what was hurting him.

They walked in silence, the wind brushing damp hair off the back of her neck, making her shiver.

“And then?”

She felt the narrowness of the spit suddenly, the vastness of space and sea on both sides. “You said you never wanted to make that mistake again. Confusing lust and love. And you said—” She hesitated.

“You said your attraction to me was so intense that you didn’t quite trust yourself.”

She finished, and he stopped. He looked at the sky, showing her the long line of his throat, already speckled with stubble, the hollow just above the collar of his T-shirt, where a pulse beat.

He pulled his gaze down to meet hers. Held hers prisoner, her blood thrumming everywhere.

“It still is.”

The world spun around them.

“I lose my breath when you get close to me,” she confessed suddenly. “It’s that intense. Like a hand squeezes my lungs. That’s never happened to me before.”

“Not the first time?” His eyes were bright.

“Not like this. Not like this combination of joy and—” She hesitated. What she was trying to describe was the fierceness and suddenness of her arousal. But the words were unfamiliar, and not meant to be said aloud. “Pull,” she said feebly, but his eyes lit like he knew exactly what she meant. “Like a whole body, every molecule committed, leaning toward feeling.”

Those eyes. So dark, even in the bright sunshine. So intent, so intense, so full of emotion.

She wasn’t sure he’d looked at her quite that way before. It felt new.

“I know that feeling,” he said. “That’s how I feel right now.”

And she lost her breath suddenly.

“Trina?”

“Yeah?”

“What was it like when we finally had sex?”

It was killing her. How she was telling him about the past but it was unfolding right this second, too, her breath coming faster, her face hot with it. He was going to be inside her, tonight. And it was going to light her on fire. She was going to burst into flames and burn up, and there would be only a pile of ashes left.

“We barely made it into the guest room. You pushed me back against the door and kissed me. Then you carried me to the bed. And—it was amazing.”

He leaned in close.

Whispered.

“But not as amazing as it’s going to be tonight.”

She was panting. Actually panting, her chest heaving, her breath rasping in her throat.

He brushed his lips across her cheek to her ear and whispered, “Do you want me to kiss you?”

“Yes.” She had barely enough breath to make the word audible.

“I will. But not now. When you can’t stand it anymore.”