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I wasn’t anticipating his mouth on mine, parting my lips with his eager tongue. My body sagged against him, turning to dough, my tapered moan swallowed by his. He pressed me against the timbered wall, cupping my cheeks between both hands and devouring me. I latched on to the front of his shirt, gripping tightly, tugging him closer as my leg lifted up his thigh. Our faces angled, tasting deeper. Taking everything. Nips, groans, licks. He was intoxicating, and I wasn’t sure why he thought this was a good idea. Reed was leaving. Going back to Illinois, to his life without me. We’d be separated in a day’s time, banished to our homeless homes on opposite ends of the earth.
His mouth lowered to nick my jaw, then settled on my throat, his tongue sheathing a trail of wet heat up to my ear as he nibbled the lobe and whispered my nickname. “Comet.”
He’d only intended for this to be a kiss. What more could it be?
But he should have known better. My thighs spread on instinct, my leg lifting higher, offering an invitation he couldn’t refuse. Temptation.
Our mouths were still locked as he grazed a hand up my inner thigh and pushed my underwear aside beneath my dress. I jolted, gasped, my head falling back against the gazebo planks. “Reed…”
He kissed me again, my mouth falling open as our tongues clumsily and blissfully danced. Two fingers slipped inside me. Caressing, claiming. I held on for dear life, my nails digging into the planks of his chest, my back anchored to the wall as voices floated over to us from the beach. Music played. Waves crested, a soundtrack to our stolen moment.
Reed rubbed my clit with his thumb, two fingers still buried inside. Wetness soaked him, leaking down my ocean-damp thighs.
It didn’t take long. It never took long for me to break, splinter, shatter against his touch. Dizzying white heat blanketed my vision as an orgasm slammed into me, leaving me slumped and heart-heavy against the shelter’s wall. Reed gathered me in his arms as I came down from the high, releasing apologies into my ear.
Apologies.
No celebrations, no fireworks, no beginning to our happily ever after.
Only a goodbye, setting as quickly as the August sun.
I hugged him harder than ever before, tears tracking grief down my cheekbones. The morning glories had slipped from my ear, now splattered at our feet in broken buds.
Mourning.
Glory.
Both bleeding together with despair.
“I love you.” Reed tried in vain to erase my tear stains with his desperate kisses. But they’d carved holes. Left scars. “I love you, Halley,” he gritted out. “I’ll never stop.”
We lowered to a nearby bench, and he scooped me into his lap, cradling me as all the light was sucked from the night sky. That was where we stayed for another hour. Weeping and wishing.
Delaying another painful goodbye.
I saw Reed one last time at the studio before he left town twenty-four hours later and headed back to Illinois. I’d known it was temporary. Every piece of me had known it, except for the most important piece. That piece ached and sobbed, begging for a different outcome.
I’d come a long way over the last two years, and I wanted so badly to say I was okay. That I’d moved on. But, while I could confidently say I’d moved on in so many ways—from my past traumas, my insecurities, my bone-deep fears—the love I held for Reed hadn’t budged. It was a constant presence, anchored inside me. Steadfast and stubborn.
All I could do was wait.
Reed had given me a lifeline.
But I wanted a lifetime.
CHAPTER 37
Hollowness festered in the months after I’d returned home from Charleston. Business went on as usual, the studio hovering at the forefront of my distractions. A friend had roped me into regular weekend boating trips while the weather clung to warmer temperatures, and my brother had made it into town, temporarily occupying my runaway thoughts for a few days with drinks at bars and afternoon golf outings.
I’d recently turned thirty-nine; I guessed that meant I golfed now.
But it didn’t interest me.
Nothing did.
And at the very bottom of my interest list were the come-hither invitations from one of my training clients who was dabbling in jiu-jitsu. I was a session away from encouraging her to find another studio. While life dragged by in shades of dishwater-gray, nothing unsettled me more than the thought of being intimate with another woman.
A woman who wasn’t her.