The One That Got Away (29 page)

My bravado evaporates. “Please don't be mean to me. You've been punishing me for two weeks, and I get it, I know how much I screwed up. And I'm so sorry. We don't have to talk about things if you're not ready, I just…I really want to see you.”

There's a long, portentous silence. “Well, I'm awake now.”

Not exactly a warm welcome, but not a total shutdown, either. Not giving either of us time to think the better of it, I tell him I'll be over in twenty minutes. Then I realize I am stale and unappealing after traveling all day—will he think I'm trying to hit on him if I show up freshly showered? I decide it's worth the risk. And besides, let's be honest—I
am
trying to hit on him.

Before I leave, I stop at the laundry room to give Newman enough food to get him through till morning. I'm definitely jinxing myself, 'cause I know I'm only going to be coming back in as much time as it takes to drive to Travis Heights, get told to go fuck myself, and drive right back home again—but just in case. Wouldn't want him to get hungry.

The city is Sunday-night quiet as I make the drive; the only signs of life are the holiday lights blinking fitfully in people's yards. I smile. Even after eight years in Austin, I'm still taken aback by the sight of Santas and reindeer cheek by jowl with live oaks and agave plants. Except, for once in their lives, the desert plants are dusted with a light, tentative coating of snow. Climatic indigestion.

When I turn onto Eamon's street, my nerves return in force. If he wanted to see me, he would have let me know; instead I have invited myself over in the middle of the night for what is bound to be an unspeakably humiliating rejection.

I park in his driveway, and as I watch the blue light of the TV flickering through his front window, I remember the last time I was here. Arriving in the middle of the night after thirteen straight hours of traveling because I just needed to be with him that
badly
. Then that stupid red car, and all of the ways it threatened me.

And then I think of the photograph I found in my stepfather's memory box, in a bedroom that used to be mine, in a house that doesn't belong to me anymore.

I step onto the porch, suck in a deep breath, and knock.

I clench my teeth to keep from launching myself at him the moment he opens the door. He's rubbing his injured thigh tiredly, and his face is more shuttered than I have ever seen it. The only possible positive sign is that his hair is wet, as if he, too, has just gotten out of the shower. And his track pants are creased across the knees, as if they were recently unfolded. He stares at me expectantly for a moment till I give him a tentative smile.

“Can I come in?”

Unsmiling, he moves aside. He shuts the door behind me, then faces me, still rubbing his leg.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “You look like you're hurting.”

“The damp weather makes my injuries ache. It's not a big deal.”

I think of all the bones that cracked in his body when that truck hit him and shudder. “Is there anything I can do?” I ask, knowing that there isn't, hating that there isn't.

“No,” he says flatly. “But thanks.”

I play with the zipper on my sweatshirt, flicking it against my fingernail. I had started to hope that he might be thawing out a little bit, since he hadn't actually forbidden me to come over, but clearly I was wrong. I don't even have to ask him if he'd be willing
to give me another chance—his feelings couldn't be any more clear. I have to get out of here before I embarrass myself any further.

“I'm sorry, I guess this was a mistake,” I say. “I just couldn't stand that we hadn't spoken in so long. But, um, I'll go. I'm so sorry for lying to you. For everything. I hope you already know that I'll see the rest of your project through with professionalism.” Aching and unbearably hollow, I turn and fumble with the door lock. Clumsily, I turn the latch to unlock it but only succeed in locking myself in.

He heaves a long sigh as if he's letting go of something. “Don't go,” he says softly.

I hesitate, unsure I've understood correctly. “What?”

“Come here.” And as I'm still standing there stupidly, trying to figure out exactly what he means by that, because he couldn't possibly mean what the actual words mean, he steps forward and encloses me in his arms.

It is like I've been welcomed into my own personal Promised Land. I fit perfectly. He rubs his cheek against the top of my head and massages the nape of my neck with gentle fingers. I inhale his familiar bleached-laundry smell and feel satisfaction and relief seep through my body. The slow, steady thump of his heart is as soothing as rain.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” I ask after a while, voice muffled against his chest. “I've missed you so badly. I just want to lie next to you and sleep.”

His only answer is to press a kiss to my head, and I suddenly realize how ridiculous I must sound. “God help me,” I groan, “what am I going to say next? ‘Just the tip, just to see how it feels'?”

He sputters with laughter and pulls back to look at me. On his face is a dizzying mix of affection, humor, resignation, and
hope. “Okay. Come on.” He takes my hand and leads me back to his bedroom.

He slides unceremoniously under the covers of his big white bed and holds them up for me to join him. He nods at the bedside lamp. “Hit that light, will you?”

The last thing I want to do is darken the room so I can't see him anymore, but I reluctantly comply. I
did
tell him all I wanted to do was sleep. Not wanting to push my luck any further than I already have, I stretch out on my side facing him and whisper good night.

“Come on, Mahler,” comes his voice through the dark. “You can do better than that.”

My eyes ping open. “Better than what?”

“Come over here and turn over.”

I obey, and seconds later I am pulled tight against him from head to heels. “That's better,” he murmurs, and I silently nod, too bliss-loaded to speak. I rest my forearm over the one locked around my middle, and thread my fingers through his. I feel him tuck my hair out of the way so it won't tickle his face. I smile.

Several minutes pass as I wait to fall asleep. When I headed over here tonight, I hadn't thought beyond satisfying my need to be near him, but now, lying here with him with so much still unsettled, the last thing I feel is relaxed. Also, whatever the state of his wary mind, Eamon's body is unequivocal about the direction in which it would like to proceed, which has my blood racing through me like white water. It is the understatement of the century when, after fifteen minutes of reverberating with his every heartbeat, I tell him, “I can't sleep.”

“Me neither. You might already be aware of that,” he adds, humor in his voice. He pauses, then continues. “I have the strong sense that there is some sort of conversation we should be having.”

“Yes.”

He waits for a moment for me to speak. “Are you going to elaborate?”

“Actually, I don't really feel much like having the conversation right at this exact moment. Tomorrow definitely, just not…now.”

Another pause, as he digests this. “Okay. Well, what
do
you want to do?”

“I want to turn on the light.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“So I can see you.”

Obligingly, he lifts his arm from my waist so I can reach forward to his bedside lamp. This accomplished, I turn back to face him.

He is propped up on one elbow, squinting against the soft yellow light. I study him as if I've never seen him before, taking in all the planes and angles of his face, that bump I love at the bridge of his nose, the curve of the gentle smile that's tugging at his mouth. He's overdue for a haircut, and the hair behind his ears is threatening to curl. Of all the moods I've seen him in, all the sides of him I've come to know, I love him most like this: soft, sleepy, rumpled. I know I must be gazing at him with the syrupy adoration of a Labrador retriever, but I can't help it; I am brimming over with love.

He waits patiently. “Is there anything else you'd like to do?” he asks after a long minute.

I nod. “I'd like to take this off,” I whisper, tugging at the hem of his T-shirt.

His lips part. “That would be fine.”

Without breaking eye contact, I lean toward him, hook my thumbs under the shirt, and skim it up and off. He has a beautiful
body—lean, with impossibly broad shoulders tapering to a flat, narrow waist; every muscle is sleekly defined under his light golden skin. When he was twenty-one, still outgrowing the last of his boyishness, he was already the finest thing I'd ever seen; now, he is perfection. But what I love most is that he looks like this because of who he is, because that body houses power that transmutes into speed. Form following function, the purest maxim of design.

“God damn,” I whisper.

He gives me a tiny, pleased, sweetly self-conscious smile, and I fall a little deeper.

A ridged scar stretches from just below his sternum to a couple inches above his belly button. I trace it with my fingertips, and his stomach muscles jump. “What was this?”

“From the crash. Internal bleeding. Donate blood, Sarina.”

I close my eyes and breathe in and out, banishing the what-if before it materializes. He's here, warm in my hands. I drag my hands up and outward across his chest, thumbs grazing his collarbones, then fill my palms with the rounds of his shoulders. “What happened to the Longhorn tattoo?”

“Reconsidered the location,” he breathes. “Let me know if you find a good spot for it.”

“That reminds me.” I glide my hands down his arms, then turn his right hand palm up. The act of setting my mouth to his tattooed wrist feels shatteringly intimate, and the expression on his face when I raise my head tells me he feels it too.

“You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that.”

His smile almost raises blisters on my skin. “Let me be clear right now that you have carte blanche with my entire body.”

“Yeah?”

He nods, one eyebrow raised invitingly.

“Hmmmmm.” I drum my fingers on my lips, as if considering the possibilities. “So much real estate, so little—”

“Also,” he interrupts, “you have carte blanche with my schedule, for the next”—he peeks at the clock—“ten and a half hours. Though I could probably reschedule that conference call,” he adds, grinning.

“Well in that case, I think mostly, right now…” I brace my hands on his forearms and lean toward him slowly, stopping just shy of his lips.

“Don't tease,” he chides me softly.

“I'm not teasing. I just love to look at you,” I say.

“You can look at me later. I was more interested in what you were about to do.”

“Oh, you mean kiss you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Kiss me!” Finally losing patience, he grabs my rear and pulls, so that I pitch forward on top of him with a shriek; and then our mouths collide and we are kissing so hungrily that my whole world shrinks to just his face, his hands, his lips. It's like nothing will ever matter again except Eamon. I'm trembling with need, but also with nerves, so before I chicken out I pull off my tank top and throw it aside. The pressure of his hands on my hips makes me pause, and he gazes up at me with serious brown eyes.

“Promise me you're not going to change your mind this time,” he says quietly. There is more than a trace of remembered hurt in his voice.

“I promise,” I whisper hoarsely, feeling so many things at once that I don't even know which one to say. “I—”

“It's okay,” he says softly. “Later.”

I want desperately to explain to him, to apologize, but a second later, he rolls us to reverse our positions, and my thoughts scatter. After that it's just a series of fleeting impressions: the silhouette of my pale hands against his olive skin; his voice, laughingly whispering “Easy there,” when my nails sink into his back;
his mouth, hot and urgent, on my throat. The groan that tears out of him when he buries himself inside me. As he begins to move, eyes locked fiercely on mine, joy blazes through me, searing away the last of my fear, leaving only regret that I wasted so much time denying this. It's beyond anything I've ever felt before; he is everywhere at once, inside me, all around me, filling me up so that the only things I'm conscious of are his taste, his touch, his voice. The orgasm that shudders through me is so intense I'm certain the heat has actually fused our bodies together, like steel under a welder's torch.

Exhausted, he drops his head on my shoulder. I can't speak, just tighten my arms around him and press a kiss to the damp hair at his temple. After a while, I feel him move inside me again and the joy wells up, and, just like that, I know that I have to tell him.

“Eamon, the conversation we need to have…”

“It can wait,” he mumbles into my neck.

“No,” I say. I feel like a skydiver standing at the open hatch of an airplane, miles above the earth's surface. Leaning out into the roaring wind, fingers clinging to the edge. “I have to tell you.”

He raises his head. “Tell me what?” The naked fear in his voice humbles me.

With a deep breath, I step out into thin air. “That I love you,” I say simply. “This whole time, I was so afraid of getting hurt that it didn't occur to me that I could be hurting
you
, and I'm so sorry for that. But I'm not going to push you away anymore, I promise you.”

He releases a long sigh and fits his hands around my jaw, kissing me with aching tenderness. “Believe me, I wouldn't let you.”

We make love again and again, ravenously, not stopping even when bleak winter light begins to seep through the curtains. I lose
track of time. Even when we are just lying together, talking, or dozing, we are tangled around each other, needing as much contact as possible.

I am half-asleep, face resting in the sweet crux of his neck and shoulder, when I feel his thumb begin doing something bewitching to my breast, and the hunger starts to rise through me yet again. A few lush kisses, and I press closer. Suddenly, he pulls away with a groan, and flops next to me on his back. His shoulders are shaking with laughter.

I am completely confused. “What?”

“Oh, Jesus,” he moans, forearm over his eyes. “I want to, but I…I honestly don't think I can. I think my dick would fall off if I tried.”

I bury my face in his shoulder and snort with laughter, which just makes both of us laugh harder.

“Don't they give out Purple Hearts for that?” I giggle. “Wounded in the line of booty?”

He laughs so hard that I bounce up and down with his body. “Oh god, I love you,” he says weakly, wiping his eyes.

Joy is an earthquake inside me, until I realize he has said it in the way you might say it to anyone in a moment of particular fondness. The way I said it to Danny, when he uttered a particularly stinging assessment of my poorly endowed, cheating ex-boyfriend. Or to Nicole, when she told off our chauvinist goat of an engineering professor. I smother my disappointment and hang on to my smile.

But Eamon's face sobers a little. “I mean, I
love
you love you,” he says, rubbing his thumb across my lower lip. He smiles. “Feels good to tell you.”

Earthquake.

I trace my fingertips across his cheekbone, scarcely able to comprehend how I can possibly be this lucky. He turns his face and presses a kiss to my palm.

“I missed you so much these last couple weeks,” he continues. “I don't know what I was trying to prove.”

“You had every right to be upset with me.”

He shakes his head. “I overdid it. Sometimes I overdo things, Ree. You're not Hannah, and it wasn't fair of me to lay all that on you. Next time I start acting like an asshole, just…tell me. Danny said you went to New Orleans while I was sulking,” he adds. “What were you doing there?”

Oho! So he
did
ask about me! Even though it's in the past now, I'm still pleased. “I decided to go and find Balm their New Orleans site, and give them a preliminary concept for it. They're not happy with the architect they hired, so I figured I'd remind them who they should have chosen in the first place.”