Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
I cut her off with a kiss, my hands clenching fistfuls of hair at the back of her head. My mouth opened over hers, my tongue slashing inside. She fought me at first, pushing against my chest with both hands. But her head slanted and her lips opened and her tongue reached for mine. I could feel the heat radiating off her body. Was it fury or desire?
I pulled my mouth off hers. Our breath mingled, quick and hot. “Do you hate me?” I whispered.
“Fuck you,” she seethed. Then she slapped me. Hard.
I kissed her again, crushing my lips to hers. Her fingers slid into my hair, her nails raking against my scalp. I reached down and hiked up her skirt, slipping my hands up the back of her thighs and shoving down her underwear. “Do you hate me?”
“Fuck you.” Her hands were at my belt. My zipper. My cock.
I lifted her up and set her on the table and she wrapped her legs around me. It felt familiar, fighting with her. Our kiss was a weapon, our mouths seeking to annihilate, consume, destroy.
I slid one finger inside her. Then two. She worked her hand up and down my cock, bit my bottom lip as I circled my thumb over her clit.
In the end it was she who decided, pulling me closer, placing me inside her.
I gave her an inch and stopped. She bit me again.
“You hate me,” I said, wishing she would just admit it. I wanted to hear it.
She reached around and grabbed my ass, pulling me all the way inside her so quickly my knees nearly gave out. Her lips moved against mine. “Fuck. You.”
I lost it all then—any ounce of control I still had left, which wasn’t much. I fucked her like it was a vendetta, like I had vengeance in my blood, like I hated her as much as I loved her.
And I did love her. God help me, I loved her and wanted her and needed her. She was mine, she was mine—that’s what I needed to prove. Her body answered to mine, her heart answered to mine, her soul answered to mine. We were together. We were one. We were inextricable.
We came together with the force of a nuclear blast. In fact, the only word I could think of as everything around us shattered was destroyed.
I was miserable without her. In pieces.
But what could I do?
When it was over, and reality sank in, I didn’t know what to say. I pulled out of her and she slid off the table, tugging her skirt down as I zipped up my pants. She wouldn’t look at me.
“Emme,” I began.
She looked at me sharply. “Don’t you dare apologize.”
“I wasn’t going to. I’m not sorry.”
“Neither am I.”
We glared at each other in the dark.
“I fucking miss you,” I said. “I miss you so much.”
She lifted her chin. “Good. Asshole.”
“God, Emme. I know I can’t make you happy. What am I supposed to do?”
“You don’t know anything,” she said. Then she sniffed, and a sob escaped her.
I took her head in my hands and rested my forehead against hers. We stayed that way for a moment, my heart desperately trying to break free from its cage, her entire body trembling, until she pushed me away.
“I took the job at the winery.” Another weapon hurled at me.
My heart plummeted. “You did?”
“Yes. I’ll get your key.” She turned around and opened the drawer in the console table.
“Never mind,” I told her, pulling open her apartment door. “I’m not locked out.”
I had Paisley that weekend and wanted to knock on Emme’s door a thousand times. To invite her over, to ask her to go for a walk, to tell her how much I missed her, how sorry I was. I loved having Paisley back with me, but it was so much better when I could share the experience with someone—the adorable moments, like when she started babbling at me and I swear she said Dada, and the less adorable moments, like when she shit herself so violently, it went up her back.
Up her back.
(I feel like there are reasons no one tells young people these things before they become parents. The world’s population would probably decline dramatically.)
But I never had the nerve to reach out to Emme, and I took Paisley back again on Sunday as lonely as I’d ever been. The following week, my real estate agent took me to see four different houses, and I was dying to tell Emme about all of them. In fact, I wished she’d been with me every time, because I felt like she’d think of things I wouldn’t, questions to ask and things to verify that were important for a family.
A family. Something I never thought I’d have. Or even want.
But as I walked through these houses, I kept picturing it—me and Paisley and Emme, always Emme. Planting flowers with Paisley as I mowed the lawn. Cooking with me in the kitchen. Sharing a bed with me.