Page 76 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

“Adam…” Our hot breaths mingle, and I feel his every shallow inhalation like it’s my own.

“Do you want this?” His voice is hushed.

I do. Every molecule in my body has been pulling me toward him since we met. It doesn’t matter if I was with Sam or when I was with Sam, how it ended or when, because this—right here, this moment—feels inevitable.

Seconds pass, but he doesn’t move. My chest rises and falls, and I feel my last bits of self-control leave me with each exhale. “Yes. I want this. You. So badly.”

When we pass the threshold of my studio, the place has never looked more like a room with a bed—the overhead light a spotlight for the single feature in the space below.

But then he hooks his hand into my coat pocket, expertly spinning me around and pressing me against my front door with his body. It isn’t even fully closed before he’s kissing me against it, but I hear it click under our weight.

With the door against my back, we remove our boots, scarves, coats, and other winter bits, trying our best not to fully break contact. His lips move down my jaw, onto the hollow of my throat. I smile into his hair at the feel of him against me.

His fingers tug at my sweater, and I gasp when he brushes my bare skin. He pulls it over my head so I’m in my entryway with nothing but a lavender lace bralette. When he starts to toss my top on the floor next to our boots, I risk breaking the moment to grab it.

“I like this sweater, and it’s kind of wet over—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He speaks into my mouth. “I wasn’t thinking. I can’t think.”

“We should make it to the bedroom at least.”

“Isn’t this all the bedroom?” he teases, and I rebuke him with a bite to his lip, pulling him toward the bed.

Adam grabs me by the hips, and I pull myself on top of him. Everything about this kiss is different. His mouth is slow, languid, sensual. There’s no desperation. No fear. Just us. Bodies alone in the dark.

My world has shrunken down to the space between us. Need flows into my fingertips. I need to feel the roughness of his beard beneath them, comb my hands through his hair and grab the back of his neck.

His calloused hand greedily scrapes up my stomach before he pauses. “Will this feel good?”

I look down to see his thumb is grazing the bottom of my breast. “I can’t…I don’t feel that,” I answer, referring to the featherlight touch of his thumb.

A knee-jerk apology plays at the back of my throat, but in the face of his worshipful expression and the tender way his hand moves to cradle my head, nothing comes out. I’m just me—literal scars and all—and he’s looking at me like I’m enough. Like I’m everything.

“I can sometimes feel the pressure of, uh—”

I consider how to say it—how to explain it—as he waits patiently while kissing my neck, like he can’t bear the momentary loss of contact. I laugh into the pillow beneath him, and he smiles into my clavicle.

I feel my fear and apprehension fall away with the thin top sheet. “I want you to touch me the way you want to touch me. It feels sexy to be wanted by you, even if I can’t feel every part of it. Is that okay?”

“Yes. Very.” He yanks off the last bits of fabric between us, and there’s not a moment of hesitation in his eyes, his hands, his mouth. There’s nothing between us. No one between us. Just Adam and me. Nothing has ever felt so much like mine.

20

The Morning After

I wake up facing the wrong side of my room. I blink open my eyes as the sun assaults me through the gauzy cream-colored curtains. Adam’s arm is draped over my stomach. He stirs and pulls me into him, cocooning me under his larger frame. When he nuzzles himself into my hair, I can’t help but let out a giggle, luxuriating in the feeling of being safe and warm and held against him like this.

“Morning.” It’s the same voice, but in my hair—in my bed—it’s low, gruff, and tinged with affection.

“Morning.” I try to flip over, so we’re eye to eye, but he playfully keeps me nestled against him.

“No. Too comfy. Don’t ruin it,” Adam faux whines with an audible smile in his voice.

“I want to look at you. I need to see your bedhead for blackmail material.”

“Then I’ll see your bedhead for counter-blackmail material.”

“On second thought…” I move to make a break toward the bathroom, but he pulls me back and flips me around. “Just know that I have curly hair and can’t wake up with it looking cute. It’s impossible.” I take in his sleepy face. It’s sweet and guileless with the tiniest bit of awe, like he wasn’t sure I was real until now.

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