Page 93 of Again, In Autumn

I swallow, glancing around at the woods behind us, the side of the house in view. We’ve somehow backtracked from the yard. It’s quiet here. We’re completely alone.

“What do you plan on doing with that?” I point to the pie.

“This?” He holds it high in the air.

“I poisoned that one, you know.”

“Is that so?”

My back meets the trunk of a tree. Startled, I grab the sides of it.

Adam settles in front of me. “You look cold, Vee. I’d offer you my sweatshirt, but it’s been defiled.”

“That’s not the only thing defiled tonight,” I grumble, nodding at the dessert. “You owe me a pie!” Then, I remember. “Two pies!”

“There’s a bakery in town.”

“Not as good as mine, and I want a homemade chocolate pie made with blood, sweat and tears.” My spine leans into the scratchy bark of the tree.

He scoops his hand into the aluminum plate and leans forward. “How do you know yours is better?” Adam covers the right side of my face with chocolate, his hand stopping on my closed lips. He stares at that place. “Other people make great pie.”

My breath becomes choppy. “There’s no pie like mine,” I say.

There’s little room between us. Adam places his left hand on the tree, beside my head. The pie rests, unsecured, on his shaking right palm, and I scoop out some of its contents. I watch his jaw clench under a stubble of hair, flecks of food mixing with his spattering of freckles, his throat bobbing.

I wipe the pie across his cheek, just as he did mine.

“You should taste it,” I whisper. Before he can respond, I inch up my toes and hold the sides of his face with my fingertips, grazing the brush of chocolate with my tongue.

He closes his eyes. Something hits the leaf-covered ground. The pie, I assume.

I pull back, knowing my ears and cheeks and neck must be bright red under mashed potatoes. My hands drop. I search Adam’s face, his lips tight, for a sign of how he feels.

That was stupid of me. Obviously. Up until this morning, he was so angry that he could barely look at my face. Last night he laid bare the gritty details of the grudge he’d held for fourteen years and the disdain he reserved for me. Now I’m licking his face and trying to resist the urge to pull myself closer to his body.

Adam opens his eyes. He glances at the chocolate on my face. He murmurs, “I think I will.”

His right hand lands on the tree beside my waist, my shirt riding up, his forearm pressing into the skin of my hip. He bends and sinks toward me, breathing into my ear, and his tongue caresses my jawbone. He doesn’t stop. He melts further into me, delicately licking the chocolate off my skin, and my left hand drags through his hair.

“Vee,” he mumbles into my neck.

I make a faintly aware sound.

“Tell me to stop.”

My head falls back as his licks and nips cease, but he edges even closer, his lips gliding down my neck, drawing breathy lines over the prickled skin.

Adam cups my jaw with one hand, and I beg myself to realize two things – two things that could stop me from moving forward.

One: this is Adam fucking Kent.

This man stuck his tongue where Leonardo DiCaprio stuck his tongue, he’s featured in magazines I read, and he’s the subject of internet memes.

Two: this is Adam. The boy who wanted to marry me once upon a time. The boy whose heart could have been mine if romance was enough.

“Adam,” I whine, hooking my elbow around his neck, refusing to focus on the facts.

He repeats, “Tell me to stop. Tell me this is too much.” His arm hugs my back, pushing us together, and his mouth pauses at the corner of mine. “Too soon.”

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