Page 47 of Promise Me This

He still smells of rain and soap and something else distinctly him, something so fresh and breathtaking that I’ve never smelled anything like it since. I bury my nose into his neck, trying desperately to imprint it on my brain. I didn’t know the last time I saw him would be the last time. As far as I knew, the year would pass and I’d be back here with him, and we’d have a whole lifetime together for me to inhale his scent. But now I have the privilege of knowing any moment could be the last, and so I cling to the details with all I have in me.

“I was wrong earlier,” he says, his breath rustling my hair.

Reluctantly I pull back. Just far enough to see his face, not enough to let him go. He cradles my jaw with one strong hand and traces his thumb over the swell of my cheek.

“The way we felt about each other back then… It was intense. That kind of feeling can’t last. It’d burn you alive.” He says it like he’s trying to convince one of us it’s true, though I can’t guess which. His gaze, which had fallen to my lips, returns to mine. “But it was real, wasn’t it? We were young and it was fleeting, but it was real.”

I want to pull his glasses away, to leave no barriers between us. But more than anything, I want him to see me clearly. I lay my hand over the top of his, feeling the ridges of his knuckles and the warmth of his skin. My next words come out in a rush.

“Still is.”

Suddenly our mouths are a breath apart and I have to release his hand because it moves to lace in the hair at the base of my neck. I arch my back, pressing my body flush against him. My nipples harden against the plane of his chest. Warmth pools in my belly when I feel the length of him straining against my inner thigh.

He tugs at the fistful of hair, tilting my head back and exposing my throat. His lips trace the line of my jaw, down the sensitive skin of my neck. It is there that he places his first kiss, in the curve where neck becomes shoulder, before he trails back up to my ear. I’m panting, clinging to his biceps, and still he takes painstaking care to move slower than I ever thought time could pass.

His teeth scrape against my earlobe, his hot breath falling in tendrils across my skin. Just when I think I will have to beg, he relents, pulling back so we’re face-to-face.

“I want nothing more than to kiss you right now.” I nod, desperate, but he presses on. “I want to pick you up off this counter and carry you to my room. I want to make love to you as the man I am now, not the boy I was before.

“But if we’re going to do this, Leo, we’ve got to take it slow. You’ve got to be absolutely certain that this is what you want.” He swallows hard, and I do, too. “Loving you isn’t something I can survive a second time.”

I nod because I can’t speak, and he folds me into his embrace completely. It’s the only thing in that moment that keeps me from coming undone.

The first thing I smell when I step into the bed-and-breakfast is the sweet aroma of fresh crepes. It’s nearly eleven at night, so I wonder for a moment if my senses are deceiving me. When I round the corner into the kitchen, though, I find Siobhan plating up one of the thin pancakes next to a spread of toppings she’s laid out for the two guests standing by the door to the garden, embracing haphazardly.

“That’s not who I sent to give you a lift,” Siobhan says.

I glance over my shoulder at Callum, who is trying desperately to contain his grin as he ignores her and asks, “Why are you cooking at this hour?”

Siobhan aims her spatula at the couple in the corner. “Meet Chase and Eden. They’re taking a belated honeymoon around our beautiful country and stopped in for the night. Glad you came back, Leona, as I was just about to give up your room!”

I roll my eyes at her as I reach out to shake their hands.

“Nice to meet you both,” I say, sounding surprisingly chipper even to myself.

“Nice to meet you,” the woman, Eden, says. She has dark auburn hair that falls in a straight curtain down to her collarbone and eyes even greener than Callum’s, which I didn’t realize was possible. Her skin is littered with freckles from a lot of time spent in the sun. She leans into Chase’s side, a man with dark hair and a half-sleeve tattoo, and affectionately pinches his waist. “This is my husband, Chase.” She preens as she says the word so sweetly it comes out honey-coated.

Chase’s chest puffs out with pride. He offers us a lazy grin. “Are you guests here, too?”

I smile. Wow, I’m doing that a lot tonight. “No, I actually work here, for Siobhan. I sleep up in the attic.”

“And the starstruck one back there is my son,” Siobhan adds gruffly.

Callum steps up to shake their hands. His cheeks are flushed red when he turns to his mother. “Do you cook in the middle of the night for all your guests?”

Siobhan’s gaze cuts to Eden, who exchanges a glance with her husband before he nods softly. Immediately, in a gesture I’d recognize in a heartbeat, her hands fall to her stomach.

She smiles at him as she speaks. “We’re actually pregnant,” she says, her voice taking on a dreamlike quality. “Not too far along, but the morning sickness has set in. Though why they call it morning sickness is beyond me.” A heavy sigh escapes her lips as she turns to face me. “I’m sick all. The. Time.”

Callum snorts. “I remember that with my ex.” He waves a hand to excuse himself. “Sorry, I know it must be miserable. But congratulations on the baby.”

His voice becomes warm velvet as he offers his congratulations. I can see in the way his features soften, in the far-off look in his eyes, that just the mention of a baby brings him back to a wonderful place.

I’m so jealous in that moment I can barely breathe.

“Thank you,” the couple responds in unison before Eden adds, “Anyway, I’m still figuring out how to navigate the nausea.”

“And I told her anything bready like crepes always helped me,” Siobhan says.

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