Page 78 of Hold on Tight

“We’ll be under the blanket. I want to be inside you.”

She obeyed, shucking her pants, swinging her leg back over him. He’d unbuttoned and unzipped, and he extracted a condom from a pocket and did something swift and efficient under the blanket, between their bodies.

It was absurd. Driftwood splintery under them, the socket of his artificial leg rubbing uncomfortably against her thigh, a reminder each and every time he thrust up into her. His jeans in the way, getting sticky and damp as she got wetter and wetter around him, as he pushed up unevenly and without any smoothness into her. It shouldn’t have been sexy at all. It should have been all the myths of sex on the beach busted wide open—sand and saltwater in tender places, the realization that you don’t like this near-stranger enough to be letting him screw you in an almost public place.

Instead it was something else. The firelight slipping and sliding into her vision as her eyelids drooped closed, as they opened again in surprise at something unexpected he’d touched, some spot he’d awoken when she didn’t even know it was there. The orange and yellow flames a strange and perfect alchemy with her emotions, stirring them up, heating them up. Making it so the stray bits and pieces of things weren’t obstacles, they were amplifiers. The friction, the not-quite-all-the-way, uneven thrust of him,him, because no one else fucked like that, the wool blanket getting in the way, his hands moving unexpectedly, reaching to push a cold, hard button out of the way—“No,” she said. “Leave it there, I can feel it against my clit”—and he groaned, and bit her neck, so hard she knew he’d leave a mark she’d have to explain to her son and her new family, but she didn’t give a crap, because who knew that denim scraping against the damp crack of your ass could feel so good. She couldn’t move in all the ways at once that she needed to feel everything he was offering her—the hard grip of his arms around her, keeping her balanced so there was this crazy pressure in all the right places she never could have achieved if they’d planned the most perfect sex in bed ever; the sound of his breath, harsh and splintered with growls and groans, so close it hurt her ear. He was holding her too tight, and she was too hot, sweating, sweating in the wool blanket and the heat they made, the heat from the fire, and her orgasm, when it came, came from nowhere, boiled up out of the mess and the chaos, all disordered and pulled together out of threads of need into this one big thorough letting go, and she gasped his name and felt him surge up into her, rigid under her, as surprised as she was, and saying her name in a broken, hungry way that hurt her chest.

I love you.

It beat in her ears and her head like a drum, demanding. It wanted to be freed. It wanted to be spoken out loud like a chant.

Loveyouloveyouloveyouloveyouloveyou.

What would happen if she said it?

What if, for him, it wasn’t like that? What if it was uncomfortable buttons sticking into his squishy parts and too much damp and sweat and clothes and blankets and his artificial leg getting between him and some smooth, easy version of the world? What if the words beating in his head wereWow, that hurt?

What if by instant family, and Christmas in July, he’d only meant Sam? What if she saidI love youand he didn’t say it back? What if he said,Mira, hey, I’m flattered, but we’ve talked about this?

She might die.

And conversely, what if she saidI love youand hedidsay it back? What if theywerean instant family?

Naive, her father’s voice said in her head.No such thing as an instant family. You want family? You come home to Florida.

No fucking way, she told him.

What if they went home and Jake moved in and set up shop and started taking care of them, the way she craved and dreaded?

Self-indulgent.

She’d have moved all the way across the country—

Impetuous.

—and proved exactly nothing about her ability to survive the world on her own.

Flaky. Foolish.

If she saidI love you, and Jake said it back, if those words rearranged her world so that she was no longer in charge of it, then her father would have been proved right about her.

No fucking way.

At least her father’s words had drowned out the chant in her head. It had gone silent, the insistent words, the throbbing emotion, underground again.

The edge of his jeans button was painful against her now oversensitive clit. The damp clothes under her felt awful and sordid. And that was a relief.

It felt safer this way.

He made a rough sound in his throat. “How?”

That seemed to be the only word he could speak. He tried it again a few more times, and then finally managed, “How was that so hot?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered back.

His heart was thudding away, a thousand miles per hour. An artifact of the sex, which had stolen his breath and his thoughts, which had made him come harder than he’d ever come in his life, which had squeezed to the surface every emotion he’d thought he’d be able to hold at bay this time.

But he couldn’t, could he? He’d never been able to.

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