Page 73 of The Seven Year Slip

Way Back When

I stepped into myapartment, slipping my flats off by the door. Rain pattered against the windows, soft like tiny fingertips tapping on the glass pane. The two pigeons were huddled in their nest on the AC unit, and I was debating whether or not to take a cold shower to scrub off the evening—and all the pesky feelings still humming in my chest, when someone called—

“Lemon?”

I froze. Then, almost disbelieving, I called back, “Iwan?”

Stumbling over my flats, I hurried into the kitchen. And there he sat at the table, a bottle of bourbon and a glass in front of him. He was still in a dirty white T-shirt from work and loose-fitting black slacks. “Lemon!” he said with a crooked smile. “Hey, it’s nice to see you. What’re you doing around this late?”

“I—I wanted to see you,” I replied, so truthfully my heart ached in my chest. I just didn’t think I could. This man with shaggy auburn hair and pale eyes, who smiled with that crooked and warm smile.

And you never get over me.

I crossed the kitchen, taking his face in my hands as he looked at me, eyes widening in surprise—oh, that wonderful wide-eyed surprise, and I kissed him. Roughly and hungrily, wanting to tattoo the taste of him into the gray matter of my brain. I’d wanted to do this all night. Run my fingers through his auburn hair, hold tight to his curls. Press against him so hard I felt him against me.

He tasted like bourbon, and his five-o’clock shadow was rough against my skin.

“Why so hungry, Lemon?” he asked, coming up to gasp for air, his curiosity a little heartbreaking, as if he suspected that I had ulterior motives. That I couldn’t possibly want to be here kissing him.

“Aren’t you?” I asked, and that seemed to be answer enough for him, because, yes, he was. Yes, I knew he would be. Of course I knew he would be. The way he’d looked at me all night, studied me, as if he wanted to drink me in, as if he thought he never would again—Iknewthat look. It was the look my mom gave my dad. That my aunt gave that far-off memory that sat like a sour candy on her tongue.

I knew that look so fucking well, I recognized it the moment he lifted his head from the table when I walked in, from the moment he called me Lemon with that hopeful disbelief.

He reached up and tangled his fingers into my hair, drawing me into another kiss. Slow and sensual, his hands cradling my face as his mouth pressed against mine, muttering soft affirmations against my lips. His tongue skimmed along my bottom lip, and I leaned into him, the feeling of Pop Rocks in my chest. He smelled sogood, like wildness and soap andhim, that made me hungrier for more.

“You seem to always visit right when I need company,” he murmured.

“Company—or me?”

He leaned back a little, looking up at me with those beautiful stormy eyes—like clouds before autumn’s first snow. “You, I think,” he replied, his voice soft and sure, and it melted the horrid wall I had built up around myself, and I kissed him again, to savor those words on my lips.

His hands were gentle as they cupped my face, slowly drifting downward toward my blouse, undoing the buttons one at a time with those nimble, long fingers of his. As he did, his kisses trailed from my mouth to my neck. I made a noise that sounded more feral animal than sexy as he scraped his teeth across the line of my throat toward my shoulder. He spun us, so I pressed against the table instead, and he lifted me up on it, scooting the bottle of bourbon out of the way. His tongue flicked against the skin at my collarbone, sucking, and then his teeth sank into it.

I felt myself prickle with gooseflesh, and I gasped.

“Too much?” he asked, looking up at me from under his lovely and long eyelashes, his gaze drunk on me.

No, the opposite.

“More,” I begged, feeling heat rise up on my cheeks.

“I love the way you blush,” he murmured, kissing the hills of my breasts as he undid the top buttons of my blouse. “It drives me mad.”

I never considered how I looked when I blushed. “Tell me.”

“It’s a lovely color,” he started, his breath hot against the skin between my breasts, as he laid me back on the table, his knee anchored on the edge, his hands planted on either side of me. “It starts right here”—he planted a kiss just below the center of my collarbones—“and it creeps up”—a kiss at the base of my throat— “and up”—another against the side of my neck—“and up.” Anotheron the edge of my jaw. On my right cheek. “And it drives me crazy when I know I’m the cause.”

I felt my skin flush at the—very true, honestly—assumption, my heart slamming against my rib cage. A slow grin crossed that terribly crooked mouth of his.

“Like now,” he purred, and kissed my blushing cheeks. The way he handled me was so tender, so honest, it was—quite frankly—erotic. I had been romanced before—of course I had, you didn’t travel the world and not fall for a handsome man in Rome or a smart-talking traveler in Australia, a Scotsman with a deep-throated growl, a poet in Spain—but this felt different. Every touch, every brush of his fingertips across my skin, had a weight to it. A reverence.

Like I wasn’t merely some girl to kiss and remember fondly in ten years, but someone to be kissed in ten years.

In twenty.

But, of course, that didn’t happen, thatcouldn’thappen, because I already knew how this ended.

He kissed the furrow between my brows. “What are you thinking, Lemon?”

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