Page 82 of How to Say I Do
We made love again that night.
I had never made love like that, where each tender movement felt like a vow and every gentle caress carried a promise. We relearned each other, rediscovering soft places and breathless spots, and how to make each other shiver and whimper and gasp. He went on an hour-long journey of my body that ended with my hands in his hair and me shrieking his name, my legs over his shoulders, his fingers clenched tight in the meat of my ass.
He was all thumbs after, his hands shaking too badly to hold the bottle of lube, so I did it instead—opening myself with my own fingers, gazing up at him open-mouthed and panting, watching the outline of him carved in velvet.
And then, when he slid inside me—
There was no way to describe how it felt, or what it meant, to be loved by someone who had seen each and every part of me, all my horrible and selfish places, all my insecurities, all my doubts and anxieties and peevish, petty parts, and yet still wanted me. He loved every part of me, maybe even more so for those ugly places, because how could I be me without all those layers tangled together?
Take a part of me away, and would Wyatt still adore me?
And would I love him as powerfully as I did if it weren’t for each and every part of him, all of it adding up to the man he was today?
I was in freefall, and I had no idea if this was the fall—in love, into Wyatt, into this life, into my future—or if I was crashing, and everything, absolutely everything, was about to shatter.
Don’t fuck this up. Please, please, don’t fuck this up.
CHAPTER22
Noël
Leaving was savagely intolerable.
I was a monster all morning, snapping at my shadow and biting Wyatt’s head off—then apologizing—when he brought me coffee while I pretended to pack. I was sullen and infantile when Wyatt and I walked out to say goodbye to Peanut and Pickle, and I finally broke down in Peanut’s neck, hiding my face in her coat as I curled my fingers into her mane. She nibbled on my shoulder and blew air across my cheek, and Wyatt ran his hand up and down my back, silently saying he knew, and he understood, again, why I was being such an unholy bitch.
He’d been quiet throughout the morning, too, and while I thought, at first, that was in reaction to me—that he was ducking and covering away from the line of my fire—I realized his silence and his closed-in, taut stillness was his own agony rising to the surface. He didn’t want me to go, even acting like I was.
It started to rain an hour before we had to leave. Wyatt and I drifted to the porch, where we watched the raindrops bend the grass and drip-drop down the glossy leaves of the oaks. Beads formed like crystal pinheads in the folds of the roses and buttercups. The ranch smelled wild, like dinosaurs and forgotten dreams.
Wyatt hitched his shoulder against a post and propped his boot on the step. In the washed-out light, he looked like a silhouette, a negative image captured from a photograph. Somewhere far away, thunder rumbled. Nearer to us, rain pitter-pattered against the gravel and the dirt. I stood beside him and held out my hand. He took it and kissed my palm. “I love you,” he said.
We had made love again in the middle of the night, and then again before dawn. I could feel Wyatt so deeply inside of me that the presence of him had been embedded into my atoms. “I love you, too.”
“Don’t forget me when you get to New York.” His voice had dropped an octave and picked up a rumble.
“Never.”
The drive to the airport was Waylon Jennings and windshield wipers, laments of lost loves, and Wyatt’s hand white-knuckled in my own. He parked this time and carried my bag for me, and then waited with me through check-in while his hat dripped rain water onto his shirt because he’d draped his jacket around my shoulders so I’d stay dry.
There were no more ways to delay. I had forty minutes until my departure and still had to get through security. We held hands around the handle of my bag, our thumbs playing with each other, him seemingly trying to memorize my eyes as he blurred into fractals before me.
“I’m going to wear this in New York.” I had my hat, and I was wearing it. It looked ginormous on me, and most of the time, I looked like a child playing dress up, especially with my Prada and my Dior.
“Send me pictures?”
“Of course.” Like we were going to somehow stop texting and calling and snapping photos for each other every hour. “Send me photos of Peanut. And the grapes. I want to know when block 3 ripens, because I think you’re right, it’s going to be the first one in, and you might need to harvest the tempranillo early—”
Wyatt wrapped his arms all the way around me. Our cheeks met, and then his hat brim pushed mine back, tipped my heat right off my head, and then we kissed, right there, right in the middle of the airport.
“Sorry. Here you—” A businessman passing by scooped up my hat from the floor and held it out. Wyatt took it as I pressed my face to his shoulder. Thirty-five minutes until my flight.
“When you come to New York, I’ll take you to all the best spots. The finest seafood in the world will be yours.” I kept going on and on about Broadway and Central Park and a Thai place near Murray Hill I’d found that was incredible and that he’d love, and how I’d show him the High Line and a dozen rooftop bars, and the horses in Central Park. As usual, I started rambling, but Wyatt looked at me with that same adoring expression he always did.
He kissed the tip of my nose as my babble slowed. I couldn’t scour any more nonsense to shove off the inevitable. It was time. I had to leave. I had to get on that plane and fly away.
There was an unmistakable frisson between us. Goodbyes had never been our strongest moments.
He let go of my bag and tipped his hat. “Let me know when you land?”
