Page 110 of Only in Your Dreams

Fucking. Bliss.

When I manage to make sense of the world around me again, I sink to the floor and pull her with me so that she’s cradled in my lap. Melody wipes at her mouth, her chin, and when I move to wipe off a smudge of my cum on her lip, she guides my finger into her mouth to finish it off.

Jesus fucking Christ. If this is what it’s like, if I can barely stay composed over a hot sixty-nine, there’s no damn way I’ll ever manage to survive fucking her. No way.

“Kiss me,” I mumble when I regain my words. Her eyelids are heavy, but Mel sinks her fingers into my hair anyway. “And make it a good one. Your brother will murder me in the morning.”

Chapter 27

Melody

Something vibrates near my hip, lifting me out of a deep sleep.

The sheets I’m lying on feel familiar, but the bed is different. The way the sun streams in through the curtains feels different, and it takes lifting my head off the pillow to remember we slept at Parker’s last night.

I’m plastered against Zac, my forehead moving with the depth of his breaths. Without shifting too abruptly, I pat behind me for my vibrating phone. And my entire body goes cold the moment I catch sight of the screen.

CONNOR BRIDGES

Apparently, in the debate between fight and flight, I freeze.

Connor’s calling me. Why is he calling me?

I stare at my phone, shocked into stillness. My hand shakes like he can see me through the screen. Like he knows I’m here in bed with another man.

My thumb hovers over the screen. What would I say to him if I picked up the call?

Part of me wants to tell him I finally figured out his game. How he’d been manipulating me over the years, so he’d know he could never do it again. I crave that kind of closure.

But I move my thumb. Silence the call, and the screen goes dark.

Zac mumbles sleepily beside me, arches his back, and I watch, momentarily distracted, as he wakes up. It’s the first time since camp I haven’t woken up to him already out of bed and showered. His hair is disheveled over his pillow, eyes bleary as they take in my bedroom, and when he finds me, he gives me a lazy, sleepy smile.

“Hey, Clo,” he mumbles, pushing the hair off my face. With a blink, his face goes serious. “What’s wrong?”

The phone vibrates in my hand. “Connor… he just called me. He left a voicemail.”

Another buzz, this time a text. I don’t know whether I have the stomach to hear Connor’s voice. But curiosity gets the better of me and I swipe at the screen, pulling up the message.

CONNOR:Melly, I know you’ll have heard this on the voicemail, but I wanted to say it here too: I’ve been thinking a lot about us, and I miss you. Let’s work this out. Give me a call when you see this.

What thefuck?

I hold out my phone to Zac, who props himself up on an elbow to have a proper look. “Are you alright?”

“I don’t really know. I guess I was expecting to hear from him at some point in the back of my mind.” I flop onto my back, grimacing at the ceiling. “He spent six years fucking with my head. It felt too good to be true that he’d break it off and leave it to that. Like I got away too easily, you know?”

Zac lies back down, turning onto his side to get a good look at me. “Do you want to talk to him?”

“I don’t want to hear a single word from him,” I say definitively. “I should have picked up the call, right? I should be able to tell him off. For everything he’d been doing, for how he broke up with me and for trying to pull this,I miss youcrap now.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because he’s so good at it. Slipping into the soft teddy bear of a guy he could be. Singing my praises. Making me feel like I was the most important person in the world, and then turning on me on a dime.” My eyes prickle with frustrated tears. “A couple months out of this relationship, and I still lose my cool at the sight of his name on my phone. How pathetic am I?”

Tears spill over the sides of my cheeks, hitting the mattress. Beside me, Zac shuffles closer. Gathers my hair from around me, under me, and moves it safely out of the way before laying his head so close to mine. We’d be nose-to-nose if I turned my face.

I really thought I’d been getting better. Getting my confidence back. I’ve been looking at jobs online, got rid of everything that reminded me of Connor. I feel a lot lighter than I have in a long time. So why the hell is my heart still pumping so furiously?

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