In This Moment(74)

I watch him think about this. “And what about Brian?”

“What about Brian?”

His golden hair tumbles low over his forehead as he rolls his shoulders forward and shakes his head. “It’s obvious that something was going on there.”

“Are you being serious, Cole? Do you really want to play the ex game with me?” I choke on a laugh. “Because I assure that I’ll win. Should I describe in detail all of the nasty looks that I get just for standing next to you? Or the smug smiles from the random girls that you’ve screwed? Do you know how that burns? How it twists my guts and makes me feel like I’m deluding myself to think I’ll be enough for you? Every day, I wonder when you’ll wake up and get sick of me.”

“I’m not…” He shakes his head. “You don’t understand. Those girls? They meant nothing. I barely remember their names.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? All that does is make me think that one day you’ll forget my name.” I force myself to keep going against the wave of emotion trying to pull me under. “I want to trust you but I’m scared.”

He cranes his neck so that his gaze is locked onto mine. “I’m scared too.” A long pause. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and soft and I can tell that the earlier anger is gone. “Sometimes I feel like I’m just going to wake up one morning and you won’t be in bed with me. You’ll be gone for good.”

“Why would you think that?” I croak.

He lowers his face and rubs his stubbly cheeks between his hands.

Dropping to my knees and placing the water bottle on the edge of the bed, I rake my fingers through his hair and bend his face to mine. The skin of his scalp is smooth and cool beneath my nails. Butterfly wings beat in my chest, sending a ripple of vibrations through my limbs. “Cole, why would you think that?”

His intense green eyes squeeze me. He spreads his hands open in a gesture of frustration. “Because you won’t tell me anything. Because you keep so much inside of you that I’m not sure that I’m imagining that what we have is real or if it’s all in my head.”

As I slide my hand to the back of his neck, the thrum of my heart goes up my throat and falls down to the bottom of my stomach.

Words crowd behind my lips. I’m afraid to speak. Afraid that once the seal is cracked, everything will come pouring out.

I take his right hand in my left one and turn it over so that his palm is facing up. Slowly, so that he knows that I mean it, I trace the words on his skin that I can’t make myself say. He watches me, eyelids lowered in concentration as he follows the outline of each letter. His knee brushes my shoulder and his breath tickles my sweaty skin and sends a wave of goose bumps over my bare arms.

Three simple words.

This is real.





Cole



I end up taking her to the beach after all. It’s dark, so instead of trudging our stuff down to the sand, I park on the side of the road in an empty lot that hugs the coast. I go first and Aimee follows me around to the back of the truck. I shift the cooler out the way and we each take one side of the blanket and lay it out under the watchful night sky.

Scooting until my back is against the cab, I loop my arm under her waist and pull her to me so that I can feel her heart thumping through her skin. I twist her ponytail out of the way and bend down to kiss that space between her neck and her shoulder.

“Don’t,” she says seriously, jerking her chin back. “I’m gross.”

She’s still in just a sports bra and shorts from her run earlier and she’s tangy and warm like the ocean. Grinning mischievously, I kiss her neck again and this time I run my tongue up her neck to her jaw. She swats at my head but she’s laughing.

“I told you that I’m gross!”

“You’re wrong,” I tell her, laughter lifting my chest. “You’re perfect and I want all of you. Even the sweaty parts.”





Aimee



It’s nice like this—lying with Cole in the back of his truck with the sound of waves licking the shore feather-soft in my ears. The moon is a white fingernail clipping at the top of the dark sky. Splinters of pale starlight push their way through a veil of low ash-colored clouds.

I’m not sure how much to tell him and how much to hold back, but I know that I need to let him inside of me and this is the only way that I know how. I’m sick of trying to hold so many pieces together with just my bare hands.

I suck one cheek into my mouth, suddenly worried that the back of Cole’s truck isn’t big enough to contain all that I have to say. “I always think that one day I’ll wake up and I just won’t remember her anymore.”