My body stiffens. My brain fires with fear. I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do this. Am I ready to do this?
He breathes calm into my ear. “Shh, it’s okay, Zephyr. You can trust me.”
But I can’t. Not now that this is the moment. My mind swirls with every sex conversation I’ve ever had with Lizzie, every Cosmopolitan article I blushed over. And I don’t feel prepared for what is happening right now. My hips speak instinctively, twisting away from his. I close my legs.
He pulls back, strokes my hair away from my face. “I love you, Zephyr.”
He kisses my forehead. “I want . . .”
He kisses my nose . . . “to feel . . .”
He kisses my lips . . . “all of you.”
My heart catapults.
“Don’t you love me?”
A rasp. “Of course.” I force my body to relax.
“Then be with me, Zephyr Doyle.”
“I’m scared.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Alec kisses me and my pulse quickens. “You know I’d never hurt you, right?”
“I do. Of course.”
Alec moves slowly on top of me and I trace my fingers along the hard ridges of his back. I watch and listen, trying to capture every sound and smell. The way a few defiant leaves rustle on the limbs above us. Alec’s mouth hot and cavernous. The wink of starlight above. The pressure inside me building.
Alec kisses the cove of my neck. I shake off the fear that’s rising in my brain and listen to what my body wants, what my brain trusts. The way my heart beats: Al. Ec. Al. Ec. Al. Ec.
His eyes meet mine. “Are you okay?” His words are whisper soft, a private language.
Am I? It’s hard to know in this cyclone of nerves and fear and love. My tongue answers when my brain can’t. “I am.” I wrap my arms tightly around him, my thighs pulling his hips closer. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly. He watches my face as he fumbles under the covers. For an instant, I think he will change his mind, tell me he can’t, that he doesn’t really love me. That none of this is real.
Until I feel that pinch, stronger this time. My entire body clenches and I gasp.
The pain grows. Becomes excruciating. A knife of lightning across a still, dark sky.
“You are perfect.” Alec’s gaze hangs distant and fogged under his flopping bangs. Then he moves gently. Joins me. Fills me. As if disparate parts of me connect as one whole for the first time. Alec kisses my lips. We lie interconnected like that for a minute, an eternity.
He and I moving together, in a new kind of forever.
“I need you, Zephyr. I want you at Michigan. With me always.”
I need you too, I want to say, but words are beyond reach as I fall into his need . . .
the motion of his body . . .
the promise of us. . . .
• • •
Later that night, I lie in bed not moving. From the record player, Joan Armatrading’s honey-slick voice bleeds love into the very air around me.
Oh the feeling, when you’re reeling.
There’s more beauty in you than anyone.
The memory of Alec cocoons me. Protected. Secret. Mine.
I don’t call Lizzie. Trying to put tonight into words would erase its magic.
I hold tight to Finn, tell him the way my heart has found wings.
Before I close my eyes, I get a text from Alec: In ur dreams tonight, imagine me with u.
Me: As if I have a choice.
My eyes draw heavy while staring at the ceiling, trying to press every minute of tonight into a sacred scrapbook of memory.
Just before I fall asleep the air shifts slightly, as if it also knows that everything has changed.
Chapter 22
I wake in someone else’s skin. Or mine, but different.
Finn lies spooned into me, his breath steady and so beautifully normal sounding. He stirs when I sit up. I watch him jump down to wait at my door like he’d never been sick at all. I let him out and he pads happily down the hall as I make my way to the bathroom.
In the shower, the spray hits me like Alec’s touch, awakening me everywhere. I swab my neck gently with my loofah sponge because I don’t want to fully wash him from my skin.
When I make it to the kitchen, Mom’s hunched over a cup of coffee at the island. I register her spacey stare, how it’s not even slightly focused on the newspaper opened before her. Then I panic. I hadn’t thought about Mom. Can she smell the sex on me? Does it linger on your skin like scented body wash? Just as I’m about to pivot on my heels and bolt back to my room, Mom looks up.
“Good morning, Sunshine.”
“Morning.” I wonder if my voice is different now too, if she can hear some indication of sex.
She picks at the edge of the newspaper.
“You okay?” She doesn’t look so okay.