My orgasm was chasing through me, building from the pure emotion of the moment. Dropping my hands to his shoulders, I braced myself and slid off of him before lowering back down slowly. “I won’t.”
I sank my teeth into my lip as he pumped into me once, hard enough my body thudded against the wall.
“Nowhere I can’t follow,” he rasped in my ear.
A whimper spilled past my lips as his thrusts picked up in pace and strength.
“I promise,” I whispered.
That was when I felt his release spill through his body, his final thrust burrowing deep inside me as his hands curled into me like I was the only thing keeping him from falling off the face of the world. His release spurred my own, the power of it making my body bind around him as our bodies took from each other’s exactly what we needed.
He held me until my breathing recovered and my body had stopped trembling. He didn’t pull out or away. He stayed in and around me, a vestige of my past and a promise of my future.
“Damn.” His voice shook in a breathless rush. “My fiancée gives it up even better than my girlfriend did.” His hips pinned mine against the wall, as I felt him swell inside me again. “Can’t wait to see what my wife’s capable of.”
I grinned in the dark, moving my hips in unison with his. “You just won the biggest game of your life. You just got engaged. This is going to be a tough moment to beat.”
Grant’s hand slipped behind my neck, holding me as he rocked into me, taking my body and sharing his with me. “Yeah, it will be,” he whispered, his smile evident in his voice. “At least until tomorrow comes. And the one after that.”
My hands wound around the man I loved—the soul mine belonged with. “And all of the ones after that.”
WE WERE BACK at the beginning. Back at the start. Because you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been. To rise above, you have to touch down every now and again.
When I’d come back into Grant’s life, I wasn’t sure if I could hope for twelve months of good health, and now I’d had twelve years. He’d given me hope for what my disease didn’t have to be, he’d given me the resources to think outside the box, and he’d given me a second chance to rewrite our ending.
We didn’t get to choose when we were born into this world or when we’d leave it, but we did get to choose how we’d live the time in between, and I squeezed more out of each day than I guessed some people did from a whole lifetime. That was what confronting one’s death will do—it made life that much sweeter.
“Is it how you pictured it?” Grant joined me in the doorway, dropping his arm around my shoulders as we studied the apartment.
It was the apartment I’d spent most of my young life with my mom. The same apartment that had tainted my dreams all of my life. The very apartment I was hoping to, finally, lay to rest. To be at peace with.
I’d felt so weak and helpless within these walls, but now I felt the opposite. It was Grant’s love, Charlie’s love, and the way I loved them that was responsible for it. Love chased fear away.
“Almost,” I answered, pulling something out of my back pocket. I made my way back into the apartment, tiptoeing silently so as not to resurrect the demons buried inside.
Behind me, I heard Grant move with me, stopping behind me when I crouched in the middle of the room. He didn’t let me out of arm’s reach whenever we crossed into Clink territory, and he didn’t take his eyes off of me whenever we stepped without the walls of this complex. Twenty-five years had passed since that day he’d found me here, our first meeting, but for Grant, it was as though it had happened yesterday. Time would never change that. Some things time couldn’t fix, no matter how much of it passed.
Some scars weren’t made to heal. Some were meant to be felt for the rest of our lives. Some scars defined us too much to ever be erased.
Unfolding the picture I’d pulled from my pocket, I carefully placed it against one of the flower vases staggered around the room. It was a picture of my mom. Her sophomore school photo, the year she’d dropped out and gotten sucked into the world she’d died in. She looked so young, healthy, her eyes bright and her smile genuine.
When my back shook, Grant’s strong hand lowered to my shoulder. He didn’t say anything or try to rush me out. He just waited with me, as unwavering as always.
As I stared at the picture of my mom, I wondered if she would have done life differently if she’d known how young she’d die. If she’d been given the gift of foresight, would that have changed anything? I wasn’t sure, and I’d have to accept that I’d never know.