by Natalie Wrye
Chapter 25
NAOMI
Thursday morning
Going back to Chicago the next morning feels a helluva lot like walking the plank into the abyss.
Landing back in the city isn’t like landing anywhere else. Not that I have much experience to compare.
Even on a misty morning, where the Chicago skies are gray and rainy and my thoughts are on the conversation I know is coming with Sevin, the sight of Lake Michigan and skyline in the distance are memorizing—soul-soothing in a strange sort of way.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing soothing about the flight attendant sashaying our way.
In the midst of trying to figure out how I’m going to break the news to Sevin, about possibly quitting my job and—scariest of all, Sawyer—the first flight attendant heads our way, eyes on the man beside me.
She’s beautiful—in that overly overt sort of way, and when she stops right beside him, long legs on display, it’s a little hard not to pretend I’m not jealous.
Afraid…that maybe I have a right to be.
She clears her throat, looking at no one but Sawyer, her stare sweeping his face.
“Can I get you anything else, sir?”
“Anything else” must mean her. I start to reach over and respond but before I can, Sawyer lifts my hand to his mouth, pressing against the skin. His lips are soft, full against my knuckles and the fear I’d just felt goes flying out the window as that perfect mouth of his slips into a full grin—one fully aimed at only me.
He shakes his head. “No, thanks. We don’t need anything at all.”
His eyes are only for me.
The trek back to my little apartment amidst the mid-morning traffic is long, the rain steadily increasing.
By the time we’re there, I’m more tired than I’ve ever been. Reluctant to admit it, but the quick trip to Miami and back has done a number on me.
At the door to my small one-bedroom, I nearly collapse, but Sawyer is there to pick up the slack, wrenching the keys from my hand, holding the luggage and escorting me inside.
It’s been so long since I’ve been here. Feels like forever.
The apartment barely holds a candle to the palace Sawyer calls home.
But the chiseled baseball player smiles the second he’s inside.
“So, this is your apartment?”
I groan, rubbing my shoulders. “Welcome to Casa de Silva.”
We’re both soaked to the skin from the rain, but Sawyer doesn’t seem to notice. Starting on his own little tour, grin wide, he walks the few steps to circle the place, the faux-hardwood creaking under his footsteps as he strolls, filling up the expanse with his large body.
He glances over at me. “It looks just like you.”
“Cold and small?”
“Strange and welcoming.”
He leans over to kiss me on the cheek.
I’m not good for much after the long trip, but I’m good for cooking. Heading towards the small pastel-painted kitchen, I’m already halfway through fishing out all the pots and pans when Sawyer finishes his tour, blue eyes simmering in my direction, his brown hair still plastered to his face.
He frowns. “What are you doing?”
“I’m baking. I’m starving.”
“We can order out.”
“Why wait? When I can make something just as fast?”
“Something just as fast?” He pauses. “You mean those world-famous pastelitos?”
“Bingo.” I point, one hand already in flour. “Did Chris tell you?”
“No, Sevin did. Everyone has. And I’m insulted I haven’t had the chance to taste them.”
“Well, now’s your turn.” I rotate back to the pots and pans, hands wrapped around the bag of brown sugar when I hear, “Can I help?”
His breath splays across my neck.
He’s so close I can feel his heat. The rain. The warmth of his body.
He smells like the sky—acidic and slightly sweet. In my small kitchen, he’s nearly pressed up against me, and I have to fight the urge to press my head back against him. To lean into this body.
To let Sawyer carry the weight of the world that always seems to be on my shoulders.
But not right now.
I still haven’t made a decision of what to do about Miami, about my brother, about Sevin. About him.
So I nod without saying a word.
He says nothing in return, and soon the two of us are sharing the same counter space, preparing the pastelitos. I tell Sawyer what to grab and he listens. I show him how to cut and he learns.
He is a sponge, watching me—soaking it all in.
By the time he is whisking the egg, cutting the guava into thin slices and blocking the cream cheese for the pastries, he is practically making them on his own.
I am in awe, just watching him.
Alongside one another, we make the perfect pastry-making team, and I don’t know if it’s rain outside of my windows, the tired feeling in my limbs or the enormity of all that the man beside has become, but suddenly I’m in tears.
I blink them away as I take the cookie sheet and parchment paper from Sawyer’s hands. Placing the final product on the trays, I slide them into the oven slowly, letting the heat wash against my skin, only to turn around and find Sawyer standing there, eyes open, chin steady staring at me the second I spin.
He reaches a hand to my jaw and strokes it, the touch bringing fresh tears to my eyes. I blink them away.
“You don’t always to be so damned strong, you know…” he whispers.
“Oh, but I do, actually.”
“No…” he hisses ever so slowly, taking one step towards me. “No, you don’t. You wanted to teach me intimacy, kitty? Well, look around us. This is it. This is me…taking care of you. You taking care of me. Us taking care of each other. And I don’t know about you. But I could live like this for the rest of my life. For the rest of yours, too.” He grips me softer, stroking my chin. “If you let me.”
And then he kisses me. And it is so much softer than the other times, so much more emotional.
So much more of everything. Because it’s so much more of him.
The hunger is gone and replaced by his longing. I feel everything that Sawyer is, ever was, in this kiss.
I feel him in his element. Not on the field or in his penthouse.
Not swinging a baseball bat or throwing parties or commanding every room he walks in. Though those are all pieces of him, too.
For the first time I see the cracks in his invisible veneer, the less-than-perfect parts. I see the man behind the facade, the guy behind the barrier he’s built, made with bricks of anger and loss.
I see the man more modest than the swanky apartment, the cocky swagger.
In my kitchen, moving around this impossibly tiny space, silently piecing my mother’s pastelitos, I see the man he claimed not to be.
The man who believes in happily-ever-after’s. The man who wants one of his own.
And I kiss that man. Hard.
I kiss that man with all the love and understanding and full-heartedness I can find.
And he wraps me even closer.
I don’t even realize that Sawyer’s picked me up until we’re in front of my bed. Undressing slowly, he peels off his still-wet shirt, sliding the rain-slicked fabric from his shoulders, giving me the best show I’ll ever know.
He’s only half-dry and still he’s beautiful.
I’m sure I look like a wet rag doll, and I tell him so, but that only makes him kiss me more, his hands gripping my shoulders, fingers sliding down my arms to hold my hands, twisting his fingers between mine.
He backs up at step, smirking at my face. “Does it look like I would kiss a rag doll like that?”
“Knowing you?” I close one eye, thinking. “Maybe?”
“Oh yeah?” He laughs. He pushes me lightly to the bed, hovering the second I hit the mattress.
Removing his shoes and my own, he rubs one heel in his large hands, kneadi
ng the skin. I groan as he places one red-painted toe to his mouth, kissing the very edge of its tip.
He grins down at me.
“For a rag doll, you taste awfully good.”
I smile. “Wait till you taste the other parts.”
“I love how your dirty your mouth has gotten. I’d say it was my influence, but I think all that naughtiness was already there. And I just brought it out.”
He’s right. He just doesn’t know how right.
And when he reaches for my jeans, unbuttoning the clasp, when he slides the denim down my legs and looks up to glance at the silk thong beneath, I know he knows just how right he is.
I’m a new woman. Or should I say, old woman?
All because of him.
Hair down in wet strands, my favorite red lipstick on, I stare up at Sawyer as he unhooks his jeans, letting them fall. The large bulge beneath his black boxer briefs greets me immediately, and I lick my lips, ready for all he has to offer.
I sit up straight, waiting.
“I’m a lucky woman.”
“And you’re saying this to an even luckier man.”
He reaches for me, wringing the pale blouse over my shoulders. My lace bra is next to go, and when he makes quick work of his boxer briefs, kicking them aside, he’s over me in seconds, his body pressing mine into the mattress, a foil packet from his jeans pocket secured in his curled hand.
He gazes at me, stare full of wonder. He blinks. “We’re only doing this if you’re ready.”
“I’ve been ready. I just didn’t know I was waiting for you.”
The returning kiss he gives me is sweet. But here comes the hunger.
Ravenous, we taste as much of each other as we can, mouths angling. Sawyer circles my body with his tongue, loving every part of me, and it is only when I’m panting, only when I’m whimpering, whining and writhing on the bed that he places himself right where I need him, the notch of him sliding across my wet nook.
He stops before plunging inside. “I wish I had given you all of me when I had the chance.”
“We still have time. I’m not going anywhere.”
“No, there’s so much I need to share with you, Naomi. So much I need to let you know. But right now, I’ll have to settle with telling you that I’m fucking in love with you. And maybe a part of me has always been. I’ve just been too scared to let you in. Let you in the way that you deserve. The way you needed me, also, to be in.”
“Oh, you are in.” I nod up at him, grinning, his confession gripping me with fear and happiness and nerves all at once. “Or you will be in, I’d say. With just another few inches.”
He smiles, covering my mouth with his. And then he closes the distance, obliterating those last inches.
The push of him inside my body is silky—hot, sweeter than I ever imagined. Pain mixes with pleasure in an intoxicating mix, and I kiss Sawyer harder, wrapping my arms around him, hesitant to ever let him go, my body needing more of his than ever before.
“Are you okay?” He pulls back slightly, searching my face. “I don’t want to hurt you. Stop me if I do.”
“The only person who’s getting hurt here is you, if you don’t keep going.”
He grins again, grabbing my face. Lowering his lips to my neck, he starts to pick up speed, slower and slower, until the pace builds.
The friction is heaven, every stroke and swirl of Sawyer’s hips delicious, circling all of my favorite spots. He hits nerves inside my body I didn’t know I had.
And with his mouth on my neck, hips pumping like a piston, one hand lowers between us to my clit, sending me off like a firecracker.
I fizzle and crackle and spark before exploding.
The enormity of my orgasm hits me like a tidal wave, and soon I am crying out Sawyer’s name, rasping guttural words among the sounds of the still-beating rain. In the sanctity of my small bedroom, together we find a place beyond the clouds.
I crash back to earth just a minute later, my head still in space, every part of my body floating in the stratosphere. I hold onto Sawyer as my anchor, nails clasped softly in his skin.
Until he speaks. “Naomi…baby, are you alive? You haven’t moved for, like, several seconds.”
“Give me a minute,” I breathe, trying to float down. “I need to get my body out of the ether. It still hasn’t returned yet.”
His answering chuckles are low, soft breezes against my still-shaking body. He releases me slowly, as if he doesn’t want to let me go, and when we finally part, it’s the look on his face that finally makes my soul touch the ground.
His gaze sweeps over my body, coming back to land on my eyes.
“I could do that all fucking day, you know.”
“Now that you’ve started this, I want you to know that I’m going to make sure you will.” I stare up at him, eyes gleaming with tears I’m still not foolish enough to wipe away. “That was amazing.”
“You’re amazing. I don’t tell you enough.”
I sniff back tears, smelling something else the second I do. I push lightly on Sawyer’s chest. “No, what won’t be amazing is the pastelitos, if we burn them.”
I laugh as Sawyer scrambles from the bed, running naked to the kitchen, the condom still on his half-hard prick, nearly swiping the door. I laugh so hard tears spill down my cheeks.
The laughter only stops when I hear a knocking at my front door, three rapid booms that shatter the bubble that Sawyer and I have built in the comfort of my bedroom.
I wrap a sheet around me, heading for the door, still smiling as I see Sawyer struggling, the pastry trays in his hands. Smoke pours out of the stove.
“Dammit,” he yells over and over, his beautiful body sweating. “Dammit, dammit. I think we burnt the damn things.”
The grin on my face hurts my cheeks but still I reach for the door.
When I open it, I find an angry Sevin behind it, green eyes hot. He stares at me for a few tense seconds as if I were a stranger before storming into my tiny apartment, strides long enough to cross my living room in two steps.
He spins on his heel, turning towards me, more angry than I’ve ever seen him, his dark hair splaying over his forehead like ink.
“Where is he, Nome? Where the hell is he right now?”
I don’t know who he’s talking about. Until his eyes find Sawyer.
Rushing over to the kitchen, he grabs his best friend by the shoulders, hauling him to the wall. The clanging sounds of the falling tray are nothing compared to the thunder coming from Sevin’s mouth as he yells into the face of the man I love.
“You thought I wouldn’t find the fuck out? You thought I wouldn’t discover that you’d slept with her? You piece of shit, how could you?!”
I hurry over to defend myself until I hear the rest of Sevin’s words.
“Kimmy. My ex-girlfriend, Kimmy, Sawyer? How could you sleep with Charlie’s mom?!”
And my heart sinks.
Heart squeezing, chest wheezing, I realize that I was wrong to forget that feeling of walking into the abyss I sensed on the plane.
This… This is the abyss. And it’s come right to us.
Chapter 26
NAOMI
I thought I’d learned long ago how not to cry.
My mother, the pillar of strength she was, had taught me the hard lesson in the back of her bakery. And on days where the pastelitos didn’t come out right or the oven burned you, on nights where the boy you liked didn’t call you back, it was your job as a strong, Miami-raised Cuban woman not to let the emotion reach your eyes.
I thought I’d learned that lesson.
But Sawyer shows me differently.
The second he leaves my apartment after Sevin, the numbness sets in, seeping slowly into my limbs. I turn off the oven, collect the burnt pastelitos from the floor.
And it isn’t until I pick up that last pastry that I think back to the day that everything changed—the day I found out my parents died in that awful car accident.
Aunt Sandr
a hadn’t even cried, hadn’t shed a tear. And on that hot Miami afternoon that was easily the worst of my life, crying may have been the last notion on my mind.
The first notion…was that good girls like me aren’t supposed to kiss and tell. At least, not according to Mama.
The memory of that afternoon is still fresh on my mind these seven years later, and on that tiny kitchen floor, flakes of pastries in my hand, I run the events like a record player in my mind.
Especially Mama’s lessons.
Because lesson three hundred and fifty-five was that good girls aren’t supposed to kiss and tell.
But she never said anything about an “almost-kiss” and tell.
My sixteen-year-old self knows the difference.
Using the back of one free hand, I wipe today’s red lipstick off my face, barely able to stop the smile spreading there. My heart is hammering hard, my long brown hair sticking to my face from the Miami heat as I turn the corner, running fast, but I don’t care.
The faster I can find Esmerelda and tell her about me and Flynn, the faster I can head home, finish my chores for the day and solidify my plan.
My fingers tingle with the urge to grab my pen and write down even the feelings I’m having right now as I sprint towards Esmerelda’s front door, my hand poised to knock.
“Esme!” I call out, forgetting my manners. “Come down here right now! Vén acá!”
I fully expect Mrs. Diaz to yank the door open and curse me out in two different languages, but I know it’s worth it.
I wait, shifting in my dark pleated skirt. I check my watch.
Seven o’clock. Mama will be home any minute now.
I knock on the door again, rapping fast, but when no one answers, I hightail it home, kicking up dirt as I head out of the Diaz’s yard, my closed-toe scandals skipping and stumbling over the cemented sidewalk on my way out.
Dammit, where the hell’s your best friend when you need her?
In less than half a mile, I find myself in my own front yard, yanking the screen door aside, fumbling for the keys to my own front door when a voice—nearby—surprises me.
I yelp. “Dios mío.” Clutching my chest, I turn to stare into the kindest brown eyes on the block. I let out of a ragged breath. “Carlosito! Goodness me, you almost scared me half to death.”