Anything More Than Now (Sutton College #2)

by Rebecca Paula

  “Are you sure you want to go back to the house?” she asks. Maybe she asks twice because she stops and tugs me closer. “Noah?”

  I brush the back of my hand against my forehead, my skin sticky from working on the house all day. My body feels stretched and alive after the work, like a good runner’s high except this is bone deep. I want to kiss her so badly, but instead I take her hand and twirl her in a slow circle so her loose hair fans out and brushes over her sun-kissed shoulders.

  “It’s like dancing in the sky,” she says in a husky whisper.

  If I could keep her, if we could have more than this moment, I think everything in life would work out finally. Realistically, I know we can’t have anything more than now. And I plan to make the most of it.

  Reagan shimmies her hips, raising her hands up in the air as she lets go and dances. Fireflies dart and flicker around her, the moon finally in the sky, and the Montana night has fully settled in. Between crickets and my heartbeat, it’s just her softly humming to herself as she dances for me.

  I reach out and hook my fingers inside the waist of her shorts and drag her against me. She gazes up dreamily, still humming, her eyes wide and sleepy. “I love you,” I whisper. It just falls out and as soon I as hear the words, I stiffen.

  Her hand skirts up my bare chest and curls around the back of my neck. “What a perfectly dumb thing to say about a girl like me.”

  I smile because she’s not backing away. Judging by her smile, she’s teasing, so I take my chances and press more. “I think it’s a perfectly true thing to say.”

  “Tell me, Noah, how does a girl like me respond to that? From a boy like you?” She pushes up to the balls of her feet and kisses my chin, scratching her nails along the back of my neck and I’m instantly turned on. Completely. Her lips spread into a smile over my jaw as she feels me hard against her middle. “I want today to last forever,” she says, her breath warm over my skin. She slides her body closer, her hands growing greedy. “Tell me we have a thousand more days like today.”

  I could lie. Holy hell, do I want to lie, but my lips meet hers instead and I kiss her until the truth is there, until we both know we can’t because her life is going one way and mine another, if at all. We have tonight and another two days and maybe emails or texts later. We don’t have anything permanent and maybe that’s why I told her what I did. Maybe that’s why she didn’t run away.

  I just want to believe there’s more.

  Reagan

  The plain truth is somewhere between the summer heat and suntans, between the kisses and embraces, I fell in love with Noah Burke. It wasn’t all at once. It took months. It took quiet moments and fights, bitter words and broken hearts. It was messy.

  I wouldn’t change it for anything.

  “Come here,” Noah whispers in my ear. “Don’t go away.”

  The cab of his truck is hot even with the windows down. I straddle his lap, my fingers skirting up his chest, his skin sticky. He smells of sawdust and summer nights. Everything, every touch, every word…they burn into me like the blazing orange sunset we watched as we ate on that faded quilt in the field an hour ago.

  My fingers continue to climb, pressing against his lips. Hot, everything is so hot right now. Noah draws my fingers into his mouth, sucking at my fingertips. My head falls back and a moan escapes my mouth. The pressure between my legs is mounting. It’s delicious frustration.

  “A girl like you,” he whispers around my fingers. “God, what are you doing to me, Rea? My perfect fighter.”

  I remove my fingers and trap my mouth with his, greedy lips, greedy hands. I can’t get my fill of a boy like him. A perfect, angry boy who has given me the best six months of my life since I let him in on that cold, wet night in January.

  “What else do you want from me?” He groans as I rock my hips against him.

  I meet his eyes, my hands at the hem of my T-shirt. “Everything.” I strip the shirt up over my head, falling back against his chest, kissing his collarbone, his strong shoulders. He’s carried me and the world on them and I think they’re the most perfect shoulders in the world. And his heart. And his love.

  “I love you,” I say, surprising myself. My lips press against his heart. “I think this is what I’m feeling. You’re consuming me, Noah. Everything. Take what you want. I’m yours.”

  His hands trace the curve underneath my breasts through my bra, then pushes the edges down with his thumbs to stroke my nipples. His lips follow, taking my mouth, trailing my neck, claiming the valley between my breasts with a sharp nip of his teeth. I’ll have a mark, a gentle bruise branding me as his and the thought of that, the idea that I might begin to know what I’m doing with myself, is making me dizzy.

  “I need you,” I whisper. I reach behind and unclasp my bra. Noah slowly removes the straps, his fingers leaving a wake of fire down my arms. “A bed would be nice, but I don’t think I can wait.”

  “I’ll give you a bed. If that’s what you want.” His hands are just as greedy as my lips. “I want every inch of you, Rea.” Noah turns the ignition halfway, tuning on the lights and radio.

  I reach around and grab the quilt from the backseat, pressing my hands against his chest. “Stay here.” Another moan escapes me because he’s relentless in his touches, his kisses. I swear he will make good on his promise and make love to every inch of me tonight. There’s time and quiet. And…just us. “Stay here for a few minutes.”

  I climb off his lap, laughing when he groans at me leaving. I step onto the cool grass, half-undressed. I walk in front of the truck headlights, flooded in brightness. I can’t make out his figure inside the truck anymore, but I drag in a deep breath and spread the quilt out before me. Then I stand in the middle and slowly begin to dance like I did the night of graduation. Slow, sexy. God, he makes me feel so incredibly sexy.

  My hands skim my naked middle, brushing over my breasts, up and up as I lift them into my hair, swaying, my eyes open, staring back into the cab. I dance for him in the dark, in the bright headlights…for him…for me…for us. I slowly unbutton my jean shorts next, shimmying them down my thighs to step out of them. All that’s left are my lilac lace boyshorts. I hook my thumbs into the hem, closing my eyes to the sensation of the soft breeze caressing my skin. I’m hot and cold all at once, ready to fall apart, warm and ready for Noah to take me apart. Once they reach my thighs, I let go. They fall at my feet, then I kick them toward the truck, smiling. I’m completely naked on a Montana summer night for him. I crook my finger toward the truck, taking a step backward. I stand still, a shiver chasing down my spine when the truck door slams shut and Noah’s silhouette stands before me. I can’t see his face and I want so desperately to see his face, to see his eyes filled with wanting and affection for me.

  He closes the distance between us, his hands braced on my hips. Noah leans down and whispers into my ear, “You’re gorgeous, my fighter. Hell, just look at you. You’re perfect.”

  I shut my eyes at those lovely words. Those perfect, indelible words whispered under the great starry sky.

  I grasp his hand in mine and bring it to my lips, before sinking to my knees. My hand slips the button from his jeans, then slowly unzips them. I lie down, studying his face, falling deep into those whiskey eyes of his, drowning and intoxicated. My body sinks into the cushion of the long grass beneath the quilt. My arms reach out for him. “Please,” I say. “Please make this stop.”

  Noah’s silent as he strips out of his jeans and boxers. The headlights flood around and dear sweet heaven above the man is perfection. He drops to his knees and bends down to kiss my inner thigh. His fingers are rough from working on the house, rough against my soft skin. And this is perfect, too.

  I close my eyes and tilt my head back, biting on my bottom lip.

  “Open your eyes, Rea. Look at me look at you. Do you see how perfect you are for me?”

  His fingers part me, stroke me, and I try to nod but I think I only melt further back into the quilt. And just as I feel
myself about to fall over the edge, about to lose the definition of my body to that blissful shattering of fleshy borders, he pulls away and kisses up to my stomach, his hips against my knees.

  “I don’t want to make this stop, sweetheart. I want to pretend we have more than now. I’m not going to stop. This is our beginning.”

  My eyes begin to burn and I try to wipe at them, but Noah grabs my hand and brings it to his lips, then his to chest to rest against his racing heart. Without him touching me, I do fall apart. In another way, completely. My heart so suddenly falls and opens to him and that’s it. I’m Noah Burke’s girl. I’m his. Completely.

  “I love you,” I whisper.

  Noah groans, his weight collapsing onto me, then into me as I open my legs and he pushes himself inside and fills me up. He grabs my calf and rolls me so we’re side by side. His body cradles mine as we move together, his hands reaching around to touch me. I sink against him, into him. I swear right there I share myself with him in the most divine way possible. There aren’t words for it. Nothing could begin to describe it.

  I turn and sit astride him, looking down that perfect face of his. I bend down, riding him slowly, the burn growing, spreading, consuming. Noah is consuming me.

  Love was something that meant everything but what Noah makes me feel before now. Love used to mean being left alone and being forgiving. Love was being selfless and selfish. Love was messy and maybe it still is. That’s the truth. Love isn’t always pretty, it’s not a fairy tale. But when it’s good, when it can bring two broken people together, it’s something better than pretty—it’s hope.

  “I’m yours.” I pin his hands above his head on the blanket, trapping his mouth to mine. Slowly, sweetly, our tangled limbs make love under the stars until we both finish. No roughness tonight, no walls or lies. What we share is honest and true and something so incredibly rare for me.

  We make good use of that quilt until the stars fade and the morning sun kisses the sky, bright and orange.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Noah

  “Are you going to cook me breakfast, Noah?” Reagan clutches her arms around my neck tighter as I carry her piggyback to the side door of the general store. “I don’t like cheeseburgers, but I’m willing to reconsider.”

  She braces her arms out ahead of me to rest against the store while I reach for my keys. I grip her waist, spinning around so we’re facing one another. “After last night, you can have whatever you want.” I wink at her, laughing as she scrunches up her face and rolls her eyes.

  “Nice try, flirt.”

  I twist a lock of her hair around my finger, drawing her closer, my lips hovering above hers. “I think we’re beyond flirting, don’t you?”

  She kisses me softly, then pecks her lips around my face, messing up my hair with her hands. “Don’t get sentimental on me now, Burke.” She releases her arms and jumps down, grabbing the keys from my hand. “I’m starving. Let’s eat.”

  The wobbly of rhythm of Auggie’s steps echo from inside, answering Reagan’s call. I smile, heading back to the truck to grab the rest of our things and get started on breakfast, when Reagan reemerges in the doorway, her face drawn and her arms clutched around her middle.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask, coming up to give her a quick peck on the cheek.

  She takes my things and leans her forehead against my chest. “Your dad needs to talk to you.”

  I can’t explain the dread that weighs me down. I can’t explain how I hear his words in my ears before I actually hear him say it. I know before I know. I feel it because it’s been slowly brewing in my heart for years, waiting to burst.

  Some truths are inevitable.

  Some pasts are inescapable.

  Some lives vanish before they ever lived.

  “Noah,” my dad says. He slaps a hand on my shoulder, then draws me in for a rough hug. “She’s gone, son. Isla passed away last night.”

  Reagan

  I barely knew Isla, yet the wreckage wraps around me and I’m sucked into that hopeless vacuum, too. I can’t do anything to make this better or help his hurt, and selfishly, I think about me losing him, right here, right now.

  Noah doesn’t cry, doesn’t say anything back to his father. He simply nods, then heads to his bedroom and closes the door softly.

  “Come on up, Reagan. I’ll make us breakfast. I think he needs some time.”

  I bend down, nodding, before I wrap my arms around Auggie and hug him tightly, my own eyes threatening to cry. I can’t. I won’t cry because I knew this day was coming. Our goodbye. It just came sooner than the two of us thought.

  Jimmy makes us breakfast sandwiches and some coffee. I try to eat, but my world is too full for me to have any sort of appetite. I sit in the corner of the small kitchen, the sunbeams filling the apartment with dusty motes. Another cowboy plays an acoustic version of “Moon River” on the radio, and the quiet sadness of growing up settles upon the house and me and the silly daydreams I’ve kept hidden in my heart.

  It was foolish to think I’d have days in bed with Noah, the two of us reading and being lazy together, tangled up. Or having someone to fall back on, to call and have in my corner longer than a few months. Or to find someone who makes me not just fall in love, but makes me fall in love with myself—the good and the bad parts. I thought I was going to be stuck in my room in Portland forever, loving someone who’d moved on, settled in my safe life. And look at the leaps I took just because Noah Burke pushed me. All because I trust him.

  Jimmy gets caught up in phone calls, spreading the news and eventually I move from my spot in the kitchen to drift downstairs. I wait before I push open his bedroom. It’s quiet, the room is perfectly made up, nothing is out of place. Our things are still by the bed.

  The shower is running in the next room. I quickly pack the few things I have and ask if Jimmy can give me a ride where I can catch a bus. He only hugs me as an answer.

  The shower is still running when I return, so I open the door and strip down. Noah is in the shower, his hands braced on the wall, the water cascading down his back. He doesn’t move when I come in, not even when I open the glass door and step inside. I freeze once I’m there. Like everything, it’s just a step. I have one word to say to him before I leave but with all the words between us, I can’t call it to my lips. It’s wedged selfishly in my heart, refusing to be said, refusing to make our reality just that.

  I wrap my arms around his back and press my front against his body, the water running over my face. He trembles beneath me, but we stay quiet. I kiss up his spine, across his shoulder blades, I dig my fingers into his flesh hard enough that we both feel the pain.

  This is all I have to give you, I want to say.

  I reach around him and shut off the water when he turns around and cups my face gingerly, gazing down at me, falling into me as if I can catch him. As though I have all the answers. I let Noah think so. I pretend I do and kiss him back, slowly, fully.

  I dry us both off and find a towel for him. I sit on the sink and draw him between my legs, wrapping them tightly around his hips. I find his shaving kit and wet his checks, massaging in the shaving cream, then rinsing off my fingers in the warm sudsy water. The bathroom smells like Noah. Like our suffocating truth. It sits hollow in his eyes now as he looks down at me. We both leave that word unsaid though.

  It’s hard, but I focus on his skin, on the careful swipe of the razor blade as I shave his face. His hands rest on the counter on either side of me, as though he’s afraid to touch me. Maybe that’s for the best. I think if he hugged me right now, I wouldn’t move for days.

  I think back to when I first spotted him in the library. How he’d sit for hours, lost in his own world as he pored himself out over a laptop and a blank document. The rest of the students rushed by as he lay pinned in my universe, a point that never pivoted that fall semester. Noah was always at the same seat, always with the same gray hoodie. I don’t think he even noticed when I stayed late so he could keep
working. I don’t think he noticed at all that I tumbled for his whiskey eyes and quiet soul from behind a library counter. I was just an angry girl pushing the rest of the world away.

  When I’m finished, I reach behind me and rinse off the blade, then move aside so he can wash off his face. And just as suddenly, I feel as if I’ve let him go. He’s a ghost again, something I can chase after but never find.

  Noah looks up at me through the fogged mirror. “I have to…I should go over….”

  I nod, maybe too quickly. “Yep, I know. I understand.” I grab a towel for myself and quickly dress.

  Noah rushes into his bedroom and flings some clothes from his bureau. Auggie whines by the door, wanting to come in but backs away when a pair of jeans fly in his direction. I grab a T-shirt and the jeans, then hold them out to Noah. “They’re not going to care what you’re wearing.”

  “Right.” His voice grows thick and I think this is it, this when he’s going to break or we both are. This is when we realize we’re finished. Instead, he dresses and grabs his keys.

  I sit on the edge of his bed, staring at my hands, too afraid to watch him leave. Noah kisses me on top of my head and for one brief moment, I fall against his hips and hold his leg. I drag in one more breath, one more second with him, before I let go.

  Both of us say goodbye without ever having said it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Reagan

  New York, New York. I’ve had a love affair with this city. It was a promised land. It was a dream. And now the lights blind me as I fly in. The plane shakes and my heart breaks as we skid to a stop on the runway, touching ground into reality.

  I wrestle with my bag from baggage claim and waddle to catch a crowded bus to get me to the subway, too broke to pay for a cab. I squeeze in and stay wedged next to someone’s armpit on the hottest day of the year. The air is heavy, my heart is heavy, the rest of me is numb. But the bus rolls on, and the subway hurtles me through the ground until I’m standing in front of my new apartment.