When The Stars Align

by Jeanette Grey

  Her only response was another kiss.

  They moved around each other in silence for the last few minutes of their shower. He got to wash her back after all, and she snuck in strategic touches as he soaped himself up. By the time they were done, the water had cooled all right, and after a nod of approval from her, he turned it off.

  Without the shower raining down on them, the room went eerily quiet. He only had the one towel in here, so they took turns with it, neither one getting really dry, but the steamy air was suddenly oppressively wet, the dampness clinging to their bodies. They might not have had much luck with a dozen towels, if they’d had them, much less two.

  She stared down the door as he finished swabbing off. “So. Are we running for it, or…?”

  Oh. Right. They hadn’t stopped to grab spare clothing, either. He turned to her and stretched the towel out, waiting until she sighed and stepped into it before wrapping it around her breasts, under her arms. She took the edges and tucked them in before tilting her head at him.

  They weren’t going to run into anybody, so it didn’t matter. Still, he scooped up their discarded clothes and held them in front of himself before gesturing for her to go ahead.

  Sure enough, the coast was clear as they retreated to his room. While he tugged on a pair of boxers, she went to the window to turn on the fan, then flopped down on his bed, legs and arms spread out to either side.

  And…

  It didn’t seem too much to presume, but he still didn’t want to reach too far.

  “Are you staying, then?”

  She lifted her head. “Do you mind?”

  “No.” The crack of light spreading its way through his ribs put pains to the understatement. Did he mind? He shook his head. “No, not at all.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jo gazed up at the ceiling for a long moment. She didn’t actually think it was about to cave in on her, didn’t think the walls were going to close in or that the world was set to shake apart. But it seemed smart to keep an eye out, just in case.

  It wasn’t all that big of a deal, was it? Sleeping over in a guy’s room? People did it all the time. So what if it happened that she’d never done it on purpose before? No BFD.

  She took a deep breath. It was just that she was tired, wrung out, and she didn’t feel like getting up or dealing with all the people at her house. Adam’s bed was comfortable.

  And when Adam put his arms around her… it was like all the jagged pieces grinding around inside her, always spinning, always hurting—their edges dulled. Things went this tiny bit quieter in her head. And she didn’t want to let go of it quite yet.

  It didn’t have to mean anything.

  Except Adam was standing on the other side of the room, trying and epically failing to hide the fact that his eyes were lit up like fucking Christmas. That probably did mean something. She’d worry about that some other time.

  Finally, once the silence between them had officially dragged on for way too long, Adam cleared his throat. “Do you want to, like, borrow some clothes or something?”

  Probably not a bad idea. “Sure.”

  The sound of drawers opening and shutting filled the space, followed by soft footfalls. The mattress dipped beneath her as he sat on the edge of the bed. He offered her a balled up T-shirt and a pair of boxers. “Sorry. They’ll probably be really big on you.”

  “Whatever.” She shifted her gaze to meet his. “Wore your trunks all day, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah.” He held the boxers up. “But these don’t have a drawstring.”

  She accepted them and set them down beside her. “They’ll be fine. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” He dipped to press a soft, brief kiss on her lips before sitting up again. Leaning back against the headboard, he nudged her with his knee until she shifted over enough for him to stretch out his legs. “You want me to look away or something while you put them on?”

  “Please. I think that ship has sailed, don’t you?”

  “Maybe.” His smile went warm and soft, and it set off an answering glow behind her breastbone. He resettled his legs so his foot rested against her thigh, a single point of casual contact that was anything but. “Just don’t want you to think you’re obligated to show me your breasts because I’ve seen them before.”

  “Chivalrous.”

  She fingered the edge of the towel where it lay stretched across her chest. The fabric was damp, which should’ve been kind of gross, but the air was warm enough she didn’t mind. Plus, the towel smelled like Adam. Hell, after using his soap and his shampoo, she smelled like Adam. That probably shouldn’t have been as okay with her as it was. After a moment’s hesitation, she dropped her hand to the side and stayed like she was.

  “So,” Adam said. “Did you want to… talk? Or anything?”

  “About what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He moved to run his fingers through the wet strands of her hair. “Maybe any of the hundred unusual things that have happened today.”

  He didn’t specify further, though she didn’t have any doubt what he was angling for. After the tantrum she’d thrown, he had every right to demand an explanation. Only he wasn’t demanding anything, just giving her an opening in case she wanted to talk. Chances were, she could start in on chicken fights or public indecency and he’d roll with it.

  And that was what made her tongue and chest both loosen up. Not quite all the way, but enough.

  “I don’t know.” She inched her hand a little farther up the bed until her knuckles grazed the hem of his boxers. The solid, lightly haired skin underneath. “Not a whole lot left you haven’t heard already.”

  She’d told him more than she’d ever told anyone else.

  “Tell me again, then. If you want to.”

  Where to even start? A darkness rumbled inside of her. The beginning was probably the most logical. Her throat tried to constrict against the words, but she pushed through it, an old pain mixing with the story she always told herself.

  But when the confession came out, it was flat. Lifeless. “I killed my mother.”

  His fingertips didn’t even pause against her scalp. “No, you didn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  Bastard. “Fine.” She turned her head to the side, looking at his leg because it was easier than looking at anything else. “‘Complications due to childbirth.’ Or at least that’s what my dad told me.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jo.”

  She shrugged. What was she supposed to say? “I try to be cool about it. Rationalize it. But I don’t know if my dad never got over her, or if he was just always that way. If I was just—” She cut herself off, because it was bullshit. Self-indulgent ridiculous bullshit, but she was so worn out, it was hard to censor.

  If I was just that disappointing.

  She picked back up again once the lump had passed from her throat. “He wasn’t around much, and when he was, he didn’t want a whole lot to do with me. I spent all this time trying to do things to get his attention. I got the nannies to dress me up pretty before he came home, but he’d be late or he wouldn’t notice.” She’d seen the pictures, and she’d been fucking adorable. How the hell could he not have noticed? “Then when I was seven, I got it into my head… You see, he always said he’d wanted a son.” When Adam’s whole body went tense beside her, she clarified. “He never said he didn’t want a daughter. And maybe it was just that ‘a man is the king of his castle’ crap that guys from that generation like to say. But he talked about a son like…” Like it would have made him happy.

  She frowned, tracing a series of birthmarks across his thigh. “And he had these graduate students. He’d have them over for parties he threw at the house a couple of times a year. The nanny tried to keep me away, but I always found a way to sneak down, because he was different with them, you know? All those guys. He’d laugh. Pat them on the back.” All the things he never did around her. “I decided maybe if I were a boy… ma
ybe everything would be better somehow.”

  “That’s a terrible thing for a kid to have to decide.”

  “You’re telling me.” The worst of it was, it had almost worked. Sort of. Cutting her hair off had gotten some attention, and her math and science tests ended up on the fridge the way her drawings never had. But at its heart, she’d still been the same lonely girl, rattling around an empty house. Wishing her dad would give her a hug for once. She swiped her wrist across her eyes, but they were dry. Apparently there weren’t going to be any more hysterics tonight. Thank God. “It actually helped a little, but not enough.” Underneath it all, she’d still been the thing he’d never wanted.

  The child who had killed his wife. The error of genetics that had robbed him of a son.

  “I took it so far, too,” she said. Past junior high, going into high school and beyond, and it had been good, hadn’t it? Her short hair and her ugly boots and the clothes that covered all her curves. They’d kept people exactly where she’d wanted them.

  Because after growing up alone, she hadn’t known how to be anything else.

  To make matters worse, she’d been good at it, too. Being the bitch, the tomboy, the one that nobody could ever get close to. Science had started as a desperate ploy for her father’s attention, but her first trip to an observatory with a program after school and she’d fallen in love. With the stars. The sky. This vast universe where she could just be.

  A quiet place in the night that was just for her.

  Adam trailed his fingers down her cheek, caressing the edge of her jaw. “Did you ever talk about it with him?”

  She couldn’t help it. She laughed out loud.

  Frowning at her, he gave her leg a nudging kick. “I’m being serious.”

  “So am I.” She caught his hand in hers and interwove their fingers. “I barely managed to get a ‘How was your day?’ out of him most of the time. You really think we were ever going to have that kind of conversation?”

  “I don’t think he’s ever going to start it. But maybe you could. It might… make you feel better about things, you know?”

  Now he was being obtuse. “I doubt it.”

  “I don’t know.” The lines around his mouth had gone strangely somber. “I mean, I don’t want to overstep or anything here. But earlier…” Right. When she’d completely freaked out on him. “It seemed like maybe you’d been bottling some stuff up. If that’s how you deal with things, okay. But it doesn’t seem healthy.” Determination flooded his eyes. “It doesn’t seem like it’s been making you happy.”

  Happy. Until this week, here with Adam, she hadn’t even known it was something she could aspire to.

  This week when she’d made herself open. Let him peel down her barricades, inch by painful inch.

  He must have seen her resolve faltering. He sat up straighter and pulled at her hand until she sat up, too. She folded her legs underneath her, trying not to flash him too much when the edge of the towel rode up her thigh.

  “Come on,” he said. “Try it. Pretend I’m your dad.”

  “Oh God, no.” She shook her head. “Role-playing is a hard limit for me. I mean, maybe if one of us is a naughty schoolgirl or something, but—”

  “I’m not joking around.”

  She dropped his hand. “Neither am I.” Her voice went small, and she hated it. “I can’t.”

  “You can. Please?” His gaze had an earnestness to it that had her resistance yearning to melt, only—

  The very idea that this was a conversation she could have, one that she should. It was hot and uncomfortable inside her throat and behind her eyes.

  He put his hand on her bare shoulder, warm and broad. “Just try it. Here, I’ll start you out. ‘Dad, I feel like…’”

  “Fucking hell.” She wanted to cover her face. “We’re both almost naked and you want me to call you Dad?”

  “Jo…”

  It was the same way he’d said her name out on that street. The same way he’d said it the night at the observatory when she’d told him about her mom.

  It wasn’t sexy. It was real.

  “Try. ‘Dad, I’”—he hesitated, but then went ahead—“‘I wish you would’ve…’”

  And wasn’t that cutting a little too close to the bone?

  For a second, she closed her eyes. What if her father really were here? What if she could tell him, ask him, anything she wanted to?

  She took a deep breath. She couldn’t look at Adam, so she focused on a point to the right of him. A smudge on the plaster of the wall.

  Dad, why didn’t you love me?

  Dad, why did you leave me all alone?

  Dad, I…

  Her chest felt like it was cracking open. “Dad, why were you so disappointed in me?”

  Adam’s palm on her shoulder went heavier, his grip tighter. He dipped his head, putting his eyes right in her field of vision, fierce and beautiful and real.

  “I wasn’t. I never, ever, ever was.” With that, their role-playing session was apparently over, thank God. He drew her up in a crushing hug, and she let him, curling herself into his strength and his heat. Trying to pretend she wasn’t shaking. Rocking her back and forth, he murmured in her ear, “And if he doesn’t tell you that, you just point me at him.”

  She laughed, a sad, low sound that was more choked than it had any right to be. Wrapping her arms around him, she buried her face against the solidity of his shoulder, hanging on. “Please tell me I can stop calling you ‘Dad’ now.”

  “God, yes.”

  “Phew.”

  “You were so brave, baby. So brave.”

  Hardly. But it felt so nice to hear.

  His hands traveled up her spine, one coming to settle at the nape of her neck, and he dug his thumb into the muscle there. “You’re so tense,” he said.

  “Imagine that.” Her eyes stung, and the wrung-out, exhausted feeling from before had magnified a hundredfold. “Almost as if talking about all that shit stresses me out.”

  “Almost as if,” he echoed. Releasing her, he shifted to the edge of the bed and gestured at the empty expanse of mattress. “Lie down. Let me take care of you.”

  Whatever resistance she would’ve normally had to that sort of thing was officially on vacation. She flopped forward, landing on her stomach. Moaning, she petted the surface underneath her. “Mmm, bed. You’re my best friend.”

  “I know where I rank in this situation.”

  “Shh, I’m trying to have a conversation with your bed.”

  “Well, don’t let me get in the way.”

  “I won’t—” she started to say, but the words cut off when he put his hands on her shoulders. The warm pressure, gently kneading at the precise place where so much of her tension always lived had her eyes squeezing shut, a noise escaping her that she’d never admit to later.

  “Is this okay?”

  “I think I can manage to put up with it.” She was such a liar. It felt so good.

  And it was uncomfortable, too. Clearly he meant for her to lie there and let him give her a massage or a backrub or whatever he wanted to call it, but that was weird, wasn’t it? Her skin prickled with self-consciousness, a guilty selfishness at accepting that kind of gift.

  “Shh. Just relax.”

  “I’m trying.”

  He leaned in closer so his breath was in her ear. “That’s the problem.”

  The mattress rocked as he moved. Heat to either side of her made her breath suck in as he straddled her thighs. His hard-on wasn’t touching her, but she didn’t doubt it was there. The guy got aroused at the drop of a hat, but somehow this wasn’t about that. His hands drifted lower on her shoulders, one of his thumbs finding a knot, and he shifted to dig his knuckles in. The deeper pressure was too tender, too hot—

  Until it released.

  “Holy shit,” she groaned.

  “I’ll take it that was nice?”

  “So nice.” A part of her was melting, but another part felt all the more aware of the one-
sidedness of this act. “Want me to do you, after?”

  “If you’re still capable of it by the time I’m finished with you, I won’t have done my job correctly.”

  Another little stab of guilt ran through her. “But—”

  “Shh.” He dipped to kiss the nape of her neck. “Enjoy this. Okay?”

  His reassurances didn’t change the squirminess inside her, the sense of being looked at and on display. Of taking something she wasn’t sure she could return. But he went about this with such an easiness, touching and caressing with sure hands.

  Gradually, her muscles loosened, and she sank deeper and deeper into the mattress. Some of his quiet confidence seeped into her bones.

  “That’s right,” he said, soft and low.

  By the time her shoulders had officially been reduced to jelly, she was almost calm. When he tucked a finger into her towel in question, she lifted up.

  He peeled the fabric from her slowly, exposing her flesh to the breeze coming in from the fan. She was damp with perspiration and the water that had clung to them after their shower. He pulled the towel out from under her and then guided her down to lie flush against the mattress again. Naked. His bare thighs brushing the outsides of hers, the whole long line of his torso a radiant heat from above.

  “Adam—” His name spilled out from between her lips. She didn’t want him to stop, didn’t want anything but for this to go on and on, her flesh faintly giving off sparks as a new sort of anticipation banked and built. A low arousal settled warm and patient in her abdomen.

  “Shh.”

  He shifted, hands making their way down her sides. He kissed her sacrum and gripped her hips and then—Oh. A cool rush as he blew a low stream of breath across her spine. Her skin prickled, gooseflesh coming up, but then he was soothing it, massaging her with heated palms.

  He worked the whole length of her back over and over before edging even lower. Thumbs dug into her thighs and teased the insides of her knees. Her calves rippled with the best kind of achiness as he rubbed them. One at a time, he took her feet into his hands. And that was really weird, except when he ground a knuckle into the arch, she just about came off the bed.