“I can’t leave her.”
“We’ll call you if anything happens, kiddo,” my dad says. “And you’ll be back in what? A day and a half? We’ll be fine.”
“And I know you don’t want to let Adam down,” my mom adds. “Okay?”
I look at the two of them and feel a surge of love so strong it practically lifts me off my feet.
“Fine,” I tell them. “You win.” To Ethan, I add. “I’ll be out in five minutes, okay?”
He nods and takes a seat in one of the uncomfortable chairs. When he looks at me, his eyes are filled with warmth and concern. “I’ll be right here,” he says. “For as long as you need.”
I follow the nurse down a long hall with glass-fronted recovery suites on either side. She pushes aside the drape in my grandmother’s room and pats my shoulder as I pass.
“You come from strong stock, my dear,” she says.
But at the moment, I feel anything but strong. I feel like my body’s been pulled inside out, and all my nerves are on the outside, aching and exposed.
I tremble as I approach Nana’s bed. Tears spill from my eyes; my nose runs; and I’m so afraid of what I’ll see, but my feet move me across the linoleum floor to the shrunken figure lying half-buried between tubes and wires, encased in bandages.
This person looks nothing like Nana. Her face is bloated and has a strange, jaundiced sheen. Her eyelids are purple bruises, practically the only part of her visible atop an oxygen mask and a white sheet pulled up to her chin.
I hover there, taking a painful inventory of the metal cage encasing her leg, the bandages on her arms, across her chest, the blood seeping through gauze. I want to touch her, to give her a kiss, but I’m afraid I’ll shatter her with even a breath.
Drawing a chair up to her bed, I see her arm dangling off the bed. I brush my fingers along a patch of soft skin on the inside of her wrist and then tuck her hand back beneath the sheet. I close my eyes and pray for her, sending all of my love and strength to her body.
“Mia,” she said to me the other day. “It all goes so fast, but you never feel different inside.” She’d put her hand on my heart and said, “We’re the same age. In here.”
I put my own hand against my heart, feeling her life beat inside me. Then I get up to go find Ethan.
Chapter 52
Ethan
Q: Finish this phrase: The feeling of skin on skin is____?
Where are we going?” Mia asks.
It’s a testament to how deep in shock she still is that I’m almost pulling up to my apartment. She’s been quiet since we left the hospital and it seemed more important to respect her mood than to get into logistics, so I didn’t run my plan by her.
“My place.” I edge Adam’s Bugatti against the curb. This has to be the first time this car’s ever been parallel-parked. “It’s almost rush hour, so I thought we could make a pit stop for a few hours.” I turn off the engine, and the deep thrum quiets. “You’re exhausted, Mia. You need to rest. And you haven’t eaten all day. I’d feel better if you had some food in you.”
She looks at me for a long moment, and I can’t tell whether she’s worried about getting back to Vegas or Nana or what. But then she nods and says, “Okay. That sounds like a good idea.”
My apartment is clean and empty. Mia stops just inside the door and looks around. “Your place looks so different,” she says after a long moment.
It must. I’ve adjusted to the new furniture—the fresh flowers and colorful rugs and abstract prints on the walls—but I can only imagine how it’s hitting Mia, considering what she saw the last time she was here.
“Isis,” I say, dropping Adam’s keys on a table. “She civilized us. They’re out for the night, so we’ve got the place to ourselves.” I realize that might sound like I’m looking for something to happen between us, so I add, “I figured you’d appreciate the quiet.”
I lead her to the couch and make her sit down. Then I unzip her boots and set them aside. Mia watches me with tired eyes.
“What’s all this about?” she asks.
My face goes a little warm, but I ignore my embarrassment. No more holding back. “Let me take care of you.”
I need to. The need to ease her worry has been consuming me from the moment I saw her on the phone in Vegas.
She nods, and I pull a soft throw blanket from the back of the couch and tuck it around her. I bring her a glass of water, and put her cell phone on a pillow beside her. Then I turn off the lights, leaving only the small lamp on the side table lit.
“I’m going to throw something together,” I say. “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be right beside you.”
Isis is named after a goddess for a reason. Before she and Jason left tonight, she stocked the refrigerator. I see exactly what I was hoping for. Fresh bread. The right kinds of gourmet cheeses. In ten minutes, I have my mom’s world-famous grilled cheese sandwich prepared. I wash a few strawberries and make some hot chocolate, and bring it all out to Mia.
She’s lying down when I come back out to the living room. For a second, I think she’s asleep, but she sits up and brushes her hair back and smiles.
“That smells so good.”
“Wait until you taste it.” I sit beside her and hand her the plate. “Good luck taking that apart,” I add, remembering her habit of deconstructing sandwiches.
“Will you share it with me?”
“I’ll eat what you don’t finish.”
We share the sandwich, hot chocolate, and strawberries—each and every taste sweeter, sharper in the almost dark. The moment feels familiar, like that afternoon after Winning Displays on the park bench, but better. I was fighting so hard to stop myself from liking her then. Nothing’s standing between us now.
“Jason asked around,” I say, setting the empty plate and mug on the coffee table. “He said your grandma’s in the hands of the best specialists in the world. She’s going to be all right, Curls. She’s strong. She’s a fighter, like you.”
Mia pulls the blanket up and curls against me. It stops my breath how naturally she does it.
“I’m like her,” she says, then adds, “Thank you, Ethan.”
I tuck her close to my chest and her arm comes around my waist. We sit for a few moments, getting the feel of how we fit together in this new way. I take a lock of her hair and coil it around my finger. Right away, I know it’s my new favorite thing to do.
Sounds drift up from the street. A car driving by, playing a thumping base. People walking past, their voices cheerful and laughing.
“Did I ruin the job for both of us?” Mia says.
I’ve been texting with Rhett throughout the day. They’re making the booth work, he told me. But I don’t want Mia to waste a single thought on Boomerang.
“I don’t give a shit about the job.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I’m right where I should be, Mia.”
Which I didn’t feel for a second at that booth this morning.
The thought surprises me, and suddenly the feeling I had at the bar last night of my life’s compass spinning around crazily is back. But this time it’s calmer. It’s settling toward north again, and I know Mia is part of that, part of me finding my way again. There’s more though. I’m on the verge of making sense of something else. It’s almost within my reach.
Mia looks up at me, and the feeling fades, making room for only her.
“I don’t want to go back yet,” she says.
“Then we won’t. I’ll stay here for the next month if it’s what you want.”
“But we’d run out of food.”
“There’s always pizza delivery.”
“People might worry we’d joined a cult. A pizza-eating cult.”
“Eff ’em. Pizza cults rock.”
“What would we do with all that time?”
“Trust me, I’ve got you covered there, Curls.” I can think of a hundred things I’d do with her if we had a month alone. I have thought of them. Over
and over as I stared at her picture, or looked up at her across our workstations. But then I realize my ideas might not be exactly appropriate to point out right now. Seems rude to tell her I want her trembling beneath me, with everything else that’s going on.
Mia’s eyes drop to my mouth. “Ethan . . .” she says.
Damn. Looks like we’re on the same page.
“Soon, Mia. I promise.” I press a kiss to her forehead. “We have time.”
I won’t do this with her as a way to forget pain.
Instead of tucking back into my side, she leans up, bringing her lips to mine. I kiss her and gather her closer. She tastes like strawberries and chocolate, warm and sweet and perfect.
Mia’s knee comes up over my leg, and she nestles against my thigh. My self-control was already hanging by a thread, but now it buckles. I draw her leg over me, shifting her hips until she’s straddling me. Awesome job on not taking advantage of her, Ethan. But I’m drowning in her. In seeing her how I’ve imagined her a million times. In her sweet scent and the soft coils of her black hair brushing against my cheeks.
Her hands find the top buttons of my shirt. “I want to feel your skin,” she says.
I grin. “Okay.”
She laughs, like I said something amusing.
It feels like it takes forever for her to undo the buttons, but my shirt finally comes off. Mia sits up, and studies me with her photographer’s eye, but better. Like a picture could never be enough. Then her hands glide over me. Over my chest and my shoulders, and I let her until I can’t be a passive participant anymore.
I lean up and take her mouth, and my hands slip under her shirt. I tug at her bra and the garment unclasps. Leaning down, I lift her shirt and explore her with my tongue, convinced I could do this—taste her, touch her, make her mine—forever. Mia lets out a whimper and arches her back. Her core pushes against me. She sucks in a breath, her eyes sparking with surprise as they meet mine and then drop lower.
Her looking at me—at us together—is unquestionably the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
“That’s what you do to me, Curls,” I hear myself say.
“Good.” She smiles and leans down, peppering soft kisses around my lips. She shifts her hips and grinds against me, and my mind empties of everything. I have one solitary need. One goal only. I might have rocked her world before, but I’m going to give her the universe this time.
My fingers find the top button of her pants. I pop it loose, and at that moment, there’s a corresponding click in my brain. A downshift as a sliver of reason returns, and my hands freeze.
“Mia,” I say.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Come on, Vance. Do the right thing.
“Curls . . . we shouldn’t. Not yet. Not now.”
The tension in her back relaxes, and she melts against me, burying her face into the crook of my neck. I wrap my arms around her and hold her close.
I know I don’t have to say anything else. We got carried away. It happens every time we touch. But I want to make sure she understands.
“Mia,” I say, smoothing back her hair, “you said something at the bar yesterday. You said I didn’t choose you. That every time we’ve ended up together, it’s been because of circumstance. Because we just happened to be at the same place at the same time. You were right. It has been that way, and you deserve better. I’m going to give you better. I want you to know that. When this happens between us, it won’t be because we’ve been thrown together. It’ll be because we both choose it. Okay?”
“Okay.” Slowly, she slides to the side a little, still half on me, and says, “But you already did choose, Ethan. You came back with me. You’re here with me.”
I think about what she says for a long while as I hold her. How sometimes we’re already doing the right things, and we don’t know it. Long after she’s fallen asleep and there are no more sounds drifting up from the street, I think about how sometimes, all we really need is the wisdom to see what’s been there all along.
Chapter 53
Mia
Q: Best night of your life?
“First we need to get you out of these wet clothes,” Ethan says. “And then I’ve got a few ideas.”
He slides my panties down, and I lift my hips to help. Then I sit up and unhook my bra, flinging it to some corner of the room. A surge of giddiness washes over me. It’s like I’m drunk in waves tonight, and I’m back at high tide.
Ethan rises from the couch, my underwear in his hands. The blanket slips off to the floor, but I don’t mind.
“Wait . . .” I reach out for him, but he’s already weaving off toward the kitchen. Guess I’m not the only one at high tide. “Where are you going?”
“We need to dry these off,” he says. I hear him crash into something and curse, but he’s back in no time. He mumbles something that sounds like “toaster,” but I’m too focused on his full lips, his perfectly masculine features, to really take in his words.
I sit up and pull him toward me, my whole body practically vibrating with need. I want more of his lips, more of his hands. I want to make him feel as good as he made me feel.
He kisses me, and his tongue teases my lips, slides slowly, playfully, into my mouth. I moan because I’m so ridiculously hungry for him. And I can’t remember feeling this way before, like my body is a live wire, throwing sparks.
His lips still pressed to mine, he eases me back onto the sofa. Finally, I think, desperate for his weight, for the full, gorgeous length of him against me.
But he moves away to kiss my throat, his teeth grazing its hollow, tongue and hands darting everywhere. “Jesus, Curls,” he says, as he brushes his lips over my nipple. “I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you.”
Again, I reach for him, dying for more. For everything.
And again, he eases my hand away. “Still your turn,” he tells me, and his lips and tongue start a slow, maddening journey down my body.
“That’s not fair,” I protest, but his mouth grazes my navel, and he spreads my thighs apart with warm hands.
“Home team advantage,” he says and dips his head lower.
I wake in Ethan’s bed, and this time I know where my panties are: unfortunately, still on my body.
I can tell it’s still nighttime, but I have no idea how long we’ve slept. Vaguely, I remember him leading me to his bedroom, helping me out of my clothes and giving me one of his t-shirts to wear. And I remember lying with my head against his chest as the final bits of our first night together filtered through my mind.
That night, he couldn’t stop touching me, teasing me with his tongue, giving me pleasure over and over again until it felt impossible, like my body had been replaced by one meant to respond only to him.
Now he’s stretched out next to me, a shaft of moonlight catching his strong jaw and angling down to his muscled shoulder and arm. His chest rises and falls, and his warmth surrounds me, along with that delicious fire and salt scent of his.
We need to get back to Vegas. But I can’t move from this moment. Or I won’t. Instead, I slide closer, brushing my lips against his throat, rising up against his body.
“Wake up,” I whisper and run my tongue over his ear. I need him to be awake, to be fully with me the way I want to be with him.
“Mia?” He opens his eyes and smiles at me. I can’t remember ever seeing something as beautiful as that. “What are you doing?”
“I’m choosing,” I say, and kiss him. He tastes sweet, still, like the strawberries he fed me.
My body, my mind, every bit of me wants this. No more Sleeping Beauty. “I can’t wait any more. Can you?”
He laughs and pulls me closer. “Hell, no.”
We kiss and kiss until I feel drunk again, like that first night, like every molecule in my body wants to crash into every molecule in his.
I slip my hand under the sheet, brushing my fingers over the soft material of his boxers. My touch grows insistent, and he groans. The sound undoes me. It’s possible I
’ll lose my mind if I can’t have him. Not just in this moment but always.
I slip on top of him, straddling him, my thighs pressed against his hips. My eyes locked on his, I pull off the t-shirt he put on me last night. Then I smooth my body against his, brushing my breasts against his chest, skin against skin. I run my tongue over the delicious groove of his collarbone, up his throat, to his lips. I get lost there, in the taste of him, the feel of him beneath me. I slide my hips down, fitting myself against his hardness.
He gives a sharp inhale. “Wait, Mia,” he says. “I need to tell you something first.”
I graze his nipple with my teeth. “What is it?”
He tilts my chin up so that I’m looking at him. “I . . . I choose you.”
“I know,” I say. “You’ve probably told me a hundred times already, only I was too dumb to pay attention.”
“But I need to say it in real words. And I need you to know it has nothing to do with . . .” His hands brush over me, and I shiver. “This.”
“Really?” I press against him. “Nothing?”
He grips my hips and pulls me down harder, sending a shock of pleasure through my entire body. “Okay. Not nothing. But it’s more than that. It’s you, Curls. The whole package. The way you look when you’ve got your camera in your hands, like you can see through people, right down to their cores. And your crazy giant hair. Your laugh. How goddamn smart you are. All of it. I choose all of it.”
I want to say it all back to him, tell him how much I love his focus, his generosity. His eyelashes. His perfect, straight nose. His intelligence and loyalty. The way I know I can trust him with every part of me.
I want to, and I will. I’ll try to tell him that every day. And I hope those days stretch to the rest of my life. But for now, I just say, “Thank you,” and I kiss him, hoping he knows what’s contained in those words.
“You’re welcome,” he says, his hand slipping down to my panties. “Now let’s get rid of these.”
Boomerang Page 25
