Hold My Breath

by Ginger Scott

  Once our front desk girl, Clair, is off the phone, she checks us in and swipes my card for the entire cost. I catch Maddy’s eyes on the receipt, and I notice the small tick in her lips. Even a budget motel in this part of the city runs two hundred a night, and two rooms over three nights is a small family vacation.

  I hand Maddy a key card and lead her toward the elevators. I packed a few of Tanya’s things in my bag for her, so when we reach the third floor, I follow her to her room first.

  “Three sixteen,” I say, gesturing over my shoulder. “Looks like I’m across the hall in three nineteen.”

  “Oh…” she starts, her brow bunching briefly. She covers it by nodding and folding her arms over her chest, blocking my full entrance into her room behind her. “Good, we’re close then.”

  I lift my bag at my side.

  “Your clothes…I could just pull them out real quick, or…do you want them in a drawer?” It’s clear she doesn’t want me to follow her into her room.

  “I think I’ll just stick with this,” she says, tugging her thin blue T-shirt out from her stomach. “I’m beat from the day, so I think I’ll just probably crash, maybe shower in the morning.”

  “Right,” I nod, my mouth closed tight. “Probably a good idea. You want me to just call you or something to wake you up in the morning?”

  I’m asking more because I still don’t have Maddy’s phone number, and regardless of this awkward relationship purgatory we’ve landed in, I still want it.

  “No, I’ll be good. Just let me know what time to set the alarm for.”

  Shit.

  “Right…okay, well let’s plan on seven? Maybe eight? Let’s live a little…sleep in,” I say, pulling the right side of my mouth high. Maddy’s mouth matches mine, and I want to kiss it.

  “Split the difference, seven-thirty,” she says, wrinkling her nose when she says the time, like she’s telling a secret or being bad.

  I chuckle and point my key card at her.

  “Deal,” I say, tapping the card against the palm of my other hand a few times before nodding and turning to face my door. “This is me,” I say over my shoulder, as if it weren’t obvious where I was going, and I hadn’t just told her my number.

  “Good night, Will,” she says, and I wait long enough to watch her mouth stretch into the kind of smile that hits her cheeks and holds on to her giggle. Of all of Maddy’s smiles, this one has always been my favorite.

  My chest warms from seeing a genuine look of happiness stretch across her face, I do my best to smile back. “Good night, Maddy,” I say, turning and pressing my card against the reader at the same time she does behind me.

  Our doors beep in unison, and we both push the handles down and our doors click open. My heart is kicking me from the inside, telling me to wake up and quit being, as my uncle would say, a chicken shit.

  “Hey, Maddy?” The words rush out of me before I really have time to decide what comes next. She turns to face me quickly, her eyebrows raised and her body already in her room while I have yet to cross over my threshold. She’s trying to speed away while I’m trying to draw things out, but fuck it. No more lies.

  “Just then, when I asked if you wanted a wake-up call? It was really just a lame attempt to get your phone number,” I shrug.

  The same smile from before touches her lips, but this time it makes her blush. She looks down slightly, then peers at me through her lashes.

  “Good night, Will,” she says.

  “Good night, Maddy,” I repeat, at least satisfied that I went down swinging.

  Her door sounds with a click before I finish closing mine, so I give up for the night and twist and hook the latch at the top. Unable to help myself, I rest my head against the door and count to five, then look through the peephole with one last dash of hope in my belly. It bursts quickly when the hallway is empty on the other side.

  I turn to face my room—two double beds, a white wooden chest of drawers and entertainment center, a table with a coffeemaker on top, and a window with a view of the Fourth Street parking garage. I laugh to myself, wondering if Maddy’s sizing her room up right now, too, then I toss my bag on the far bed and step into the equally plain bathroom to run water over my face. The shower looks tall enough that I might not have to hunch, so I push the curtain back and twist the knob, happy when I feel the water turn hot.

  I tug my shirt over my head and walk out to the room, tossing my shirt, along with my jeans, over the arm of one of the wooden chairs near the table. As I turn to walk back to the bathroom, a quick movement under my door catches my eye. A small square of paper, folded in quarters, is flicked underneath, and I hear the sound of the keycard registering and a door clicking closed a second later.

  My mouth starts to curve as I step closer to the paper, and my hopeful suspicion is confirmed as I kneel down and pick it up. I see the first three numbers before I completely have it unfolded, and when I flatten it against my chest and hold it out to read, I fist pump with my other hand.

  “Still got it,” I say, celebrating to no one. I have a weird feeling Duncan can hear me though, and I chuckle at the thought of him eating his nightly bowl of cereal and holding up his hand to give me an air high five.

  I carry the note that reads call me with a series of beautiful numbers underneath into the bathroom, and I lay it on the counter next to the small bar of soap shaped like a leaf, then I strip off my boxers and climb in for the greatest hot shower of my life.

  Maddy

  I gave a boy my number once, in junior high. My parents’ number, actually. He told me he wanted to invite me to his birthday party, and almost as much as I wanted a call from a boy, I wanted to go to the birthday party. It was at an amusement park, and all of the coolest kids were already invited. The call never came, and I was devastated. I decided to hate the boy for the rest of my life—Colton Churchfield; I’ll never forget. He works at a gas station now—management. I saw him once when I pulled in to get a coffee and fill up on gas. He looked miserable, and I was overjoyed.

  This time, there is no party. There are no hopes of running into Will years later, in a dead-end job. There’s just a man. With my phone number. Fifty feet and two doors away from me.

  I keep getting up and looking through the peephole, excited at the thought that maybe he’s just coming over instead. Part of me wants that. Most of me wants that.

  My phone in my palm, I leave the comfort of my hotel bed, shoes dumped by the dresser and socks still on my feet, and shuffle back to the door to look again. I stand on the tips of my toes and let my head rest against the wood, pressing my phone between my hand and the door. When it buzzes, I drop it, fumbling as it bangs against the door on the way to the floor, bouncing end-over-end and eventually landing behind the trashcan just outside the bathroom. I pick it up quickly, but stay near the door, pulling my legs in to sit crisscrossed with my back to the hallway just on the other side.

  His text is on the screen.

  There is something to be said about unlimited hot water.

  My lips curl into my cheeks as I read, and I bring my hand to my face to feel my expression, proof that this smile is happening automatically—an instant reaction to the smallest note from him.

  Will makes me happy.

  I write him back.

  I was thinking the same thing about expensive sheets and a comforter as thick as a mattress.

  I wait while he types, bringing my knees up and cupping my phone in my hands, like I want to keep his messages a secret for only me. When my phone buzzes with his call instead, I feel my cheeks grow warm, and I scrunch my legs in tighter as I bring the phone to my ear.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “How’d you know it was me?” he chuckles.

  “I already gave you a special ring,” I lie. “A Fat Elvis song.”

  “Wow, Fat Elvis. I don’t even warrant skinny, movie-star Elvis,” he says.

  “Fat Elvis is better,” I say, stretching my legs out and crossing my ankles as he laughs.


  “I think we need to explore this more,” he says.

  “There really is no debate. His music meant more when he was older. More emotion,” I reply.

  “You mean more drugs,” he fires back.

  “Better clothes.” That response makes him laugh hard, and I love the way I hear it coming from his chest, like it’s deep—genuine.

  “I liken myself to more of a Jail House Rock kinda guy, is all,” he says, finally.

  “Hmmm,” I hum, lowering myself so my head is propped against the door, and I’m now lying on the floor, as close to him as I can be without leaving my room.

  “What, you don’t think I have moves? These hips—they swivel, darlin’,” he says with a slight twang.

  “That they do,” I respond, pulling a few strands of my hair in front of my face, hiding from the flirtatious words I just said. Will chuckles more, but after a second or two, it’s nothing but the sound of his room on one end meeting the sounds in mine.

  “Your lip ticks up, like Elvis,” he says, breaking the silence just as I feel my blush crawling down my neck and onto my chest.

  I punch out a laugh and roll to my side.

  “Does not!” I say, feeling my face, my mouth higher on one side. Son of a bitch!

  “It does,” he laughs lightly. “Always has.”

  I wait for the quiet to settle in again. I wait to be braver with him.

  “Just how many things have you noticed about me, Will Hollister?” The second my question is done, my words are replaced by the rapid pounding of my pulse, but my face—it’s still smiling. So hard it hurts.

  “Let’s see,” he says, and I hear him settling into his bed, his voice muffling as his phone presses against his face. “I noticed that you can’t stand having your hair pulled up in anything. When we swim, you pull your cap off the second we’re done.”

  “Well that’s sexy,” I say, covering my face and mentally kicking myself for letting that one slip out.

  “Oh, you wanted sexy things…” he says, and I open my mouth to say no, but shut it quickly, curious over exactly what he’ll say next. “I have lots of those, too, besides the Elvis-lip thing, which yes, Maddy, is so fuckin’ sexy.”

  “Oh,” I blush, my thumbnail quickly moving between my teeth.

  “Let’s see, first, there’s the way your legs curve along your quads, the muscle that’s there giving them this edge. The athlete part of me likes how hard you had to train to make it that way,” he says.

  “What does the…” I pause, taking a quick breath, “man side of you think?” I ask, now so red that even my arms look flushed.

  “Oh, the man side…” he growls low, a rumble from his chest. “That part of me likes the ride my hand takes when it starts just above your knee, then glides slowly up your leg to your panties, my fingertips tracing that lacey band that runs along the inside of your thigh and up over your hip.”

  Holy hell.

  “And then there’s the way your neck curves into your shoulder, the way your hair tickles your skin and makes you get goosebumps—just like it does when I kiss you there,” he says, and my body shivers at the memory of his mouth against me.

  “Your eyes do this thing, just before you race, where they haze and close in on their prey. I always imagined what it would be like for you to look at me like that,” he says.

  “Haven’t I?” I ask, waiting a breath while he considers what I’m asking. “Looked at you that way,” I fill in. “When we…”

  “Maddy, I was so focused on every other part of your body that day, I don’t remember what your eyes looked like,” he laughs.

  “Well maybe next time you will,” I say.

  “Next time.” I can hear his grin in his words.

  “Yeah,” I breathe. “Next time.”

  This time.

  The quiet comes again, filled only by the sound of his breathing, his breath a long draw that sounds as a warning in my ear. I chew at my nail, waiting…hoping.

  “Maddy,” he says, finally.

  “Yes?” I sit up and crawl to my knees.

  I hear his door open across the hall, and I stand, pressing my palm and forehead against mine.

  “Let me in,” he says.

  I drop my phone to the floor and unlock my door, his hands running along my cheeks and into my hair the minute he enters my room. He kisses me so hard that he walks me backward several steps before the door slams closed behind him. His hands sweep down my sides to my legs, and he lifts me; my legs wrap around him as he continues to take long strides toward the bed, where he drops me the instant we reach it.

  Will doesn’t waste a breath, lifting his shirt over his head and tossing it to the floor as he moves closer to me. I lift myself on my elbows and bend my knees as I lower my chin to my chest to look him in the eyes. He runs his hands up my legs and along my knees, pushing them apart enough to put his knee on the bed between my legs. I move myself backward slowly as he crawls toward me—predator, prey.

  “There it is,” he smirks. “That’s the look I love. Goddamn, Maddy, when you look like you want something.”

  His biceps flex from holding his weight, he climbs over me slowly, and I succumb, falling to my back until his elbows rest on either side of my head, his eyes raking over my face as his hands run through my hair and caress my cheek so sweetly I can’t help but close my eyes and just feel.

  “You have no idea,” he says, and I hum, “what?”

  Will’s lips brush against my cheek, and I feel his tongue tickle my ear, his teeth gently tugging on the lobe as he breathes softly, covering my skin in tiny bumps while my spine rushes with a sensation like morphine—numb and tingly all at once.

  “Just how beautiful of a woman you’ve become,” he says into the tiny space above my shoulder. I feel his words travel down my neck, down my body, and I pull my right leg up higher, the sensation settling where his hardness teases against my center.

  My eyes blink open, and his are waiting—adoring.

  I bring my hands to his face, my cool palms pressing softly against his unshaven cheeks, warm with want.

  “When you were eighteen, that summer…just before you left for State,” I say, stopping at the sight of his breath catching, his eyes moving just enough that I see this hint of hurt flash behind them. I run my thumb along his jaw, and he turns his face enough to the side so his lips catch my palm. He kisses it, never once breaking our gaze.

  “I would have picked you,” I confess, my chest lifting with life, my lungs filling with the weight of every single word I just put there between us. I believe it. My heart knows it, and maybe it knew it all along. “If you would have kissed me. A hint, or sign, or…anything. Will…” I let my hands slide down his chest, pausing over his heart. “I would have chosen you.”

  Seconds pass with his eyes on mine—the only movement the trembling sensation of his thumbs along my own over his rapidly beating heart. His lips fall to my forehead slowly, his eyes closing as he draws near, and I close mine.

  “I dream it every night, Maddy. Every single night,” he says against me. He moves so his forehead is resting on mine, his body lifted above me, his weight held by his hands on either side of my body. I watch his chest move in and out with heavy, long-drawn breaths. “There is not a single day that has passed since I’ve met you that I didn’t know in my heart you were supposed to be with me.”

  “You never said anything,” I say, touching his face. I lift his chin enough to look at me.

  “You were happy. Evan made you happy, and that…” he stops, shaking his head lightly, breathing out a regretful laugh that quirks the edge of his mouth, a small dimple shadowed by his whiskers. “Maddy, there is not a thing in this world I wouldn’t have done to make you happy.”

  His words land on my chest. They dig inside and squeeze my heart and stop my breath. So many things have twisted and turned since Will came back—since he came home. Our worlds have been on this slow decent, but they’ve collided together here and now. Ou
r truths have tangled, and it’s clear now as I look at him that there is no going back for us. We will always be everything we’ve always been for one another. We’ll always push; we’ll always compete—he’ll always be my fire—but not without everything else, we are beyond those things. Not without this.

  Will is deliberate as he moves his body flush against mine, my hands searching along his abs and around to his back, feeling every curve and ridge of the muscles that define his shoulders. His arms carry his speed while his back is where his strength is; I could spend hours tracing every bend along his frame. His hands move underneath me, pulling my chest tight to his as he rolls to his back and pulls me so I’m now on top of him. His hands slide up my sides, and his thumbs hook under my T-shirt as he drags it up my stomach and chest. I rise so I’m now straddling him and help him lift it the rest of the way, then slide the straps of my bra down my shoulders just before he takes over, unhooking the clasp in the front and gliding the soft cotton down the length of my arms.

  Every movement takes time. I stand and pull away my shorts and panties while he watches, a heavy breath doused in desire leaving his mouth. Will slides off his jeans and boxers, discarding them over the side of the bed before his fingertips reach for mine. He guides me back to him, his hands letting go of mine when I’m near enough that he can touch my thighs. His fingertips slowly snake upward, and I blush as he pauses with his thumbs circling along the top of my legs, where my muscles are the largest. The curves he said he admired bring a devilish grin to his mouth, and he blinks slowly, his mouth hung open as if he’s ready to taste. His gaze moves to my eyes, and he looks at me with a rawness that warms my core.

  I fall to him slowly, his erection hard against my inner thigh as I move down. His hand wraps around his hard thickness, and he guides himself into place just as I feel the heat of him against my center. As I sink onto him completely, my head falls back, my lips part, and I breathe out in pleasure.

  Slow.

  Tender.

  Every single movement meaningful.

  I move above him, my hips working in a steady rhythm that never builds, and that Will never rushes. It’s purposeful, meant to make this feeling last as long as it can. It’s something we both crave. My head falls forward and my eyes meet his just as my palms fall to his chest to steady myself as I move with him.