by Alex Rosa
I hang up on her, tossing the phone onto my bed as if the damned thing burned me. I’m fuming, my face hot, my chest heaving.
Clink-clink.
She was trying to be light-hearted about the situation, but anything that involves Caiden is anything but light-hearted. No, it’s always heavy-sledge-hammer-hearted when it comes to him.
Normally, I would have laughed at her attempt, but I can’t, not with this, not when I just got him back.
Five days at most? What am I going to do? Why couldn’t I be given more time to enjoy what it’s like to have Caiden here in PineCrest, living carefree?
Clunk-clink.
My phone starts ringing again, and I know it’s going to be Janet trying to apologize, but it’s me who needs to cool off. I’ll call her back in the morning when I’ve collected my thoughts. I swear I will.
I shake out my limbs, more distracted by a very distinct sound. It’s familiar in a surreal way, and I need it to distract me from my waiting reality across the country.
I blink a few times as I approach my window, hoping I’m not making those sounds up in my head.
Clunk-tink.
My eyes flicker to the window, knowing that I definitely just saw something hit the glass. My heart is beating an intense dub-step remix at what that sound means. And I need it more than ever.
Clunk-clank.
That’s most definitely the nostalgic sound of my romantic hero throwing rocks at my window. My heart twists, pulses, and clenches, knowing I want to run into his arms for comfort, but also considers running in the opposite direction in search of safety from the hurricane of heartbreak that could ensue.
Logic doesn’t win this battle. Love does, and I worry how long it can hold out in this war.
“Caiden, you’re crazy,” I whisper as I reach for my window, unlocking the latch.
Tink-clunk.
I allow a grin, and the simple joy it gives me is indescribable. As I absorb the feeling, the word ‘grin’ doesn’t feel good enough to describe the smile that splits my face in half as I fling myself at the window in an attempt to lift it open.
The damn thing probably hasn’t been opened in years. My first shove only causes a bleak squeak to emerge from the worn wooden frame. I’m annoyed and overly eager, teetering on manic. I need this moment more than I need anything else. I need him.
I shove the window upward again, my palms digging into the wood, trying to lift it, and it still only squeaks its resistance, but doesn’t open.
Clink.
I’m fuming at this point, especially when I hear Soot smugly meow as he struts into my room, seemingly just to watch my struggle-fest.
“You think I’m funny, huh?”
The cat just plops himself on the floor in the middle of my room, as if to mock me more.
“I’m so not in the mood,” I grumble. “I’m under a lot of stress right now, Soot.”
And I need Caiden’s mouth to make me feel better.
Clunk.
I leap at the sound, giving it my full attention, and give it a determined scowl. I shove at the window again, lifting with all my might. I relentlessly push and push, holding my breath until the squeak screams longingly and the swollen wood gives. It springs upward. I nearly fall out the window as I let out an exasperated breath of accomplishment. I can hear Soot swiftly running out of the room, apparently disappointed with my success.
“Hailey, what the hell?” echoes impatiently from below.
I’m practically hanging from my windowsill, but that stupid smile is back in a flash when I see Caiden on the grass staring at me in one of the most picturesque scenes from my youth I have replayed in my mind so many times.
Though this Caiden is broader, stronger, and has thick scruff that makes him into a man, his smirk and moon-lit eyes tell me he’s the same. The same guy who never denied how crazy he was about me, like the way you would never deny the existence of gravity, or the wind. He would only ever shrug, as if his love for me was some infallible fact written in the stars.
It’s a shame it took me leaving him to realize how precious that sort of love is.
“I can’t believe you’re throwing rocks at my window right now,” I chide, forgetting my anger and choosing to live in the moment. “I have a front door, you know?” I feign an annoyed eyebrow raise, but he swiftly rejects it with a chuff.
“Oh, you love it, and you know it.”
That I do.
He doesn’t wait for my rebuttal because he’s already scaling the side of my house, springing onto the oak tree with ease before making it to the gutters on the roof of the first floor.
This Caiden is also much stronger. Something that took seventeen-year-old Caiden ten minutes, took strapping twenty-four-year-old Caiden less than five minutes.
He makes it to my window, which I’m still leaning out of, and presses his lips to mine without warning before coming inside.
I hum dreamily at the contact, turning how my body feels into an audible sound.
He tastes of mint and coffee, and smells of charcoal and pine. I’m putty in his hands over the blissful sensory overload.
“How did you like my grand entrance?” he says against my lips.
I grab him by the collar of his work shirt and tug him inside while the sounds of his rounding chuckles escape him.
“Most definitely like old times,” he quips as he slings a leg over the sill, and then the other before falling into me, his arms wrapping tightly around my waist.
I’d yank him into my bedroom just like this when I was a needy teen, more than him playing Romeo-through-yonder-window-breaks.
My hormones, when it came to Caiden in our youth, sometimes rivaled his. He was so much more patient than me. I wanted his pants off, and he wanted to kiss me stupid first.
Lucky for me, five years tests even the most patient man.
He stumbles into my room, pushing me back, tumbling us back onto my bed.
I release a yelp, pulling away to let out a string of laughter as he buries his head in my neck, kissing and nibbling over my pulse point, leaving a hot, sticky trail.
Before I know it, he’s swung me over his body, perching me over his hips.
My hands drag over the thick navy linen of his shirt. “Did you just get back into town?”
I can’t get over the look in his eyes, like he’s just ended a hunger strike and he’s about to have his first steak in months.
“Yeah, I did. To Brandon’s dismay, I said no to a beer and dropped him-the-eff-off so I could come see you. I haven’t even made it to my house yet. But guess where I dropped him off?”
I slide my hands down his torso, loving the sinewy feel as I shrug. “Where?”
“CeeCee’s. He was livid, but they were texting constantly while we were away, so I knew she missed him. I just dropped his ass off at hers. Think she’s gonna be pissed?” He wiggles his brows as his hands make contact with my thighs, gripping them near the knee.
“Was Brandon pissed?” I ask, loving how natural this feels and how much more I want. I swallow down my bubbling nerves, refusing to acknowledge them.
“I don’t know. I drove off before he could cuss me out. I skidded off in the direction of your house, stranding him at hers. I’m a fucking genius,” he exclaims.
I laugh a body-rattling laugh, the vibrations running a course through my body straight between my legs where my most private area is nestled nicely against Caiden’s slowly hardening length.
“Are you playing matchmaker now?” I ask.
He sits up, curling his arm around my waist and smirking like he’s won the Pulitzer. I’m so enthralled by the spark in his eyes when it’s matched with his feral grip on my body, pressing me to him. “Nah. I was just sick of Brandon moping the past three days.”
“Quite the Prince Charming you are.”
His smug grin only grows, causing the butterflies in my gut to not only flutter, but rage for an escape, and it’s hard for me to hold back my tiny gasp.
“Ya know what I love about summer?” he asks, changing tact, his tone turning gravelly and hot.
I tilt my head to the side as I feel his other hand greedily slide up the length of my bare thigh.
“What?” I ask.
“You in these tiny dresses.”
“Oh really—”
Ring. Ring. Ring.
My phone rings somewhere nearby. I see the blinking light of my screen on the bed to the right. Janet Martinez flashes. I lean over to grab for it, hating and loving so many different things at once.
“Don’t you dare answer that,” he says, his hand reaching its goal of my panties, his fingers stroking over the damp fabric. Just like that, I push the thought of my agent and my career into the far reaches of my brain, giving myself up to the tiny pressure he puts against the most sensitive part of my body. I turn my phone off and toss it onto the floor.
“Caiden, I—”
“—Nope.” He kisses the spot below my ear while sliding his fingers under the flimsy underwear, stroking me, petting me like you would to soothe a pain, but it only causes a throbbing need to ignite there, colliding with my unease. It wins the battle seamlessly before bouncing the unease away to a dark corner of my psyche to be dealt with at a different time.
I focus on Caiden. He makes me want to cherish this tiny moment. It’s mine. Caiden. All of it. I refuse to let time get the best of me like it always has. Even if the choices I made, or have to make, will come sooner or later. What happens if I just pretend that time doesn’t exist? What if only Caiden and I exist?
“I love you, Caid.”
His lips crash into mine as he twists our bodies back around, one arm around my waist, the other cupped against my sex as he flips me over and presses me back into the bed. He pulls the arm around my waist away to curve his hand around my jaw, anchoring my stare to his as he says, “And I love you, but ...”
His pause ignites a mini-panic as my whole-body tenses. “But what?”
He chuckles, completely oblivious to the unease that’s sitting like seeds in my gut, waiting to grow and bloom when the time is wrong and inappropriate.
Caiden kisses a trail down the nape of my neck, over the curve of my breasts, biting at the hem of my clothing that covers them before dragging his nose down my torso as his hands push up my dress.
“... But we need to get you out of these clothes. They’re obviously causing you discomfort.”
I giggle, releasing the tension, knowing I’m being absurd. I lift my hands to his head, raking my fingers through his thick hair.
“Is that so?” I ask while he rubs his scruffy chin back and forth over my bare stomach, igniting my lust and dissolving my worry into oblivion.
“Oh, yes. It’s too tight, I think. It’s the friction.” He pulls away as if to examine it.
He nods as he says, “Yep, the friction it has against your skin could cause a fire or something.”
I roll my eyes as I fight back a smile. “Well, thank goodness I have a fireman on hand to help, though I think this fireman needs to work on his wooing.”
He pulls my dress off, leaving me in just my bra and panties before perching his chin on my tummy as he grins something magnificent. “This fireman knows how to woo.” He takes a firm grip of my thigh, his fingertips digging deliciously into my flesh.
I shake my head, fighting back my squirming. “He could work on it. Although, at least he’s good with his hands.”
A humid huff of his laughter hits my skin. He scoots up my body, putting us nose to nose.
“I missed you,” he whispers, as if it’s a secret.
Hearing it makes me happier than I thought it would. He’s relit the furnace to my heart and turned up the heat. I wish I knew how to wrap my mind around it.
It’s weird when you realize you were never as happy as you could have been.
Water unexpectedly pricks at the corner of my eyes. “I missed you, too,” I whisper back.
“Whoa there, what’s wrong?” he asks, noticing the emotions I wish I could hide.
I shake off the tears, banishing them. I lick my lips and lift a heavy shoulder. “I’m just scared.”
“Scared of what?”
It’s such a good question, and I try for the most honest answer.
“That this isn’t going to last forever.”
He shakes his head, a hint of anger hiding under the furrowing of his brow as he sits up on his knees. Then he untucks his work shirt from his pants and pulls it off his body, tossing the garment across the room and giving me a 20/20 view of his chiseled chest.
He lays his body on top of mine, kissing a trail across my collarbone and up my neck until he reaches my lips. He kisses me hard, bruising even, as his lips dance with mine, his mouth only content when I moan against his.
He pulls away. “I’d never let anything get in the way of our forever. We worked too damn hard for it.”
I exhale, making sure that every bit of tension, sadness, frustration, anger, resentment, everything, comes out with that gust of breath.
I grab for his shoulders, pulling him to me. “I need you,” is the last thing I say before crashing my mouth onto his.
It’s his groan that satisfies me, fueling me forward. My lips coax his open, tasting him, devouring him, using him as a remedy to my worries, and feeling the instant cure.
I drag my hands down his chest, my fingers pressing into his muscle, loving his soft skin over the hard muscle until I reach his pants.
I unbuckle his belt, then push his pants and underwear over his perfect hips. He kicks his clothes off and presses his hips into mine. His hard length presses into my core against the damp fabric of my panties.
“I missed you so fucking much,” he breathes out. “I can’t live without you. I need you. I need this body...” He moves his mouth to my breasts, kissing over the soft skin as he reaches behind me to unhook my bra, pulling it off me. He places more tingling kisses over my sensitive buds, working his tongue around each before placing his face to mine. “... And this mind.” He presses a heart-wrenchingly sweet kiss against my forehead.
There’s so much I want to say, and so much I wish I could say, but words aren’t enough right now.
I kiss him like my life depends on it.
Both of his hands trail down either side of my torso until they hook into my panties, pulling them off achingly slowly.
“You’ve always liked to test my patience,” I moan against his lapping lips, and his laughter against my mouth ignites an electric current that matches the one that sparks when the head of his cock presses into the opening of my sex.
He pulls an inch away, a smug grin on his handsome face. “Tell me you need me again,” he demands.
My lips twitch, fighting back a smile. I nibble on my bottom lip, basking in the fact there are no barriers between us. His naked body against mine, matching smiles and goading looks that speak of lust and love. He’d never believe me if I told him, but he’s my equal in ways he might never understand. The yin to my yang, the Bonnie to my Clyde, the peanut butter to my jelly.
