CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
At first, I think I’ll need to lead him. Like he’s a virgin. Like he’s never done this before. And that same part of me wonders, for scant seconds, if this is right. Because something in Gavin has changed. When I met him at the Nosh Pit, he was one man. When I saw him later at the Overlook, he was another. This is a third, and in a way, I’ve never met him before.
But then I see something in his eyes, and I realize who he is.
The Nosh Pit Gavin — friendly, joking, happy, and lightheartedly flirtatious — was half of him. the Overlook Gavin — arrogant, confident, cocky, and dismissive — is the other.
This is who he really is. This man here is who he must have been all those years ago, before the accident ripped him down the middle.
We’re in my apartment. Lisa isn’t here. She stays out late on Fridays and Saturdays, rarely coming home before morning. It’s not a far walk, but it’s farther than Gavin’s place, which is only a block away. But by unspoken agreement, we didn’t go there, even though something is clearly pulling us somewhere to be alone, to heal whatever’s gone wrong. Because that’s predictable. Because that’s what Gavin would normally do when leaving the club with a woman.
There’s a period of time where I think we’ll keep on walking forever. We’d never go to any apartment, any enclosed place. Because it would be wrong. But it’s not wrong, and every little sign is telling me so. Chloe and Freddy told Gavin to get some air. Danny even came up to me and told I’m fired for the night, with pay. Dimebag was beside me, and I got the feeling they’d been in the midst of an argument or at least a disagreement, and the overweight former child star had simply followed Danny when he’d come to us. Danny smiled. Dimebag said, “Yeah, get out of here,” and Danny stared at him as if to say they weren’t finished with whatever they were in the middle of.
I don’t guide us to my front door. We simply arrive. I invite him inside, and he agrees too readily.
I wonder if this is right. If he’s in a good place, and if I’d be taking advantage, the way he so often does. But just when I’m thinking I should call things off because he seems too fragile, Gavin reaches out and undoes a button on my blouse.
“We don’t have to do this.” It’s hard to force the words out, because my body is screaming for him. The song’s first notes were a splash of cold water. There was no delay; my anger and guilt and hurt vanished in an instant. The fire was burning. I felt like a death row convict granted a pardon at the final second. I heard Brandon’s voice, and my old infrastructure re-solidified. I felt strong. I felt right. I felt the burn. Watching him, it was like the clock was reset with no interlude between.
Gavin doesn’t respond. He leans forward and kisses my neck, his breath hot on my skin.
My head tips back. My eyes close without permission.
“If you’re not ready … ” I say in an exhale.
He puts his hands on my hips. Pushes me gently back until I’m against the wall. My shirt is fully unbuttoned, my bra exposed, and the fan above drags a breeze across my stippled flesh. He kisses farther down, to the place where my shoulder blades meet in the middle, then to the hollow of my throat.
“Gavin … ” I start to say again, but my well-meaning protests are losing their steam. It was meant to be another chance to stop this, a chance to slow down and take whatever this is more slowly. But my word leaves in a breathless gasp, and I find my hands straying to his belt, to the jeans below, to what awaits me.
But I can’t be like this. I can’t be the user his dark half has been all this time. So I grab his head between my palms and, with tremendous effort, drag his blue eyes up to meet mine.
“We can wait, Gavin,” I tell him, my heartbeat making my words come out uneven. “We can take our time.”
“I’ve waited long enough.”
“If this is hard for you … ”
A sad little smile crosses his beautiful lips.
“Abigail,” he says, and the purr of my name, from Gavin, melts my insides. “In three years, this is the first thing that seems easy.”
He moves to kiss down my chest again. But with more effort than I’ve ever mustered in my life, I pull him back up as the pressure between my legs begins to pound.
“I won’t be a one-night stand. I won’t have sex with you if I’ll wake up tomorrow as another notch on your bedpost.”
Some of the lust leaves his face. A hand comes up and caresses my cheek. The other hand stays where it is, on my lower stomach, and it’s all I can do to not scream at him to push it lower, beneath the fabric and over my tender skin.
“I don’t just want to ‘have sex with you,’” he says. “I have a lot of ‘sex.’”
The way he says the word, like he’s couching it, leaves me curious. I should be offended, hearing him talk about others right now. But I’m not. I want that hand to move from where it is to somewhere better. Because I’ve waited long enough, too.
“What I want,” he says, “is to wake up with you, and for you to stay with me after it’s over.”
Weakly, knowing how I must sound, I say, “When what’s over?”
His hand moves an inch downward, the tips of his fingers below the fabric of my jeans, beneath the hem of my panties.
“What I want,” he says, the hand moving slowly downward, “is to make love to you.”
It should sound corny. It should make me laugh. Instead, it makes me grab his shirt with both hands. Instead, it makes me kiss him.
“You don’t love me,” I say, making my voice strong but feeling none of it.
“All I know,” he says, “is that you’ve made me believe again.”
I think of the song. Of how he looked singing it. Of the words he sang. Of the story he told about himself and Grace, himself and someone else — himself and me, if I allow myself to believe as he’s believing. His song about moving on. And I recall his eyes, on me, as he sang words I sort of wrote, that we both sort of remembered from nothing, as if from outside. As if the song was pre-written. As if this was meant to be.
My hands slide up his chest, below his untucked shirt. His chest is strong, smooth, harder than I’d have expected. He has a lean feel, and all I want is for him to press himself against me. Press into me. To make me his. To make both of us whole.
“Tell me you love me,” I say.
He stops again, and this time I want to scream at him to keep going. To unbutton my pants. To paw my breasts. To touch me where I’m yearning. Now I’m two people, and they’re warring as this unfolds. If he tells me no, I’ll still want him. If he says the wrong thing, I won’t want him to stop.
“Oh, Abigail,” he says, his eyes boring into mine. “You’ve woken me up. You’ve made me want to write. To play. To sing. And to live.”
“Kiss me,” I sigh. “Please. Please just kiss me.”
“Of course I love you.”
“Then show me.”
I shrug my shirt to the floor. I reach back and unbutton my bra. Then toss it aside. Despite his obvious lust, Gavin seems hesitant, like he might offend me, now, by being eager. Men. Always believing that the act of love is somehow separate from the emotion itself.
I begin to unzip him, and he finds his fervor. He kisses me hard enough to knock my head against the wall then explores me with his lips, his tongue, his warm breath. He turns me around and pushes me toward the bed, and when the backs of my legs strike it we fall in a heap. I’m laughing until he silences me with a hand, and then his mouth on my right breast. My laughs die to nervous giggles, and he looks up at me with a devilish grin.
He slides down the bed, taking my jeans and panties off as he goes. I’m fully bare, my wetness licked by the fan. He kisses my sex on his way back up, and I lose a nervous little laugh again as he comes up, his lips on mine.
It’s been so long. So long since I’ve been touched that way.
“This isn’t fair.”
He pulls back to look quizzically at me.
“You’re fully dressed, and here I am naked.”
Gavin laughs. His hand slides down my belly, and one finger parts my sex, sliding over my clit. I suppress a shiver, but inside it’s a bomb waiting to explode, and it’s all I can do to hold it back.
“Maybe I want to do what I want. While you lay here helpless.”
I roll, and now I’m on top. His hands move to my ass, grabbing it, as I slither down his body, repeating what he just did to me. His cock is hard as steel as it comes free, and I grip it as I return to his mouth, allowing its hardness to glide between us, pressed against my breasts, my stomach, its heat settling nearly between my wanting legs. Then I pull his shirt away, and he nips up at me, pecking at my neck, my ear, my lips.
“Now we’re even.”
He rolls us again. His hand slides over my clit, one finger parting me to slide inside. I gasp against Gavin’s neck, the scent of him filling my senses, his flesh against my opening mouth. He touches me for a while, increasing tempo, and I think I might come. But then he stops, and I feel the tip of him touch me, waiting, denying.
I grip his back. I grip his ass, pulling him into me. He enters me smoothly, as if we were meant to be like this from the start. As he fills me, my head tips back on the soft sheets. His whole body is on me from top to bottom, his chest moving against my erect nipples, eliciting wave after wave of electric pleasure.
He holds me as we make love. As his hardness fills me. We’re one long unit, tightly bound from top to bottom, our movements small and deep. I feel all of him. His hips press against my clit as he thrusts; his mouth is still on my lips and neck, giving me suffocating kisses. I climax once then again. When I do, I scream against his neck, my eyes watering. I grip him harder, my nails on his back. Then he heaves and thrusts and I feel him coming down, our union moving from frenzy to tiny, jerking spasms.
Finally, he rolls away, but our arms won’t fully part and we lie there in afterglow, our breath slowly returning to normal, face to face, Gavin actually smiling.
Contented, blissful sleep follows.
In the morning, we wake with the sun and do it again.