Great Big Beautiful Life(78)
He runs a hand over his mouth as he considers his word choice. “No one knows this,” he begins.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” I insist, reaching for his hand.
He knots his long fingers through mine. “I told you that when I was a kid I felt like I had to be perfect. But there’s more to it than that.”
“Like what?” I ask.
He blows out a long breath and blinks hard a few times, like he’s working himself up to something. “It wasn’t just me. My mom…she had pretty severe depression and anxiety, when we were younger. I guess my dad knew, but no one else really did. And when I was in high school…” He trails off, coughs. “It got really bad, really suddenly. Or I don’t know, maybe she just suddenly stopped hiding it from us. She almost overdosed, and she had to go get inpatient treatment for a while. My dad was in the middle of a campaign and…she asked us to lie about it. Pretend she went to help her parents for a couple of months.”
“What?” I crawl across the small gap on the couch, lifting his other hand into mine, his fingers still chilled from the cold rain. “Hayden, I’m so sorry.”
“I understood why she didn’t want strangers knowing,” he says. “If it had gotten out, it honestly would’ve been big news in my hometown, and it wouldn’t have been treated sensitively. But the thing that bothered me was that…until then, I had no idea what she was dealing with. She always acted…fine.”
I lift his hands to my lips, breathing warmth into them. “That’s not your fault,” I tell him. “You can’t tell what’s going on with a person just by looking at them.”
“I know,” he says. “But I always felt like…if she weren’t trying to be so perfect all the time, if she didn’t need to look so happy…maybe we would’ve known before it got that bad. Pretending everything’s fine only works for so long. And I don’t know. It freaks me out a little, that I could…that I could feel like this, about someone who’s good at pretending to be fine. That I could miss it, if you’re actually not. It was about me. Like you said.”
His words crack something open in me. I climb into his lap, winding my arms around his neck. “I’m sorry,” I say. “That all makes sense.”
His arms curl around my back, holding me to him. “I was rude,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
I touch his jaw, angle his face toward mine. “One of us is going to have to stop this, or we’ll be apologizing all night.”
He kisses me again, this time a little faster, rougher. He pulls back to rest his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, teasing, and I laugh into him, kiss him again, soft and tender this time. His hand rises to cradle the back of my head. Both of mine skate up his jaw. I pitch my weight forward into my knees, on either side of his hips, and shift myself into him, letting the kiss deepen.
He reaches for the bottom of my sweatshirt, and I draw back to let him lift it up my torso and over my head. He drops it on the floor, whispering something under his breath when he realizes I wasn’t wearing anything under it. He lets his large hands skim up from the base of my bare stomach to my chest, and I hold my breath, anticipating the moment his palms will cup me, scared they won’t.
My head tips back on a sigh at the light contact when they finally do, chills erupting from the waistband of my pants up to the crown of my head. He leans in slowly, kisses one side of my collarbone, then the other. “Yours too,” I whisper scratchily, and his eyes tilt up to mine in the dark.
I reach for the hem of the shirt I loaned him, and he straightens, letting me slowly slide it up him, the heels of my hands tracing his warm skin as they go. My thighs go hot and liquid at the texture of his skin.
He lifts his arms and lets me push the shirt over his head, leaving his chest bare in the mix of soft candlelight and the lantern’s harsh glow. “I wish I could see you better,” I whisper, letting my hands rove down him now that the shirt’s out of the way.
“Me too.” His voice is low and hoarse. Gingerly, he pulls me back to him, our bodies melding together. The low sound that moves through him makes my blood vessels start singing. The pressure between my thighs builds into an ache. I roll myself against him, and he returns the favor, a white-hot streak of pleasure searing through me at the firm feeling of his chest pushing into mine. His hands climb down beneath my ass, angling me where he wants me. I roll my hips against him again, the friction pulling a small, breathy sound from me. He wraps me around him as he kisses the side of my neck, lets his mouth move lower.
“What about your rules?” I say hazily. “Aren’t we breaking them?”
“Bending,” he says roughly. “Not breaking.” He takes my nipple into his mouth, and I almost start crying. I slide my hand into his way-too-tight sweatpants, and to my incredible relief, he lets me. “God, Alice,” he groans against my chest, his teeth scraping over me again. “It’s not enough.”
I move myself against him harder, but he’s right: It’s not nearly enough. I want to taste him. I tell him as much and wind up on my back on the couch, him crawling down me, yanking my sweatpants down my hips as I buck up from the couch. His hands squeeze my bare thighs, and I writhe toward him as he presses his parted lips to the inside of one leg. He licks me once through my underwear, then sits back to pull my pants the rest of the way off, settling himself between my thighs. For a few seconds, we’re mindless with hunger, my thighs wrapped around his hips, our mouths colliding, his hands clutching every bare part of me and mine scratching down the wide expanse of his back.