How to End a Love Story(79)

He drops another kiss on her inner thigh, then moves up until he’s above her. Her hands drift down and she can feel a wet, sticky trail of precome against her leg, and the dampness of her own orgasm. It’s messy, the way they want each other, and she doesn’t seem to care.

“I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you,” he gasps when she squeezes him, as if he can hear her thoughts.

He grips her by the hips then and rolls them over so that she’s perched above him, her hands on his shoulders. She sinks slowly onto him as he guides her down, reveling in the way he exhales and scrapes her skin with the force of his grip as she takes him farther into her body. She moves her hands up her own body because she knows he likes to watch her touch herself, and his eyes gleam with wanting as she cups and squeezes her breasts.

He grabs her hands then, and lifts them above her head as he leans forward to kiss her. There’s a strange kind of intimacy in being pressed against him like this, as her hips draw slow circles below them.

He gasps against her mouth. “I’m not gonna last much longer.”

“Me too,” she murmurs. “Can you wait for me?”

He makes a small, pained sound at the back of his throat, and nods. “What do you need?”

“Just this.” She squeezes him with her inner muscles, and his breathing goes ragged. “This, and you, and this, and you. . . .”

“Helen,” he rasps into her neck. “You have me.”

She falls over the edge then and feels him climax too. He comes in shaking waves, and she’s surprised to feel tremors still racking through him when she returns back to earth. She holds his face in her hands and kisses him then, loving the taste of salt and her on his tongue.

“You have me too,” she murmurs against his mouth.

He doesn’t say anything, but drops his head to press a reverent kiss to her shoulder, and she feels the strangest sweep of melancholy wash over her. He chuckles when he looks back up at her.

“Missing me?” he asks, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

She nods.

“But you’re right here, crackerjack,” he says, squeezing her ankle. “Happy birthday to me.”

She laughs then, and he scoops her up and carries her into the shower, and she doesn’t think about it again for the rest of the night.





Twenty-Five




It’s remarkably easy to imagine what it’d be like to love Grant Shepard.

Helen sets up the dinner table with placemats he has because his mom forced him to take them back to California after Helen made a passing comment about liking their place settings. They’re made from a plain linen fabric and feature a scrolling embroidery border (“stitched in the 1920s by his great-grandmother Margaret!”) and are unlike anything Helen ever had growing up.

Grant cooks his own birthday meal—he’s using old family recipes from a box she found in his kitchen a while back, and she once took an edible and separated out each dish she wanted him to make for her. Folded in between instructions on hot cross buns and Christmas roast and steak Diane, there are newspaper clippings boasting of local events featuring Grandma Vicki’s famous German-Irish apple cake and Grandpa Carl judging a “nicest ears” competition. There’s even a photo of seven-year-old Grant and Grandma Vicki in the kitchen, covered in frosting and bad sweaters and perfectly joyful smiles.

“I wish I knew you then,” she says, touching the smiling Grant in the photo.

She thinks of where she must have been at the time—in that first cramped apartment in Union, New Jersey, sharing a bedroom and learning about mind over matter, probably—and feels some familiar ache stretching up.

Present-day Grant brushes a kiss to the side of her head and gently nudges her away from the stove to stir some delicious molten thing.

“You gotta stop saying things like that out loud—everyone will know,” he says, a teasing note in his voice.

She turns and grabs him by the collar and kisses him very suddenly, and his arms come up automatically to meet her. When she releases him, he has an endearingly mussed quality about him, and she wonders how long she could make that last. He looks surprised, and pleased. It’s a good combination on him, and she’d make him wear it every day if she had the right to.

“Okay,” she says, and returns to her task of chopping spring onions.

He glances sideways at her.

“How much time do we have?”

She glances at her cell phone.

“Not a ton. Nicole’s coming over early with Owen to heat something up in the oven.”

She moves off to the sink, when he suddenly catches her in his arms.

“Not what I meant, crackerjack,” he says, and she vaguely registers that he’s got two nicknames for teasing her now—sweetheart for filth, crackerjack for something sweeter. “How much time do we have, you and I?”

She stares back into his eyes and thinks she’s so close to falling into them, she might have already done it.

“Enough,” she says.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Grant answers slowly, rubbing his thumb on her forearm, and the doorbell chimes. He lets her go. “Saved by the bell.”

Nicole and Owen bring baked brie and charcuterie and demands for wine.

Owen slaps Nicole’s arm when he sees Grant gently brush back Helen’s hair as she stoops to open the oven door.