Say You'll Remember Me(52)

I turned and started unlocking my door.

“Samantha—”

“No. You lied to me,” I said, not turning around. The lock was sticking. “This was a date. The whole fucking time it was a date.” I groaned. “Tattoos are so expensive,” I said, almost to myself. I hate it when Tristan is right.

My door wasn’t cooperating. A co-conspirator trying to keep me on the porch.

A hand came up from behind me and rested gently under my elbow. “Samantha…”

My heart slammed against my rib cage at the contact. The key stilled in the lock.

He hadn’t touched me since the last time he was here, almost three months ago.

His touch was like kryptonite. I lost the strength to move. Or the will. Or both.

He came up behind me. Closed on me like a wall of him. I felt the heat from his body warming the tiny space between us, the piney scent I kept breathing in from his jacket when we sat at the firepit, advancing on me, drifting around me in an invisible caress I wanted to draw into my lungs.

“Please…” he whispered.

His hands slipped around my waist and he drew my back to his chest in a soft hug. So gentle a small breeze could blow him off me—but I couldn’t.

His nose dipped into my hair and he breathed in.

I put my forehead to the door and squeezed my eyes shut.

He’d come back for me.

It was so… everything. It was romantic and sweet and what every woman wants—only I knew that even though I wanted him, this was bad. An addiction that would only get stronger and I’d never get enough of him to satisfy me. This was reckless. Completely irrational. We could never work.

So why was I unable to tell him no?

I knew if I asked him to, he’d let me go and leave. All I had to do was say the words.

But I couldn’t. Because I’d used up my words. All the strength and resolve that I’d had for this situation were gone. I gave it all the last time and I had nothing left.

I should never have gone to dinner with him. I should have blocked him, months ago.

But even as I thought that, I knew he would have shown up here anyway. If he was feeling even half of what I felt, he was always going to come back. And would I have been strong enough to not open the door when he did? No. Definitely no.

My thin dress provided absolutely no barrier between his body and mine.

His gentle breathing rose and fell against my bare shoulder blade, blew over my skin in humid currents. It rocked me like a tide, pulling me closer and closer.

If I turned around, I was going to lose myself. There would be no control. At all.

I wanted to turn around.

Be face-to-face with him while he held me like this. Maybe stand on my tiptoes and nuzzle his Adam’s apple. Kiss the sharp edge of his jaw, the soft corner of his mouth, feel him smile under my lips.

“I missed you,” he whispered from behind me. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I tried. I really did. And I’m sorry I came here without telling you the truth, but I didn’t think you’d see me and I just… I just needed to be in the same room as you.”

I let out a puff of air.

“We can’t do this,” I breathed.

“Not seeing you is terrible,” he said quietly. “And I don’t want to do it anymore.”

That’s it. I gave up.

I turned around and kissed him.





22





XAVIER


SHE SPUN IN my arms, her hands slid up my chest, and I got to do the thing I’d been wanting to do since the second she opened the door five hours ago.

I got to kiss her.

All night I’d been in a state of dull panic. Knowing the clock was ticking, knowing she was only giving me this one dinner and that dinner wasn’t a date. I’d been trapped between being so happy it was happening and dreading that as soon as it started, it already had an end.

I had to do something. This couldn’t be our last time together. Even if the something was pouring everything out and telling her how hard it had been to pretend to forget her, and hoping that was enough, because I could not live like this.

I couldn’t act like I didn’t remember what being with her felt like and that it hadn’t changed me.

She didn’t think we could have parallel lives. But we were. Even when I couldn’t talk to her and she was two thousand miles away, I was next to her. Seeing her tonight didn’t even feel like we’d been apart, it felt like we’d been on pause.

And now she was kissing me.

There was a tiny glimmer of a chance. And I felt instant peace.

The gnawing discontent of the last two months was finally quiet, and all I could think in this moment of relief was that I was kissing my wife.

I couldn’t tell you how I knew this. A pristine realization on a dim porch in the middle of the night. The scent of her perfume bringing up memories of a beach under the moon, the sound of crashing waves, a kitten with fur that smelled like her, a shitty hotel room or a UFO that was the only place in the world I wanted to be, simply because she was in it.

I had friends on their wedding day who still weren’t totally sure—and I was sure, even this early. I didn’t need more information, I didn’t need more time. I just knew.

And now that I did, the panic was back.

Because even though she was kissing me, she still might not ever let me see her again. If she sent me away, I was going to be condemned to think about her for the rest of my life.