“So beautiful,” she murmured with a sigh.
I elbowed her gently. “Glad you came?”
“Yeah. It’s been a long time since I did something like this—just sat and watched the sunset. It feels like there’s always something to be done at work or at home. No time to sit still.”
“I know what you mean. Whenever I sit still, I feel guilty, like there’s something I probably should be doing.”
“Exactly.” She shook her head. “I can’t even remember the last vacation I took. Or even the last date I went on.”
“Good. Must not have been too memorable.”
Laughing, she poked my shoulder. “Jealous?”
“Always.” I reached for her, hauling her onto my lap, facing me. “From day one, I hated it when you’d talk about guys.”
“I know. I remember. But you talked all the time about girls.”
“Well, I didn’t want you to think I liked you or anything.”
“God forbid.” The wind blew her hair around her shoulders, and she gathered it in both hands on one side. “We’d spent all those years building up animosity, we couldn’t throw all that away just because we were attracted to each other.”
“Hell no. What fun would that have been?”
She grinned. “You know, I used to wonder what would have happened on prom night if I hadn’t walked away.”
“Um, I’d have popped your cherry about four months sooner.”
“Maybe …”
“Definitely. I wanted you so bad that night.”
She laughed. “I’m glad we didn’t do it then. I think it would have changed everything.”
“Probably,” I agreed, thinking back to the way events had unfolded over the years. We definitely didn’t have a conventional beginning. “Our story is sort of zig-zagged, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but it’s ours,” she said, giving up on holding her hair in place and wrapping her arms around me. “And it brought us here, so I like it.”
I pressed my lips to hers. “Me too.”
19
Chloe
Now
Back in our room, I slipped off my sandals. “Today was magical.”
Oliver locked our door and set his wallet and phone on the dresser. “It was.”
“I’d forgotten how beautiful it is here. I need to come back more often.” I went over to the window and looked out toward the lake, but it was too dark to see anything.
“We’ll come back later this summer.” Oliver came up behind me and wrapped me in his arms. “How does that sound?”
“Good. Maybe we can go to South Manitou again. Maybe even when they’re planting the rye!”
Oliver laughed. “Whenever you want. I’m glad you’re excited.”
“I am. I really am.” Spinning around to face him, I rose up on tiptoe and looped my arms around his neck. “I haven’t been this happy and excited about something in forever. Thank you. For asking me to do this with you. For insisting I listen to you, when all I really wanted to do was punish you.”
He tipped his forehead to mine. “I deserved it.”
“You did. But I’m ready to forgive you and move on.” I smiled. “Maybe the timing wasn’t right before. Maybe we still had growing up to do. Maybe if we’d have gone ahead with the plans we made then, we wouldn’t be here today. And I think today is pretty fucking awesome.” I pressed my lips to his, then jumped up on him, wrapping my legs around his waist.
“It is,” he agreed, walking over toward the bed. “And it’s about to get even better.”
We went slow. Deliciously, torturously slow.
With every article of clothing removed, we lavished time and attention on the skin revealed. The inside of his wrists. The small of my back. The lines on his abs. The curve of my hip. Calf muscles. Collarbones. Chests.
He ran his hands over every inch of my skin as if he’d never touched anything as soft or sexy. He whispered sweet, dirty things in my ear that made me blush. He buried his head between my thighs and used his lips and tongue and fingers on me until I arched and gasped, writhing beneath him with my hands fisted in his hair.
“So was that less than five minutes?” I asked, still panting as he crawled up my body.
“I have no idea. I’m not in a rush this time,” he said, bracing himself with his hands above my shoulders.
“Me either.” I reached down and took his hot, hard cock in my hands. “But don’t make me wait.”
I didn’t have to worry—he was just as anxious to be inside me as I was to have him there. As his hips rolled over mine, my hands snaked around his back and down over his ass, pulling him closer, deeper, tighter to me.
He went slow until he couldn’t hold back anymore, until I was begging him to fuck me harder, until our bodies were so overwhelmed by need they took over, bucking wildly against one another until the tension spiraled so tight and high it snapped, sending us spinning over the edge, soaring head over heels, exploding like stars.
Afterward, we snuggled up with our arms around each other and my head on his chest. I was already falling asleep when I heard his voice.
“Chloe.”
“What?”
“I need to say something.”
“Okay.” I picked up my head and looked at him.
“I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. And I’ve never been more sure that something is right. I know it was a risk for you to trust me, but I won’t let you down.” His crooked grin appeared. “From now on, it’s you and me.”
Pure joy radiated through me. “Are you trying to make me fall for you, Oliver Pemberton?”
He grinned. “We don’t fall. We jump.”
I fell asleep with a smile on my face, positive that the risk had been worth it, that my heart had finally led me in the right direction, that people really could change.
This was real. I felt it way down deep.
We spent most of the morning in bed, looking at each other in the sunlight streaming through the window, running our hands along each other’s bare limbs, discovering freckles and dimples and scars in hidden places.
“What’s this?” I asked, tracing a scar on his ribcage.
“I gouged it on some big rocks in the lake one summer.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, it hurt. But I’d jumped in to save this one kid who’d fallen off the boat, couldn’t swim, and wasn’t wearing a life jacket.”
I gasped. “Oh my God! Are you serious?”
“No.” His crooked grin appeared. “But that’s a better story than ‘I was being a jackass jumping off a rock pile and slipped.”
I slapped his chest. “Jerk. I believed you.”
“I know. You’re so gullible.”
“Do you even teach sailing to kids or was that bullshit too?” For a moment, I had a small panic attack that I was gullible, and Oliver was still a con man, a wolf in preppy sheep’s clothing.
“Yes. I wouldn’t lie about that, Chloe. You can take that suspicious look off your face.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know? You have to admit, you have a history of stretching the truth when it suits you.”