Tell the truth.
Honesty is the cornerstone of all I am now. I have to own myself and my life, so I take a breath and speak it. “I don’t know who the father is. It’s kind of a blur, that whole period.”
The light in his eyes dims the faintest amount, and I’m instantly defensive, casting away any thought of connection I had. “People don’t go to rehab for slightly misbehaving,” I say sharply.
He reaches for my hand and captures it. “I know.”
“But you’re judging me.” I pull my hand away.
“You’re right,” he admits, and there’s the slightest roll of his childhood accent amid the British. “I apologize.”
I duck my head. A flush burns up my chest to my cheekbones, and I wish I could snap my fingers and disappear. I wish I could be back in rehab, where somebody would say, Oh, that’s nothing. Let me tell you . . .
“Maya,” he says softly. “I am so sorry. Please don’t banish me, all right?”
I laugh. “Banish you?”
To my surprise, he rounds the table and kneels by the chair, taking my free hand. “Forgive me. I am sometimes at the mercy of a patriarchal society that judges women very harshly.”
I look at him, narrowing my eyes. “Did you actually just say that?”
“I did.”
Everything in me surges toward him. It’s that clean and that simple, and I bend in to kiss the sad mouth that’s so close, smelling pine and hope. For a split second before our lips meet, I’m afraid he’ll be appalled and push me away, but quite the opposite happens. Our mouths lock and he stands, pulling me with him so our bodies are pressing tightly together. My arms wrap around his torso, his around my shoulders and waist, and we fit like Russian dolls. His head tilts and mine tilts the other way and we dive into kissing like it will end climate change. The low-level restlessness I’ve been feeling, that longing for sex, for connection, for skin-to-skin nourishment, rises in a wild current in my body, setting all the circuits to on, my skin rustling to life.
He makes a noise and pulls me harder into him, his hands traveling over my back, down to my ass. I follow suit, tugging his shirt out the back of his pants so that I can touch his skin, and at the feeling of bare flesh, hot and smooth, I make a noise myself. I want to tear his clothes off, bite him, ride him like a bronco.
I break away and look up. “Is this okay? Do you think . . .”
“Very okay,” he says, and his hand is under my skirt, on the back of my thighs. “I think yes.”
“Let’s go upstairs.”
The balcony doors are open and we shed our clothes in the breeze. It feels inevitable, obvious, the only possible thing that could happen. We fall together in fierce, almost bruising intensity at first. Lightning crackles and explodes outside the windows as two bodies give each other the meal they’ve been so starved for.
And then we begin again, taking our time, exploring nooks and crannies, kissing and kissing and kissing and finally falling asleep naked beneath the covers, tangled in the most natural possible way.
As I’m drifting off, I think, Is it possible to fall in love at first sight?
Chapter Thirty-Four
Norah
A man is in the kitchen when I come down the next morning. He’s making espresso with a machine I’ve never once used. “Wow, that smells amazing.”
“Hello.” He looks up and I realize he’s the guy from the coffee shop the other day. He frowns slightly. “I recognize you from the Brewed Bean, don’t I?”
“Yeah. I used to live here. Or, well, I do live here for the moment. Maya’s letting me stay.”
He nods, focus returning to the nozzle dripping extreme coffee into a cup. He’s already made one, with frothed milk in a big mug, which I assume is for Maya. I look for her and spy her by the pool in the soft, cool air of morning, wearing a lime-green T-shirt dress and no shoes. She looks content. Cosmo is leashed beside her so he won’t fall in the pool.
I look back to the guy, who also has that just-laid easiness about him, his feet bare as he carries the coffee across the tiles to the door and settles one by Maya’s left elbow. The connection between them is practically visible, shining with iridescent exuberance between them, around them.
It makes me painfully, embarrassingly jealous. For the space of an entire minute, I stand by the island and stare at them, wishing for Augustus, or for the Augustus I first knew, not the one who betrayed me, betrayed everyone, all of us.
And yet.
I still miss him, the bastard.