“Is this easier?” she asks quietly, adding, “Seeing me here in a fancy restaurant, or fancy hotel wearing a masque with a q-u-e, rather than trying to fit in down by your boat?”
The knot tightens again. “I was mad, Harlow. It made me act like a dick.”
“I know. I’m just an insta-forgiver. If someone I care about says they’re sorry, it’s done.”
“I’m not like that,” I admit. “You’d already left by the time I decided you were forgiven.”
She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and sucks it, eyes wide and vulnerable. I know she has no idea she’s looking at me this way, and it makes me want to open up my chest, let her see how fast my heart is beating.
I lean forward, looking around the room. “You know I’ve never stayed overnight in a hotel except for that Vegas trip?”
She stills, breath catching. “Not even for Bike and Build?”
“No. Some people did, but we stayed with host families or camped.”
“Wow . . . that’s . . .”
“That’s been my life. Aside from the two years I spent in college, I was always here. I sounded like a dick when I said you looked out of place, but I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t like seeing you there. I just meant my world doesn’t look like this. Doesn’t look like you.”
She puts the brush down and turns to rest back against the desk.
“I don’t go out drinking every Thursday night and buy Starbucks every morning,” I tell her. “I don’t go on vacations and I couldn’t call up a producer friend to come drop a ton of money on fixing my boat.”
“You could now, probably,” she says. “Your life is going to change completely.”
“I know,” I say, bending to rest my elbows on my knees. “I guess that’s what I’m saying.”
“That you’re scared?”
I laugh, turning my attention down to the carpet. “Maybe not scared, really, just stepping into an unknown. It takes trust.”
“You don’t have to navigate this all on your own. I know I screwed up with you and Sal, but do you trust me?”
I look up at her and nod. “I do.” She watches me, eyes softening and I repeat, “I absolutely do.”
“All right. Then I’m getting dressed and you’re taking me to a lumberjack bar.”
My heart stalls, and then revs back to life as I sit up straight. “Just like that we’re done fixing this?”
She nods. “Just like that.” Swallowing, she adds, “I love you. We don’t need to rehash. I messed up, you messed up. I’m sure we’ll mess up again, it will just look different next time.”
She grabs jeans and a sweater, underwear, and a bra from her bag and turns as if she’s going to leave to change in the bathroom. Before I know it, I’m on my feet and moving across the room.
“Don’t get dressed.”
Harlow stops, backing into the wall. I slow a little, taking the last few steps to her over the span of what feels like a million rapid-fire heartbeats. I can see her pulse in her throat.
“Finn.” She leans her head back against the wall, looking up at me as I step so close I’m only a few inches away from her.
“You love me?” I reach forward, finger the tie at her waist.
“Yeah, you idiot.” She licks her lips, and then bites the lower one because, fuck, she knows it makes me hard. “I told you that already. You think it goes away after a few days, like a temporary tattoo?”
Laughing, I bend, pushing the heavy terry cloth aside to kiss her collarbone. She smells like shampoo and the soft smell I couldn’t forget in a million years: honeysuckle and warm stone, Harlow and mine.
I loosen the knot at her waist and pull her robe open, groaning at the sight of her bare skin, golden and smooth.
Her eyes close and she moans hoarsely when I run my palms from her hips to her breasts and back again, pulling her forward into me.
“I’m sorry,” I say into the warm skin of her neck. “I’m glad we’re not rehashing, but I want to say it anyway. I’m sorry I split town, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you yesterday. And I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t call to find out if we were pregnant.”
She pushes me away so that she can look up at my face. “ ‘We’?”
“Fuck, Harlow, you didn’t do it alone.”
Laughing, she agrees with a nod. “I’m sorry, too.”
“Baby, that was two weeks of fucking miserable.”
She falls silent, pressing her face into my neck. After a few seconds, she hiccups and nods wordlessly and I realize . . . she’s crying.
I pull back to look at her, cupping her face. “Hey . . . no, don’t. I—”
“I thought it was done,” she says. I wipe my thumbs over her cheeks. “At the boat? I thought you were done with me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get over you. I’ve never had to get over someone before.”
“I wouldn’t have let it be done.”
“You left, though.” She looks up at me and two more tears run down her cheeks. “You just left and then wouldn’t talk to me and it was terrifying because with you I realized I’m that person who finds their guy and that’s it.”
My chest twists and I tug my shirt over my head in a rush before pulling her against me. I need her skin on mine, need to get my heart as close to hers as possible, and she shrugs out of her robe, pressing into my heat, her arms going around my neck.
The Harlow everyone sees is a force to be reckoned with. This vulnerable Harlow is rare. She’s just told me she feels what I feel—this is it, I’ve found my girl and that’s it—and I don’t want to fuck it up with her.
“We talk about everything,” she promises into my shoulder. “And you don’t ever leave me like that again. Promise me.”
“I promise.” I pull back and kiss her, a glancing touch across her lips. I mean it to be small, a seal on a promise, but her mouth opens and the sound that escapes is a sob mixed with a moan and fuck me, it’s the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard her make because it’s so raw.
In an instant her tongue is sliding over my lips, my teeth, my tongue and her pleading little noises are filling my head. She slides her hands down my body and presses her palm to the front of my jeans and I was already quickly getting there but under her touch I harden, needing her so much it feels like a match has been lit beneath my skin.
She slips free the buttons and digs her hand in, under my boxers, and, with a tight gasp, curls her hand around my shaft. I need my fucking jeans down at my ankles and her legs up around my waist.
I need her skin and her sounds and the sharp burst of her breath on my neck. I need her taste on my tongue and— “I’m on the pill now,” she says between her wild, sucking kisses. “I started it the day I got my period.”
“Jesus fuck,” I groan. “There is no better combination of words in the history of time.”
She laughs, shoving my jeans down, and I kick them off with my shoes, stumbling against her and pressing her into the wall.
“I’ll be slow later,” I tell her, reaching between her legs. My fingers slide across her clit, down into the unbelievable slickness. Fuck me. “Later, I’ll take my time but I just—”
“Stop talking,” she says on a tight exhale. “I know.”
Lifting her, I pull her legs around my waist and she holds herself there, watching me reach between us, rub the head of my cock over her. Up and down, barely in—fuck, fuck—barely out again.
“Look at that.”
She sucks in a tight breath. “I’m looking.”
The slight give of her body as I ease just in and out is a torture of bliss. My arms are shaking with how much I want to pound into her but she mistakes restraint for strain: “I realize this hotel thing is a novelty, but this one does come with a bed.”
Laughing, I walk the two steps over to it and lower her onto her back, following closely so I don’t lose the feel of her for one single second.
Her legs come around my hips and she pulls me down and in, guiding me inside her so fucking slow and hot, I have to stop when my hips meet her thighs because honest to God I could come right this fucking second.
She’s staring right at my face, straight into my eyes; our faces are close enough that we’re sharing a breath, back and forth. I lift my chin just slightly and I’m kissing her, and it’s too intense somehow but I can’t look away. I’ve never felt this. I want to tell her that but it sounds clichéd and plain. This feeling is so much larger than some trite words like never before and no one else.
“You’re it for me,” I tell her.