The thought of this has me precariously close to coming already. But I don’t want this moment to be over so soon, so I refuse to let my body have its release just yet. Kiss to kiss, caress to caress, thrust to thrust, we move together in perfect synchronicity. And then, just as I no longer have any more control over holding myself back, I surge into his mind, he into mine.
Before today, whenever we merged, I would have laid down money that it was better than any kind of orgasm that rocks a body, because it’s born from souls. We’ve even done something very similar to this before, although never during actual intercourse and only ever with one person climaxing at a time due to oral sex or the like. It was phenomenal. But tonight, though? Tonight I learn the real truth—when merging souls and physical orgasms collide during actual intercourse, a person’s being becomes nothing but stardust in the vastness of time and space. We are no longer just lovers separated by bodies.
We are one.
We are nothing.
We are everything.
My apartment—well, my old apartment—is exactly how I left it down to the placement of my purse and keys on the counter and my pajamas on the floor near my bed. There are magazines open on the coffee table and dishes in the sink. When I open the refrigerator, there’s even a bottle of half-year-old orange juice.
I’ve just stepped right into my past.
“Callie said you tore this place apart,” I say to Jonah when we’re in my bedroom.
He leans against the doorframe, hands in his pockets. “I did.”
I glance around my room. It’s . . . not clean, by any means, but it’s the kind of messy I would have left behind, not the kind made by a desperate man searching for answers.
“I straightened up afterward,” he says quietly. “Just in case you came back. I didn’t want you to have to deal with my . . .” His smile is bittersweet. “Rage, I guess. Or desperation.”
I come over to where he’s standing. “I’m so sorry I put you through that. I will regret that every day until I die.”
He pulls me flush against his body. “I don’t want your regret, Chloe. I think that we’ve had enough of that from both of us to last more than a lifetime.” A leisurely kiss precedes, “Let’s just focus on all the good things we’ve got going right now. Stepping back into old habits in which we drown ourselves in guilt doesn’t do either of us any good.”
I press another kiss against his mouth. “One day at a time?”
The dimple appears, even if just barely. “One day at a time.”
I lean my head against his chest. “What about your stuff? Is it still next door, too?”
My face rises and falls with his sigh. “No. It’s all either in storage or at Kellan’s.”
Next to my bed is a candid picture of the two of us taken maybe a year or so ago. To almost anyone looking at it, all they’d see are two people content in love. I’m kissing his cheek and he’s smiling and looking away from the camera. I loved this picture for so long, but now, as I look at it, I realize it was just as fake as we had been. To move on, we need to let these pieces go and build ourselves new ones.
“I don’t want to move back in here,” I tell him.
He’s quiet for a long moment. “I bought the apartment above Kellan’s a few months ago. It’s being remodeled, so . . .”
I pull away from him and stare up in shock.
He tugs on his hair. “I didn’t mention it before now because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it.”
I shake my head in amazement, a wry smile tugging at my lips. “You and your real estate ventures. When will you ever learn to just tell me about them in the first place?”
He pulls me back to him. “I’m sorry—”
I reach up and lay my hand against his cheek. “I thought you basically just forbid that word. If I can’t say it, you shouldn’t be able to, either.”
“Touché.” He kisses my palm. “We can go look at it today, if you like.”
We head back out into the living room, our hands entwined. “What made you buy an apartment?”
“Honestly, partially because it was one of those things that I did to prove to everyone I was moving on. Maybe even try to prove it to myself, too.”
I pick up my purse and phone. “Partially? Also, why the one above Kellan’s?”
His lips purse together as he considers how to answer me. Finally—“The building Kellan lives in doesn’t have a lot of movement in terms of sales, but one came up while you were gone. Sophie Greenfield had put a bid on it, and . . .” His head tilts so his dark hair spills into his eyes. “After everything that happened this winter, there was no way in hell either of us were going to let her own that apartment. Buying it seemed to kill several birds with one stone.”
I keep my voice light even though everything in me goes taut like a thread ready to snap. “What happened with Sophie?”
He picks up a shirt of his off of one of the chairs in the living room, one that he must have left behind. “Are you sure you want to know?”