I put my hands on either side of his face, anyway, because like it or not, this man has burrowed his way into my bones, and even if he hears something unrequited in my voice, I don’t care so long as the right message reaches him.
“You are the kind of person people should bend over backward for to keep in their lives, Alex.” My fingers trace along his jawline, past his cheeks, up to the corners of his brown eyes. “Your aunt and your cousins see that, and so does Freddy, and so do I. It’s a real fucking shame Robert won’t bend for you, but that’s his shame to bear, not yours.”
His thumb grazes my wrist. “All I heard,” he says, “was something about you bending over for me.”
I laugh, and he tugs me into a hug. “Seriously, though,” he nearly growls. “Thank you, Simba. Thank you for being a person I can trust with all my heartbreaking, brutal truths.”
I press my lips to his neck. “I’d trust you with mine. I’ll give you one right now.”
“Okay,” he says, voice cracking, hands grazing my waist. “Give me one heartbreaking, brutal truth of yours.”
There is an acquisition on the table, and it might ruin you—
“I only like change when I get to see it coming,” I admit.
“No wonder you hate surprise parties,” he jokes, his voice going straight into my ear. I laugh weakly, and he tilts my head up toward his. “I can tell you with one hundred percent confidence that what’s happening between us is going to change,” he says. “It’ll have to, at some point. But just because it’s not permanent doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
We kiss, and I feel like I’m pouring myself into him. It’s been nineteen days since we last did this, but every single one was its own marathon. I drink in the taste and smell of him: butter mint on his tongue, crisp deodorant, clean linen, orange hand soap from the restaurant bathroom. Alex hauls me against his body, lifts my feet off the ground. My mouth slides against his in a harmony that carries musical chords I never learned. I don’t know how I can kiss him right now and envision a future where this all stops.
“I think of you,” Alex tells me. His voice is already husky against my neck. I pull him back toward my bedroom. “At work, on vacation, at home.” His hands run over my chest, down my stomach. He grips my ass, groaning lightly.
“I think of you, too. All the time.”
“All the time.” He shakes his head. “It’s a problem.”
“Agreed.”
Alex lifts my shirt over my head. “What’s the solution?”
I yank at his belt. “This, probably.”
Seconds later, he’s crawling up the length of my naked body on my bed, and the sight of him like that makes my eyes roll back in my skull.
He kisses me through every thrum of pleasure between us, and I don’t know how to process how right it all feels, how sturdy, how perfect, when I know whatever this is has an expiration date. It will end. Signed, sealed, and delivered by the very nature of who we are.
If my heart were a patched-together thing, refurbished from a relationship that chipped at it slowly, Alex is here now with glue, and later with a hammer. He is healing my heart, and he is breaking it.
A while later, while he feathers kisses over my rib cage, I say, “You think it’s a good idea. Don’t you.”
He looks up at me through thick lashes. Asks hoarsely, “What’s a good idea?”
“London,” I scrape out.
He presses his lips against the hollow between my breasts. “Yes, I think it’s a good idea.”
I already knew the answer, because I know who Alex is and what he believes about the world, but my eyes still flutter closed hearing it. “Why?”
He lies down beside me, tucks my hair behind my ear. “Primarily,” he breathes against my skin, “because I can tell you want to do it, and I think you should always go after the things you want in life, the things that make you happy.” His hand grabs my thigh and hooks it up around his leg. “Secondly—”
“Secondarily,” I correct. “If you’re going for consistency.”
Alex’s nose catches on mine. “I’m going to secondarily throttle you.”
I bite the inside of my cheek and whisper, “Continue.”
He draws loose, lazy circles on my hip bone and stares at his fingers, entranced. “I think it’ll be good for you.”
My eyebrows pull up as I exhale a single breath of laughter. “Good for me how? So I can expand my uncultured, limited worldview?”
He rolls his eyes. “That’s not remotely what I meant.” His body moves on top of me, elbows pushing into the mattress. “You’re open-minded, and curious, and hungry to explore, which is the best place to start in my opinion. Not that I’m the gatekeeper of worldliness or anything.”
“Then what?” I mumble, turning my face to the side. He follows me, trying to steal a kiss. “So I can do something absurdly fucking cliché like find myself?”
Alex grins against my lips. “Maybe.”
“Wait.” My body stiffens. He uses the opportunity to slide his hands down my arms, loosely pinning my wrists to the mattress. “Really? You don’t think I know who I am?”
“I think there are parts of yourself you don’t fully know yet. Especially the part that doesn’t just let change happen, but that wants it to happen. I think you’re starting to realize you don’t need as much safety as you used to need.”
I frown, deeply disturbed by the poignancy of his psychoanalysis. “Well, who the hell are you, then?” I ask.
Alex laughs. “A guy in your bed doing his level best to worship your body. Fuck if I know the rest right now.”
“Then how come I’m supposed to know?”
“You’re not,” Alex groans, still laughing. “Never mind. It’s not that deep.”
I harrumph, rolling our bodies so I land on top of him. “You’re being difficult.”
“Me?” His hands settle on my waist. “You brought this up.”
It’s annoying that I know what he means—about me finally wanting change to happen. Moving to New York was the most unsteady I’ve felt since I was little. Conquering that fear of the unknown, mastering it, unlocked something inside me I haven’t been able to tamp down since. Not only that, but it’s brought me this awareness—this knowing—of Mom and her choices. Completely of my own will, I’m making the same ones, and I think that’s the reason I’m so close to cracking open what she always wanted for me.
I lay my head on Alex’s chest and listen for the sound of his heartbeat. It quickens, then evens out again. His fingers stroke my hair.
“Tell me things,” I say.
“What things?” he murmurs.
“Stories.” I close my eyes and gulp. “Just … you know.” I don’t finish my thought.
Alex clears his throat. “What do you want to hear about?”
“Go chronologically. That’s how stories work.”