"How can you say that?" she asks and I can see the struggle she is going through and I hate that we are doing this.
"Because I can," I finally say. "Because it’s the truth. Because after four fucking years, it’s time to get it all out there." The nerves run through me. "Four years ago, I let you go without talking to you. I was wrong," I admit. "Four years ago, letting you go shattered me. Literally." The lump in my throat forms into the size of a golf ball. "I don’t even know how I made it through the exams, and to be honest, I don’t really remember much of anything for a good year. It was like I was in a daze. I got up every day, did what I had to do, and then the next day started over again. Like Groundhog Day, except it was my life." If I give her anything, it will be the whole picture, the good, the bad, the ugly. "For two years, no one could say your name around me." I look down at my hands and they nervously tap the table as a tear slips out. "I couldn’t even think of you without having this crushing pain in my chest. It was hard to breathe, and then I met Jennifer and she was nice. I knew that what I felt for her wasn’t love because it was nothing, and I mean nothing, like what I felt for you. I figured that what you and I had was something that you will never get again." I smile sadly. "So I settled on just feeling content. I told myself it didn’t matter that my heart didn’t speed up when she called my name. I told myself that it didn’t matter that we would go sometimes weeks without seeing each other. I told myself it was fine that I wasn’t attached to her. I told myself all these things because I knew deep inside me, you were the only one I would ever feel that with and I had lost you." I wipe the tear that is coming, the pounding of my heart in my chest is echoing. "I remember my father once telling me a story about how he knew my mother was the one. How he would get antsy if my mother wasn’t around. How just her being in the room would make him feel okay. How with just one little touch from her and he would settle. I knew that was what you should feel. I knew that because I felt it with you." I swallow the guilt. "But then I felt none of that and I thought it was because you only get one love your whole life, and I knew you were it." Now that I’m sitting here looking at her, talking to her, touching her, I know that there is going to be no one else for me. That she is it. She was always meant for me. We were always meant for each other.
"Travis." She says my name and I look at her, seeing tears running down her face. "This is." She shakes her head. "It’s just too much."
I shake my head and push my chair away from the table, getting up and going to her. I turn her chair to face me with her still seated in it. She bends her head, not showing me the tears, and I squat down in front of her. "Harlow." I say her name as her hand comes out to wipe away the tear that is escaping out of the corner of her eye. I put my finger under her chin and raise her eyes to look at me. "This is everything." I rub my thumb over her cheek, wiping the tear that is rolling down her cheek. "Seeing you again, it just." I stop speaking because the lump is so big. "It made me see that there isn’t anyone out there for me but you."
"Travis." Her lower lip trembles.
"I’m not letting you go this time." I pull her to me and kiss her lips. I taste her tears on her lips.
Her hand comes up to hold my face. "I don’t know what the right thing to do is," she says, looking into my eyes while she rubs her thumb back and forth over my five o’clock shadow. "You hurt me like I’ve never thought I could hurt," she tells me, and I know that hearing this is going to kill me, but to get to the future, we have to talk about the past. "You making that decision that changed both our lives without so much as talking to me. I just don’t know."
"There are no words that I can say that will make what I did okay," I admit. "None. I would say I’m sorry but that isn’t even close enough." I lean in and rub my nose against hers. "But I’m going to die trying," is the last thing I say before she leans in and kisses my lips. She slides her tongue into my mouth and I know without a shadow of a doubt that she was made for me. I tilt my head to the side and take the kiss deeper, her legs opening up so I can get in the middle of them. She scoots to the front of the chair, and when I wrap my arm around her waist and stand up, she wraps her legs around my waist.
I turn to walk into the house and she lets my lips go as she buries her face in my neck and lays her head on my shoulder. "I love you," I say when I step into the house and I look down at her.
"By there." She points at the hallway off the side of the kitchen, away from the living room, and I walk into her bedroom. Her bed is already undone when I walk into the room and sit on the bench that is right in front of her bed. She unburies her face from my neck. "Kiss me," she says and I groan out before my hands go to the back of her neck, roaming up and getting lost in her hair, pulling her head back, and leaning forward to kiss her neck. "No hickies," she says. "I had to wear a turtleneck for the last week."
"But your skin." I nip at it. "It’s so clean."
"It’s the month of May in the South." She pushes up her shoulder to stop me from marking her. "You can give them to me anywhere you want," she says. "Just not my neck."
"Anywhere?" I ask her, thinking of all the places that I’m going to mark her.
She pulls her tank top over her head and tosses it to the side. "Anywhere." She stands in front of me with her tits on display for me. I can’t help but groan as my hands come out and take one in each hand.
"Define anywhere?" I ask, bending and taking a nipple in my mouth, biting, and then sucking right next to it. Her white skin is turning a touch red. "What about here?" I ask her, going to the other nipple and repeating the same thing.
"That’s okay," she murmurs and her head falls back, giving me complete access.
"Yes," she pants as I make another mark on her and I get up, turning her and setting her down on the bench where I just stood from. I get on my knees in the middle of her legs. "Tell me." She puts her hands to the sides of her hips. My hand moves on top of hers, "Lift," I say. She lifts up and I slip her pants and panties off her and she sits in front of me naked while I toss her pants right on top of her shirt. She leans back on the bed and stretches her legs open for me. The little landing strip calling my name, I lean down to kiss her inner thigh. "What about here?” I bite and then suck in. "Is this okay?" All she does is watch as I move to her other thigh and leave another mark. "And what about here?" I lean in and lick her slit, my tongue slipping into her and then going to flick her clit. "Can I do it here?" I suck her clit into my mouth.
"Why is it like this?" she pants as I put each leg over my shoulder.
"What do you mean?" I ask her between licks, as she tilts her hips and leans back on her elbows on the bed.
"Why is being with you so good?" she says, looking down at me and I take one more lick before I answer her.
"Because you were made for me."
Chapter 20
Harlow
I smell the coffee right before my eyes flutter open and I see the sun coming into the room. I stretch my hands over my head and groan out, my muscles tight from all the exercise I did last night, and then again this morning. There is sex and then there is sex with Travis, and no matter how much I try to deny it, everything with him is better. And I mean everything. I look over toward the clock and see that it’s just a little past ten. I turn to my side and reach out to find the spot next to me warm but empty. I get up on my elbow. "Travis?" I say his name and hear movement coming from the kitchen.