I already know the truth of them, though. I’m fully aware that without Callan, I am only half a person, emotionally disfigured and displaced in the world. Eventually, something snaps inside me. I can’t fight this anymore. I don’t want to. Being without him is too hard. It’s like I’m trapped, running on train tracks. There’s a high-speed bullet train on the horizon, growing closer and closer no matter how fast I sprint. There is no escape. No matter how fast I run, the train is always going to catch up with me. Callan is always going to be there, and I am always going to love him. So what’s the point anymore? What’s the fucking point in keeping things from him?
I kiss him back, my heart skipping out of my chest, my hands shaking as I reach up and dig my finger nails into the broad, muscular planes of his back. His skin is hot and slick with sweat under my palms. As I open my mouth wider, allowing Callan to dip his tongue past my lips, he shudders, groaning. It’s enough to make me light headed. I slide my tongue into his mouth too, tasting him the same way he’s tasting me, and I can barely keep my legs rigid beneath me. Cal’s grip on me tightens, as if he senses me weakening against him. He bunches my hair in his hands, gathering it into a knot at the back of my head so he can tip my head back and move swiftly down, kissing at the line of my jaw, my neck, my collarbone.
“Fuck, bluebird. You’re the only thing I want in this life.” He pants, his hands working their way down my neck, my arms, my ribcage, until he’s tearing at the material of my shirt, trying to get underneath it. “I need you. I need to be fucking inside you right now.”
Before I met Ben, I had a few boyfriends. A couple of them nearly made it to the twelve-month mark before I freaked out and broke up with them for one reason or another. I knew it was never going to work out with them, because none of them ever made me feel like this. None of them ever felt like they were bringing me back to life, giving me something I could never find by myself. I just gave up caring with Ben, it was the only way I could stay with him, but now that I’m feeling this powerful, impossible riot of emotions with Callan, I know there’s no way I can ever go back.
He makes a frustrated sound as his hands work their way over my bare stomach, up toward my breasts. His fingers skirt along the edge of my bra, digging in a little as my back arches, curving my body into his. He knows how to touch me. He knows how to make me hungry for him. In fact, right now I feel like I’m starving for him.
“God, Callan. Fuck,” I gasp. His eyes meet mine, deep and dark and disturbing. He stops moving. Doesn’t say anything. The silence between us is miles deep and miles wide, and feels like it could be miles further still if either one of us lets it. Callan gives me a look that would have terrified seventeen-year-old me. “We’ve been through so much,” he whispers. “You were my first, and I was yours.” His voice is strained, controlled, like he’s having trouble keeping it together. “But we’re adults now, Coralie. Back then I loved you like a kid. Now I plan on loving you like a man. Do you know what that means? Do you think you can handle that kind of fucking?”
Truthfully, this is already too much for me. I couldn’t back down or turn away now even if I wanted to, though. It’s too late for me. I feel so out of my depth most of the time; the difference right now is that it feels okay to be out of my depth. Callan’s got me. I know he won’t let me drown, hurt, suffer, even if it seems as though that’s all there is for me to do.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I don’t know if I can handle it. I want to find out, though.”
Callan’s mouth quirks up at one side, forming that dimple deep in his cheek again. “There she is,” he says quietly. “See. You think you’re not brave, but you are. And bravery is rewarded, bluebird.” He scoops me up into his arms, and I’m pinned against him, trapped, as he carries me over to the kitchen table. In one swift movement, he knocks the stacked boxes containing my mother’s clothes to the ground. He swears under his breath when he realizes what he just dumped on the floor, but that doesn’t stop him from lying me down on top of the worn wood.
“I want to use the Leica, bluebird,” Callan growls into the crook of my neck as he licks and kisses at my skin. My hands are buried into his thick hair, my fingers wound tight around his hair. I pull a little harder when he says this. “Ahhh. I want to show you everything I see. I want you to see how fucking beautiful you are.”
He drags his thumb across my bottom lip, pressing the pad of it against my lower teeth, pressing my mouth open a little. He trails his tongue over my bottom lip then, fastening it between his own teeth and pulling.