Back in the hotel elevator, Tate doesn’t touch me. But his eyes bear down on me, like he’s holding himself back. My abdomen tightens and swirls with heat.
When the elevator doors slide open onto the penthouse, Tate grabs me and pulls me through the door after him, wrapping me up in his arms and leading me into the living room. He holds me for a moment, his lips hovering over mine. “I’m incapable of thinking clearly when I’m with you,” he says. And my insides flutter, about to burst.
The sliding glass doors overlooking the balcony are still cracked open slightly from when I walked outside earlier, and a crisp breeze rolls in, dampening my suddenly scorching-hot skin.
I hear a familiar chime, the whistling of my phone. I slip from between Tate’s arms. It might be my grandma checking up on me. But when I open it, it’s from Carlos. I totally forgot to text him that I landed safely.
You alive? It reads.
I type back quickly. Yes. City is amazing. Might never come home.
You better come home. And remember what I said about V-card. Be good. Text me in the morning xo, he replies.
Night. Xo. I can’t give him any guarantees that I’ll be good, and I can’t make any promises that I won’t come back to LA a different person.
I’m about to drop my phone back onto the table when I see an unopened e-mail. It’s from Stanford. I never checked my phone after I landed, and my heart nearly stops. With trembling fingers, I slide open the message. My eyes scan the words rapidly.
Congratulations! On behalf of the Office of Undergraduate Admission, it is my pleasure to offer you admission to Stanford University.
For a second I can’t move. I reread the first paragraph several times before it sets in.
“Everything okay?” Tate asks me from the bedroom doorway.
“I—I’m going to Stanford,” I say. I can’t believe it.
He crosses the room, his eyes lighting up. “Charlotte. That’s amazing.”
“I wasn’t sure I would get in.” I look back down at the phone to make sure I didn’t misread it. “My guidance counselor wasn’t either. I mean, nobody’s sure they will. It’s a really tough school. You know that. I’m rambling.” I blink up at him: stunned, elated, my mind clattering with a million thoughts all at once.
Tate grins. “I knew you’d get in—I’m so happy for you. We need to celebrate, this is a big deal. I’ll call down for champagne—I know the concierge, he won’t have an issue serving us. Or we can go out? Whatever you want, this is your night.”
I set my phone on the table, focusing back on him. I take a step closer, breathing in the sight of him here, in front of me, and I realize there’s no one else I’d rather be with when the news about Stanford came in. I want to share this with him.
I run my hands up his chest and his eyes reignite under my gaze. His fingers go to my chin. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” I say. His mouth finds mine, and he wraps his arms around my waist and lifts me easily. I shiver in his embrace, my arms going around his neck as he carries me back to the bedroom.
Tate sets me carefully on the edge of the bed and I tilt my head up to look at him. I touch his stomach, his abs hard beneath his T-shirt, and he sucks in a breath. I want to see him. I want to touch his bare skin, and I push my fingers underneath the hem of his shirt. He pauses for a moment, watching me, and then he lifts the shirt over his head, his biceps flexing with the motion.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispers. “So damn much.”
My heart is a butterfly, fast and light, beating inside my chest. I have everything I’ve dreamed of and something I never even dared to dream of. I’m not afraid of anything anymore. I know what I want.
Tate.
*
The night flutters and spins out around us. We strip from our clothes and slide beneath the silky white sheet. His lips make a map along my skin, charting a course where only he has ever been. We kiss, we tangle ourselves together, we go slow. And even though we don’t go all the way, it feels like we’ve branded ourselves together. Each tender kiss, each suspended moment looking into each other’s eyes, we discover something beyond desire.
It feels like trust. And I realize I would do anything for him, go anywhere, risk everything, just to be with him.
It’s close to midnight when our hands settle, our lips place our last kiss, sleep tugging at us, and I rest my head on his shoulder, his fingers in my hair. I’m tired, sated, overwhelmed. I never thought it could be like this with someone. I always imagined the worst: seeing how easily my mom’s heart could be broken, how easily she deluded herself. My sister abandoned with Leo, her dreams forgotten.
But it’s not like that with Tate. Here, in his arms in the middle of Manhattan, an acceptance letter in my inbox from Stanford, all of my dreams have come true. Nothing could be better than this one, single moment.