He was looking beyond me, into the house; lost, it seemed. “We have three days off.”
“So you flew here? Hayes, I can’t … You can’t be here.”
“Please let me in. Please, Solène.” His eyes were brimming. He looked to me at once young and old. His tortured face a harsh reminder that I’d destroyed us. I’d done this. I’d done this.
I stepped aside and shut the door behind him. “Isabelle is here. She’s sleeping.”
“I won’t wake her. I promise.”
“Hayes, we can’t do this…”
He wasn’t listening to me. His hands were in my hair, at my neck, caressing the sides of my face as he inhaled me, and kissed me, thoroughly, passionately, completely.
“What are you doing? We can’t do this.” Even as I said it, I was aware my body was communicating otherwise. Melting into him. His hand beneath my T-shirt. The feel of his skin on mine. His mouth. Hayes Campbell. Like a fucking drug.
“I love you. I fucking love you so much. You cannot leave,” he whispered. “Tell me you don’t feel this, Solène. Tell me you don’t want this…”
I shushed him. My finger on his lips. “You’re going to wake Isabelle.”
He stopped, his eyes peering into mine in the half-light. Pleading. And before I’d registered what I was doing I had taken his hand and led him down the hall.
*
It happened fast, the first time.
I did not regret it. Not feeling his weight on top of me, and his hips between my thighs, and smelling him—familiar. His mouth moving over mine, and his fingers gripping my hair, and his dick … filling me. Fulfilling me.
We came quickly, and at the same time. And we might have been both laughing and crying when I said, “This is not setting a precedent.”
“It’s not.” He smiled, shaking his head.
“I’m serious, Hayes. We can’t do this again…”
“We can in two more minutes.” He curled himself up beside me with his head on my chest, his fingers interlaced with mine, and I felt it: happy. “I missed you, so fucking much,” he said, soft.
“I missed you, too. But I’m serious: this can’t become a habit. I don’t care how far you’ve flown, or how long it’s been—we can’t do this again. Do you understand that?”
He did not respond.
“Hayes?”
“I heard you.”
My hand was in his hair, his coveted hair. “If you keep coming back like this, you’re never going to move on, and you have to move on.”
We were both quiet. His phone vibrated on the nightstand, and he ignored it.
He propped himself on one elbow, gazing down at me, his fingers tracing my eyebrows, my cheek.
“Why? Why do I have to move on?”
“Because I can’t be your girlfriend. And I’m not going to be one of your friends you fuck…”
“Do you think I could ever think of you that way?”
“I don’t know.”
His fingers were outlining my lips, trailing down over my chin, my neck. “I could never think of you that way, Solène. I didn’t think of you that way in the beginning, I’m certainly not thinking of you that way now.”
I was quiet. His phone was vibrating again, unanswered. His hand was descending across my clavicle, my breast. The tip of his middle finger drawing circles around my nipple.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m just loving you for a few more minutes before you kick me out.” His voice cracked and I realized he was crying. Again.
“I’m not kicking you out just yet, Hayes.”
He nodded. A tear fell onto the side of my face and he kissed it away. “Sorry.”
His phone vibrated once more, and he reached over to silence it.
“You’re quite popular tonight.”
Whether or not he’d registered what I’d said, he did not respond. His fingers had returned to my chest, descending, traveling over my belly to my navel and back up again.
I stilled his hand then with my own and, without saying a word, guided it down between my legs.
For a second, he resisted. “You said no.”
“Now I’m saying yes.”
“You’re very confusing. You realize that, don’t you?”
I nodded. God, his fingers. “You’re already here.”
“So if I’m already here, it’s fine. But if I’m not already here, I can’t come back?”
“Exactly.”
“Well then, I just won’t leave, then…”
*
The second time he was controlled and focused, intense. He was unusually quiet, and it felt to me that every movement was a concerted effort to win me back. His thrusts, slow and deep, our hands clasped above my head, his gaze holding mine, never wavering. He wanted me to feel it, all of it. And remember it. And I would.
“Look at me,” he said when I was coming. “Look at me, Solène.” And the moment was so unbelievably charged, I started to cry.
Afterwards, he held me in his arms, close, ignoring his phone, which was still lighting up on the nightstand.
“Who keeps calling you?” I asked once I’d regained the ability to speak.
“Jane,” he said, low. “I quit the band.”
“What?!” It was quite possible I had not heard him correctly. “You what?!”
“I quit the band.”
I sat up, alarmed. “What do you mean you quit the band? Why would you do something like that?”
He looked up at me, confused. “Because,” he said, “it was the one thing that was keeping us apart.”
Funny how I’d waited for this for months, it seemed. And when it finally came, it had the complete opposite effect on me. Nothing about this was good.
“Oh no. No no no no no.” I grabbed my T-shirt from the other side of the bed, pulling it on. “You’re not going to do this. This is a mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake,” he said, sitting up. “What are you doing?”
“You’re going.”
“I’m not going.”
“You’re going. I’m going to go to the bathroom, and when I get back, you’re going to go.”
*
When I emerged, he was still sitting on my bed, naked. His expression, lost. “You’re freaking out. Why are you freaking out?”
“You can’t quit the band, Hayes.”
“I did it for us.”
“I understand why you did it, but you can’t. I don’t want you to do it for us. You need to stay in that band. You’re going to get on the phone right now, you’re going to call Jane, and you’re going to tell her you’re coming back. Tell her you made a mistake and you’re coming back.”
“I’m not going back.”
“You’re going back. I am not going to let you squander this opportunity, this gift, for what? Sex?”
He looked at me, shocked. “This is not just sex, Solène. I love you.”
“I know you do.”
“I thought you loved me, too.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters.”
My head was spinning. My heart, racing. Nothing seemed clear. “What is this, Hayes? What do you think is going to happen with us? Do you think we’re going to move in together? Get married? Have kids? Are you going to be a stepdad? Drive Isabelle to fencing practice and visit her at summer camp in Maine? Think about it. Think about it.”
“I have thought about it.”
“Then you have to realize how crazy it sounds. Nothing about us makes sense.”
“Don’t say that.” His eyes were welling. Crap.
“You’re young, you have your whole life ahead of you…”