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I watch in rapt fucking fascination as her body contracts, muscles tightening, mouth parted in a gentleoh,features contorting with the onslaught of her pleasure and walls clenching around my shaft in endless waves that milk my own orgasm free.
It starts at the base of my spine and rips down my body.
Her warmth spills over my cock as I spill inside her,I love youwhispered so many times between us I’m certain it’s the glue that now pieces us together.
We hold each other in desperate grips, my hands sunk into her thighs where her own floral tattoo now lies, her fingertips dug into the muscles of my ass, ferocious in the way we mold our bodies together, fuse our mouths together, as we come, until it feels as if we’re one solid entity.
MeAndHerAndHerAndI.
It’s a long damn time before we come down from the high.
Declan beneath me, pink hair a mess around my pillow, swollen lips parted as she works to catch her breath, but her arms and legs still hooked around me, pinning right where I am.
My heart swells three times its size looking down at her. This summer might’ve been a brutal one for us, but it was worth it.
Lying here, Declan’s ocean blues staring up at me, happiness, clarity, confidence, and unwavering love shining within them, her hold on me as desperate as my own on her, it was damn well worth it.
I lower my face down to hers, lips meeting her soft ones as I murmur, “I love you so much, baby,” fully intending to prove my words to her through my actions every day of this upcoming year, until next summer, when she’ll be mine for good.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Declan
Quinn Malcom King.
I run my fingers over the letters of my brother’s name etched into his headstone. It’s been four years since I last sat in this cemetery, saying goodbye. A million-and-one emotions filter through me as I lower myself to the ground—where I’ve sat a hundred times before but once promised I never would again.
My graduation ceremony is right around the corner now, though—tomorrow,to be exact—and I found myself not wanting to experience it without telling him about… well,everything.
All the moments that have filled my days between then and now.
He’s been on my mind every single one of those one-thousand, eight-hundred and twenty-nine days since. In a resurfaced memory, or a deep, hollow ache reminding me how much I miss him. In the clear image of his face in my dreams. In a conversation with Addy. In the comforting pass of my thumb over the pendant where I keep his ashes. He’s always with me.
But I haven’t talked to him like I used to. And I’ve really, really missed that.
When I told Jude as much yesterday, he had our flights booked immediately. I bawled like a baby the entire time we packed our carry-on suitcases, and all through dinner, too. And even still, as we fell asleep in our shared bed, his arms wrapped around me and holding me together.
We drove straight here from the airport, and we’ll be driving straight back in order to make sure we make it home with plenty of time before my graduation ceremony starts tomorrow, butwe’re here. We’re here, and I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, with anyone else, now that we are.
It seems silly to me that I feel the spirit of Quinn here more than anywhere else, but I do. It’s like I can feel his energy, his aura, wrapping around me, hugging me. Or maybe it isn’t silly whatsoever because the bulk of his ashes are buried beneath this soil and I once spent countless hours unburdening my heart and soul on this specific patch of earth, my hands on this very headstone with his named engraved in it.
I can’t believe I went four years without this connection to him.
“I’ve missed you,” I say, tears welling behind my eyelids. The rest of my words compact together in my throat, a traffic-jam of emotions I have to clear my way through.
The firm, solid weight of Jude’s hand presses into my back, travelling a path up and down my spine in a comforting gesture, before his touch settles onto the back of my neck, grounding me with its presence. Having him here with me feels like inserting a final needle and thread through my past and present, pulling the two together and suturing them in a way I never thought could feel so…I don’t even know.
Freeing. Healing. Perfect. Right.
None of those, exactly, yet all of them at once.
With my hands on Quinn’s headstone, and Jude shifting in closer behind me, his tattooed thumbs now painting soothing circles on either side of my neck, I tell Quinn everything.
About the night I left home and what running into Addy’s arms felt like that first day I was free—like a blank canvas, a sunrise, the first page in a good book. About slamming into the most beautiful apparition I was sure anyone had ever conjured on my second night—how its solid body said otherwise but its storm-ridden eyes still had me convinced I was dreaming.
Jude buries his smile in the crevice between my neck and shoulder, and I feel it curl against me.
A light blush blooms across my cheeks, warming my skin, and sparking a flutter in my chest. I clear my throat and continue, telling Quinn about the team of football players I befriended, about the parties and the lake house and gaming late into the nights with Jude. I tell him about how welcomed I felt by everyone. I tell him all about how much that summer meant to me. How much it changed me.