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Or am I just crazy?

“Fuck, I…I—I need you to stand up.” He breathes heavily, and I don’t need him to say the words; I can see them dancing behind his eyes. Steady, sure.

I press a soft kiss to his mouth and slide out from beneath him, standing up against the edge of his mattress. My heart still races as he steps off the bed and slowly turns me around with his hands at my waist, nipping the space between my neck and shoulder with his teeth as I watch his fingers deftly unbutton my jeans. And then he kneels down—on the wooden floor of his bedroom—to slip off my shoes and slide my pants down my legs, and it’s, hands down, one of the hottest sights I’ve ever seen.

Andmy god,but it’s been way too long since I’ve felt this way—wholly and utterly consumed. There isn’t a single thought in my mind that doesn’t entirely exist for the way Greyson is making me feel.

The way he slowly kisses his way up my spine, his fingertips trailing behind, making a line of goosebumps break out along my skin. Along what feels like the surface of my soul.

I reach forward and help him out of his pants, out of his black boxer briefs, and lead him back onto the bed, climbing on top of him. I lower my mouth to his. And if he didn’t feel how much of myself, and my heart, I put into that last kiss, I know he feels it now, his hands gripping my hips tight as he pants a, “Shit, Jess,” against my lips.

“This is…” He shakes his head beneath me. “This isn’t only me, right? You feel this too?” he rumbles, breathless.

“I do,” I nod, breathing the words into his chest, and I feel our hearts winding themselves even closer.

I kiss him. Harder—deeper—than before.

He rolls over me and finishes undressing me, until I’m completely bare beneath him, and it’s just him, and me, and the sound of our heavy breaths crashing between us.

His gaze sinks further into mine, and…

I love you,I wordlessly tell him, with my heart and my eyes and my hands raking over the taut muscles in his back.

He reciprocates it in the way he holds me against him, the way he smooths my hair away from my face and curves his hand over my cheek. In the way he slowly swallows with too many emotions to name as he eases himself inside of me.

I clench down around him, fingers biting into his skin as pleasure immediately sings through me, and—

“Fuuuckk,” he groans. It’s easily the sexiest spoken word I’ve ever heard in my life, but then his mouth crashes against mine, his tongue matching the rhythm of his hips, and he moans it again into my mouth, and I think I like it even better that time.

Tension coils itself inside me, too fast, pulling every cell, every nerve ending, to the center of my being. Dragging my heart all the way back to his, all the way back home.

I feel them beating together, thundering against one another.

And then he tugs my bottom lip between his teeth. Slides his fingers up my throat and grasps my jaw, my chin. And proceeds to kiss me deeper than I’ve ever been kissed before, thrusting and groaning into me. And I’m gone.

Completely, and entirely, gone.

We come together—a hot, heated, tangled mess of sweat and limbs and teeth digging into flesh.

And I could stay inside of this high forever.

But eventually, after some time, the outside world slowly trickles its way back in, and my body settles back into itself. I sink into his mattress with a deep and contented sigh. A sigh mirrored by his own, and we both quietly laugh into the calm that surrounds us.

The sound mingles with our breaths and teases the silence away, and there’s nowhere—nowhere—on this beautiful green earth, or any place beyond it, that I’d rather be.

Sixty-six Before

THOSE TWO WEEKSflew by. Funny how time did that. How when we prayed for it to speed up, to zoom past us so we could pull ourselves together, or heal, or grow, or finally find ourselves in a better place in life, it crawled by instead, oozing past us in slow motion. But when we wanted to ram a fist into it and stop it altogether, it passed by so fast it gave us whiplash.

So, no. Not funny at all. Not really.

—two days—

Two days were all we had left, and then I was going to have to face reality. Face all the thoughts I’d been ignoring and keeping buried deep where I couldn’t see them.

So many truths I was going to have to acknowledge, even though I didn’t want to. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but…

It didn’t mean this was theend,end, right?