Page 96 of Take Me Home

The pressure deep inside her crested then tore through her. Every part of her clenched tightly around Ash as the waves of it kept coming, kept breaking. The night’s ever-present tears stung her eyes anew, this time from sheer relief, like her orgasm was yanking open every door inside her, letting out every pent-up breath. She was only half aware that he came, too, his thrusts hard and fast up into her and then one last jerk.

They held each other, chests heaving, until Ash gingerly tilted her face back and swiped a tear from her cheek. His eyebrows furrowed, but then he seemed to understand these tears were different. “How?” he whispered. “How is it like this?” And his own eyes were intense with emotion that made her want to hold him forever.

“Pretty sure I’m falling for you, too,” she answered.

He swallowed twice before he managed, quietly, “Thank God.”

—

The first time Hazel awoke, the room was still dark. Ash’s arms were wrapped around her from behind in a full-contact cuddle. He stirred shortly after she did, pressed a kiss to theback of her neck, and soon they were grinding against each other under the warm blankets, pausing only to grab a condom from the bedside table.

The next time she awoke, the dark night outside was just beginning to turn, an undertone of blue bleeding through. She extracted herself carefully from Ash to tiptoe across the hall to the bathroom, hoping since they were the only ones up here in the addition, she wouldn’t run into one of his sisters or nieces. When she returned, she stopped in the doorway to watch Ash, curls brushed across his forehead, T-shirt sleeve twisted up around his shoulder. She had designs to pull the covers down, wake him with her mouth, but something began buzzing. She pawed through the pockets of Ash’s blazer on the floor until she found her phone.

She had seven missed calls, four voicemails, six texts, all from her father.

“Get back in here,” Ash murmured, eyes still closed. When she didn’t, he pushed up on one elbow. “What’s wrong?”

She held up her phone.

“Your dad?”

“I don’t want to look yet.”

“Don’t then. Give it ’til morning.”

She nodded at the window. “It is morning.”

He pulled the covers back. “Five more minutes. Then we’ll figure it out.”

Hazel was pretty sure you couldn’t snooze anxiety, but she relented. He took her phone from her and tucked it behind him where she couldn’t fixate on it, and he held her in the cozy warmth of his bed until, somehow, her adrenaline and dread leveled off.

“It’s going to be okay, you know,” he said after a while.

“I acted like a freak.”

He made a sound of protest in his throat.

“I flipped a table. And the things I said…”

“I think you needed to say them.”

Regret burned through her. “I should have had more control. Now it’s all just…” She closed her eyes. Her breathing was shaky.

“You did the hardest part,” he said, kissing her shoulder. He stroked her arm. “Now you guys can talk it out.”

Hazel flipped over to face him. “There’s no coming back from this. Now heknows.”

“I know,” he said gently. “I know it feels like that. But it’s a step forward.”

“No, it’s like ten thousand steps back. It undoeseverything. The whole point of this week was tonotdo any of this. No steps forward or backward. Everything was supposed to stay the same.”

“But things don’t just stay the same. I understand you didn’t want to tell him how you really feel, but—” He squeezed her wrist gently. “What you guys have been doing all these years isn’t a real relationship. Isn’t that what you want, something better? Isn’t that, deep down, why you came back?”

Hazel opened her mouth to deny it but couldn’t.

“You don’t want to change anything so you won’t risk losing these scraps he’s given you.”

She sat up, and he barely dodged her shoulder. “You don’t get it.”