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It rolled over them both until they were both panting to catch their breath, still locked in each other’s arms.
Garrett pressed his face against the side of her neck. “That explanation went a lot better than I thought it would,” he mumbled.
Emma raised her head. She was still breathing fast, but now that their mutual hunger had been fed, she was sobering quickly. He could see the doubt creeping back into her eyes.
“We’re not done talking yet,” he said.
Emma started to rise, intending to climb off him, but he shook his head, holding her fast.
“Like this,” he insisted, his voice barely intelligible. “With me inside you.”
That way she wouldn’t forget that she belonged to him when he told her the rest.
Emma settled back down and nodded, the slight sheen of her sweatmaking her glow.
He hugged her to him, relishing in the weight of her. “Your skin is unreal. It’s so soft. I’ve never felt anything this fine.”
Emma knew he was stalling. She poked him in the ribs. “The rest.”
“All right.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek, the soft down next to her ear. “You spent the whole night with me. Woke up after dawn in my arms.”
She pulled back to look into his eyes. “I didn’t go home?”
“Your mom was working two jobs back then,” he explained. “As long as you were home between her shifts around lunchtime, she was none the wiser.”
He tilted her chin to make sure she met his eyes and could read the sincerity there.
“I never intended for our relationship to be a secret from her. But things between us were extremely new and already intimate. It seemed reasonable that you didn’t want to tell her where you were sleeping that night.”
“Did I at least text her?”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “You told her you were sleeping over with a friend.”
“Oh.” Emma didn’t know how to process that. “Seems a little thin. She wasn’t suspicious?”
“You never mentioned her asking any questions about it.”
He shrugged apologetically. “You have to understand she was busy, overworked. Plus, you thought she was seeing a new guy. Mariana was preoccupied with her own love life at the time.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “We continued seeing each other?”
He closed his eyes, stroking her back. “It was an amazing night. The best night of my life, which turned into the best few weeks of my life.”
She tilted back to look at his face. “We spent the whole break together?”
“Every minute we could.”
He traced the plush line of her lower lip. “I would drive you home so you could see your mom when she wasn’t at work, but then she’dleave, and I’d drive over as soon as you texted me to pick you up. I even snuck in one night when she was asleep and slept with you there. But you felt so guilty about it in the morning that we agreed from then on, you’d come with me to the cabin.”
“And where was your father during all of this?”
His shoulders straightened, the tension in him impossible to hide. “Where he usually was. Away on business.”
Grant Chapman had eschewed all parental responsibility after the death of his wife. He left Garrett in the care of a nanny and less frequently under the supervision of his mother’s sister, his aunt Phil.
“You and I were joined at the hip all of winter break,” he said, smiling at the memories of plans and waffle breakfasts—the only meal he could make himself at the time. “But we hashed out a lot of stuff. Made plans. You agreed to move in with me when you started business school.”
Emma squeezed his shoulder. “What went wrong?”