Page 28 of A Summer Thing

Chapter Sixteen

Declan

“I cannot believe this is our last movie night of the summer.” Addy pouts with wide, pitiful eyes, and it makes Cal and Stacy smile. Snacks are laid out across the massive coffee table in front of us, oversized blankets covering every inch of the couch, and we all snuggle in beneath them.

The lights in the living room are turned all the way down, the opening credits of Labyrinth filling the screen.

It’s our favorite movie—mine and Addy’s—introduced to us a few years ago by Stacy, and it’s been the last movie we’ve watched during my visits ever since.

It’s that fact that brings home, more than anything else these last few days, that the end of our summer is here.

Emotion weeds through my chest and climbs into my throat.

Addy shifts closer, snuggling into my side. Cal and Stacy cuddle into each other further, too. And my heart grows three times its size with an overwhelming sense of… home. Of family.

I let the feeling wash through me, settling into the marrow of my bones.

It feels like only minutes later when the movie ends and credits are rolling up the screen.

Stacy nudges Cal awake, who was only “resting his eyes” and we all snicker at his insistence that he was not, in fact, asleep—despite the soft snores that have drifted from his corner of the couch for the last half hour.

Addy and I give them the biggest hugs goodnight, smiles bracketing each of our faces, before we head up the stairs and into Addy’s room and land on her bed in a hug of our own.

“I can’t believe we’re leaving tomorrow,” she muses again. Her words are soft and quiet, but they sound louder in the silence of her room.

“I know. This summer flew by too fast, Addy. I’m not sure I’m ready.” To head off to college, to be in a new city all on our own, to be the only one solely responsible for the success of my future from here on out—I’m not sure I’m ready for any of it.

I’m not ready to leave yet, either. Not when it had just started to feel like our summer had truly begun.

Until last week, and the accident, the harsh realities of life tugged against the lighter days and forced them to come crashing down, anyway. Leaving Jude, and his own darkness, exposed in the aftermath.

He apologized, though, and I know how much he meant it. His imploring, quiet words. The subdued storm brewing in his gaze. The desperation in his tone.

I’m used to apologies. Ones full of buts, blame, and a lack of accountability. Jude’s held none of that. Nothing but the very opposite. And I’m learning now that not all darkness that bleeds is meant to submerge us until we drown.

Sometimes, it bleeds just to remind us we’re alive.

That there’s still a life worth fighting for.

I fall asleep next to Addy in her bed, those thoughts running on a loop in my mind.

______

In the dead of night, I wake with a gasp.

Orienting myself in Addy’s room, my breaths slowly start to calm, receding into a steady tempo of inhale and exhale.

I don’t even remember what my nightmare was about, but my heartbeat echoes the rhythm of fear.

Fear, I almost laugh as tears surge at the back of my eyelids.

Because I know my fear isn’t born from the usual mess of my nightmares, but instead, from what tomorrow brings.

A panic that words can mean nothing, and I might not ever see Jude again.

It’s with that thought that I slip from Addy’s bed and into the hallway.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but my feet carry me forward regardless, guiding me toward his room.

As slowly and silently as I can, I open his door and pull it closed behind me.

His quiet breaths fill the room, his soft little groan as he rolls onto his back making my lips tug at the corners.

It’s such a contrast from the moodier, shielded guy I’ve known that it stuns me still for a moment.

The delicate moonlight washing over his skin, his breaths rising and falling in his chest, and the darkness dissipating as my eyes adjust—meeting his straight on.

“Declan?” his low, gravelly voice breaks through the quiet, and my breaths still before kicking into overdrive. He sits up, his sheet slipping down and pooling around his waist. Rows of toned abs greet me. The low line of his dark boxer briefs does, too.

My heartbeats wait until now to make their presence known—after they’ve already climbed into my airways, and into my limbs, where all I can feel are their quick beats pulsing through my body.

What the hell am I doing here?

His eyes ask a similar question, but his lips remain still, so I make my way to the edge of his bed, my heart pounding so hard, so loudly, it’s all I can hear.

It blasts through every single one of my thoughts, leaving only…

Can I just? I want to… “Can I lay here with you?” I ask.

It feels like my heart says the words for me, because I don’t know where they come from, only that I mean them.

Lay here and what, though?

Ask him to hold me? Fall asleep with me? Kiss my forehead goodnight?

Let him silence the chaos of everything , my heart whispers , the way he always does.

“Yeah, of course.” His brows furrow, concern creasing the edges of his eyes. “Everything okay?”

I nod, my throat thick with emotion.

I’m in nothing but my underwear and an oversized T-shirt, and Jude has nothing on but his dark boxer briefs, but he pulls me onto the bed and onto him anyway.

I’m not sure it’s where either of us intended for me to be, but it’s where I land—in his lap, my knees bracketing his hips, his firm body resting beneath my soft curves.

I told him I couldn’t hope for anything more, but my actions right now are saying otherwise. I’m not sure that’s fair, but my body moves ahead of my brain, sliding my hands up the smooth ridges of his torso.

A groan digs its way from his chest, before dying out into the silence of his room, where we sit here in this space, in this breadth of not-quite-here, not-quite-there, in utter stillness.

Our breaths grow increasingly heavy.

The sharp lines of his features melt into the shadowed contours of his face, his eyes glowing vibrantly in the muted light.

Heated.

Full of questions.

On fire.

And I—

I test the limits and shift myself against him, only now realizing how hard he’s grown beneath me. A strained moan slips from my throat, and his fingers dip into the flesh of my thighs, his own groan vibrating through him, the feeling centering at my core.

“Little D,” he warns, but it feels more like a question, a plea.

“Just this. I promise.” The words slip out, but I don’t know what they mean.

Just that one shift of my hips? Just that one blinding rush of euphoria?

Or just this—his hard length against my soft warmth.

Easy, blissful movements. The rocking of my hips and the press of his fingertips.

Just this, until I can feel myself climbing, until he’s moving with me in earnest, guiding me with his hands, setting a rhythm that has him growing harder beneath me.

The thick ridge of him pushes at me painfully, but I grind against him harder. Waves of arousal crash through me, cresting higher, and higher.

“Fuck, Little D,” he growls through gritted teeth. “That feel good?”

A gasping breath and nod are all I can manage.

“Shit.” His inked hands pull at my hips, dragging me farther into him. “I can’t let you go. You understand that, right?” he groans, or growls, or hums—a rough version of all three that slips down my nape and tickles my spine. His fingers grasp my chin and lift my gaze to his. “You hear me?”

I nod, but he lets out a low growl. His features draw together into a scowl, his gray gaze raging behind his stare. “Tell me you understand. We will be in each other’s lives. Say it, Declan.”

“I understand,” I gasp, and it feels like I just swallowed my heart, my emotions caught in my throat.

I didn’t realize how much I needed him to fight for my presence—to fight for me.

After a lifetime of feeling pushed out, all I’ve ever wanted to feel is pulled in.

While Jude has been doing that since the moment I met him, whether he’s intended to or not, I think I needed to hear him say it, too. That he wants to pull me in.

He grunts out a groan beneath me, dragging me harder along the thick length of him, and a strangled gasp gets caught in my throat, the thoughts long forgotten.

The ridge of his tip rubs against me through his underwear, his hands firm on my body, his breaths rough and broken beneath me, and—

This feels too dreamlike to be real.

His strong hands feel too perfect on me. His hard body feels too right beneath mine.

The chaos in his gray eyes reaches into me, drags me into their stormy depths, and pushes me clear over the edge.

My breaths tighten, and then cease to exist at all, as my insides wring together, tightening, and tightening further.

“Fuck. Yes,” Jude grits through clenched teeth. “Come for me, Little D. Let me watch you fall apart.”

With his low, growling words guiding me, his hands keeping our rhythm steady, I come apart beneath his touch. Crying out, clenching around nothing where I wish it were him.

I dig my nails into his flesh, soft sounds pouring from my mouth, and he covers it with his palm, muffling my noises, and I come that much harder.

He groans, loud, a “Fucking hell, Little D,” falling from his lips, and then I can feel him pulsing beneath me, his thick length jerking against me, liquid heat leaching through his boxer briefs with his grunts.

I watch in rapt fascination as his features contract, his teeth clenched and his brows drawn low as he comes. The wild torrent in his gaze pulls me in further, dragging me into the dark depths of his pleasure and deepening my own.

His hands are unforgiving, digging into the flesh of my thighs as I ride him through his orgasm, stretching out my own as my walls continue to convulse around nothing but my need for him.

Our breaths clash together in the space between us. Moonlight washes over his defined abs, painted in an array of shadows, and a thin sheen of sweat coats his skin.

My mind goes blissfully quiet.

I don’t allow myself to think too much further about what that might mean, falling onto the mattress beside him in a heap of breaths.

An electrical current of pleasure still hums through my body, and I fight to slow my quick and shallow breaths, and the beats of my heart. The same choppy, yet contented sighs escape Jude’s mouth, and pride blooms inside me—strengthening with each intimate sound.

I wish we had done this sooner.

Or maybe I don’t. Maybe it would have been harder that way.

Jude rises from his bed, chuckling softly, and the light sound reels me back into the present moment. Jude standing half-naked in the darkness of his room. The cooling stickiness of his orgasm drying on my skin. The wetness of my own soaking through my underwear.

“What’s so funny?” I ask, biting back a smile.

He gives a quick shake of his head, biting down on his own grin before he says, “As if jerking off to thoughts of you all summer wasn’t bad enough, now you’ve got me coming in my briefs like an inexperienced asshole.”

My cheeks warm with his statement, and I breathe out a laugh. Pride curves around my limbs like vines, dragging me deeper into his mattress.

When he comes back from the bathroom, after cleaning himself and offering me a warm towel, too, he slinks into bed behind me, his arms winding through and curling around my body.

Flora, spice, and thunderstorms— Jude —envelops me. And I fall asleep with him completely surrounding me.