Page 41 of Cruel Summer

She’d wept in his arms about that surgery, so of course he knew.

“Well. You don’t need one. As long as you…”

“I’m good,” he said.

“I trust you. You’re you.”

It was a big deal, she realized, not using a condom. But she didn’t want to. She wanted him. As close as she could be. She wanted everything. As much as she could have.

This was the most fully honest moment of her life, and she didn’t want anything to come between them.

This might destroy everything. It might break apart that cul-de-sac life that she’d lived for so long.

She wasn’t going to be able to claim innocence.

She wasn’t above anything. She didn’t need to be.

She’d lasted two months into the separation.

Her willpower was nothing.

But maybe it had nothing to do with willpower at all. Maybe it was just honesty. For the first time, and not turning away from it. Not hiding behind a shield of needing to be good.

She wanted to weep. As he moved back to her, kissing her mouth, settling between her thighs.

She wanted to weep because all she cared about was how good it felt.

Not what anyone would think, not what it would mean tomorrow.

She didn’t want to know what it would mean tomorrow.

Or in a week. Or in a month. She really didn’t want to know what it would mean in five months.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this.

The slow press of him into her body, the uncomfortable, delicious stretches, the way he filled her.

She moaned, arching up against him, and he began to move. Hard, short strokes that hit her in all the right places. He whispered things in her ear. The kinds of things no one had ever said to her before. Dark and illicit, and something out of a fantasy she’d been too afraid to have.

This was a fantasy. One she had never allowed herself. How could she have? But she hadn’t wasted time on the fantasy. It was just reality. Sharp and honest. Glorious in its friction. In its honesty.

She was so aware of everything. All the messy things.

The things you edited out in a movie. It wasn’t soft or gauzy or easy.

It was teeth, and fingernails digging into his shoulder.

It was a sharp sting as he thrust deep, bigger than she was used to.

It was sweat and grunting and ragged breathing.

It was all the glorious and filthy things that she had never allowed herself to want. It was truly beautiful.

When her release took hold, everything in her mind went blank. There was nothing. Nothing but this. Nothing but him. She felt free.

When his own need overtook him, when he clung to her as he growled out his climax, she shuddered again, a new wave of sensation overtaking her. The deep satisfaction of knowing that she had given him pleasure almost as good as her own.

They clung to each other. Breathing hard, the wreckage of so many decades of forbidden desire taking the shape of an upended bedspread and clothes all over the floor.

It didn’t seem like quite enough. It felt like the whole room should have come down around them.

Or like lightning should have come through the roof, God smiting them for transgressions.

But no. They were whole, and so was the room. So was everything.

For a brief moment she was sort of disappointed they had survived the thunderstorm.

Because that meant consequences. But not just yet.

Instead, she pressed her head to his chest, resting her hand over his raging heartbeat.

Over the bear. She traced those dark lines with her fingertips, and then he pressed his index finger to the inside of her forearm, doing the same, making a path over her tattoo.

They were tracing each other’s grief. Looking at it. Acknowledging it.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she pressed her face more firmly against his chest, trying to cover them up.

He wrapped his arm around her, and kissed her head.

The simple, comforting, nonsexual gesture tangling up her insides.

If she’d had a chance to think about this ahead of time, she would’ve said that being naked with Logan would be awkward or strange. But it wasn’t. It just felt like a long time coming. Because this was the truth of it. The full exposure of all the lies that she had told herself for all these years.

They wanted each other. They had each other.

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t going to be. Something inside of her chest cracked. Because one thing was perfectly clear to her. Her marriage was irredeemably broken. She was never going back to him.

She wanted to laugh. A little bit. Because this was just another example of her epic denial. Of course she wasn’t going back to him. Of course it had never really been an option from the moment she had really started digging into everything.

But she couldn’t… She couldn’t just jump into another relationship.

She had been married for twenty-two years.

Had been in a relationship since she was sixteen years old.

There was just… She had needed this. But it had been a dead end.

Because what could she possibly get from this?

She had to go eat and pray before she could love, right?

That was the thing. Everybody knew it was dumb to rebound. It sold everyone short.

She had lived her life beholden to somebody else for so long, and she…

“Stop,” he said, his voice firm.

“What?”

“Thinking. Planning. Trying to spin out every last damn implication of this.”

“How can I not?”

“Well, that means I’m a failure, because my intent was to fuck your brains out.”

She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “I mean, my brains aren’t intact. Trust me. Though…” A pulse started to beat at the apex of her thighs again, and she marveled at the fact that she could be so confused and get aroused at the same time. He had that effect. “I can go again.”

“Give me a minute,” he said.

“But see, if I have a minute, I’m going to start thinking. I can’t help it.”

“Just don’t.”

“How?”

“It’s a trick I learned,” he said. “When Becca was sick. I knew what the future held. I knew she was going to die. But I didn’t think about that.

I counted the breaths that she was taking right now.

I would make myself conscious of the air, the position of the sun in the sky, the feeling of my clothes on my body.

Anything and everything to ground myself in the moment.

There is nothing more than the moment. Everything else is a what-if.

Nothing else is real. The past is gone. The future doesn’t exist yet.

This,” he said, his blue eyes so intense she had to fight not to look away.

“This is the only thing that’s real. Right now.

We are all that’s real. Everything outside that door is only a possibility.

” At this, he dragged his fingertips along her lower lip again.

“This is the only real thing in the world.”

He lowered his head and kissed her again, and she let herself get caught up in that. In that seductive promise. In everything.

The only real thing.