Page 200 of Falling Offsides

“Good girl. Good… fucking… girl…” Auguste groans, and then he’s coming hot and hard, buried so, so deep.

We stay tangled for a long time. Heartbeats syncing. Breath slowing.

“I love you,” I whisper.

“I really would marry you tonight if you let me.”

“I know.”

Auguste smiles into my chest, and as he plants a kiss over my heart, his thumb scrolls across my hip bone.

“Mine.”

I don’t knowwhere the week goes. But I’m clinging on to every second we have left in LA. Together.

My chest hurts at the thought and I pause part way through emptying a drawer when I hear Auguste’s deep voice grumble from the bedroom.

“C’mon, buddy…” I peer through the gap in the door and my heart does that sad, awful lurch that stops me from breathing every time I look at him and our boy today. “You can’t hide in mommy’s suitcase forever.”

I chuckle to myself when Samson’s tail sticks out from the duffel.

“I know,” Auguste continues when gives him a gravelly yip. “It sucks. But we’re a family and your mommy will always come back… we’ll go visit her…”

Samson sighs, flopping on my packed clothes when Auguste scratches behind his ear.

“I’m gonna miss her too… fuck, I miss her already…”

This is the worst. When we planned the next ten months, it didn’t feel like this. Hopeless and daunting. Leaving him is going to hurt unlike anything else, and I’m not ready for tomorrow evening when he takes me to the airport and we kiss goodbye… see you soon… or whatever we’ve told ourselves it is.

Opening the closet door, I rush to him. I can pack tomorrow. Tonight we can just be. Eat take out, fuck and love and cuddle in his fresh sheets so that they smell like us when I’m gone.

Auguste catches me as we fall onto the bed, next to my case. I can’t stop myself from kissing him again. I won’t. I want to make the most of each of these moments we have left.

Then we come up for air and Auguste’s watching me with thosegreen eyes that make all sense and will go out of the window. He smiles that smile that says he’s aching and dying like I am.

“I don’t want to leave,” I whisper over his lips, curling into him when Samson plops himself over our heads.

Auguste nods, cradling me deeper into him with a kiss to my hair while breathing me in. He says nothing for the longest while.

Then his hand caresses my face, fingertips memorizing every line as he murmurs, “I know… I know, Princess. But you have to.”

“Do I? I don’t want to go back to not having this. To not having you.”

“We’re not going back, Court, we’re forging ahead. Making a future.”

My fingers twist into his t-shirt and I pull his mouth back to mine. “I love you.”

“I love you more.”

“Impossible.”

He grins. “Try me.”

FORTY-TWO

AUGUSTE

Courtney holdsmy hand as if it's a promise all the way to the airport.