Page 78 of On the Way to You

He was all strength and longing, holding the weight of me as he filled me again and again. The friction of his tight abdomen against my center sent a spark of pleasure through me, the heat popping and fizzing with each brush. I rolled into him, each wave reaching farther, climax tickling my fingertips, it was so close. When he groaned in my ear, his entire body surrounding mine, I clenched tight around him until stars invaded my vision and all my muscles tightened and released at once, my orgasm rocking through me like a tsunami. I clutched his shoulders, his name on repeat from my lips like I was speaking in tongues as I moaned out my release.

Emery kissed me hard, his arms wrapping around me tighter as he thrust in twice more, each time hitting me deeper before he held me in place, pulsing out his own release with a longing groan. His hands bruised my hips, holding me there as he emptied, his body shaking, eyes squeezed shut. When they finally fluttered open again, his body stilling, I collapsed into him with a shudder, giving him all of my weight, all of me.

For a while we just breathed, we just existed, two bare bodies wrapped up in each other like tangled wires. The air still buzzed and sparked, and I leaned up enough to look into his sated eyes, my fingertips running through the damp strands of his hair, feeling each one from root to tip before letting it fall and repeating the motion.

Emery watched me, his eyes flicking between mine before falling to my lips where he placed a tender kiss. My heart was so full, swelling with words unsaid, with feelings never experienced. He just held me closer, tighter, like even one centimeter of space between us was too much.

It was like a dream, my body numb and mind distant as we rolled, Emery pulling me under the covers with him and curling into me. He held me, his breaths on the back of my neck, arms wrapped around me like a sweater. But this time, and for the first time, my dreams weren’t better than my reality. Emery was real, the way I felt was real, and every ounce of fatigue I had washed out of me at that realization.

I was wide awake, and I never wanted to sleepwalk through life again.

It was still dark when Emery woke me the next morning, his large hand rubbing circles on my lower back. I arched into the touch, body sore and aching and incredibly satisfied. My toes curled as I rolled over, reaching for my glasses on the bedside table when I saw he was already dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Time is it?” I mumbled, rubbing the sleep from my eyes under my lenses. “Is Kalo okay?”

“She’s fine,” he said on a chuckle. “But there’s something I want to show you before we get back on the road.”

Emery was quiet as I dressed, taking my hand when I was ready and grabbing my yoga mat and a long towel on our way out the door. I cocked a brow, curiosity piqued, but he just squeezed my hand.

I watched the dawn break behind the mountains, the sky softly lightening to a cerulean blue as we drove. We weren’t on the road long before Emery pulled off to the side, parking and grabbing my mat from the back seat.

The waves were calm below us as we hiked down a bit, finding a plateau where Emery laid out my mat, taking the towel and spreading it out a few feet to the left. When he turned to me, I swore the sky lightened more in that moment, the golden hues of the morning racing to match that of his eyes.

“Usually when I have a bad day, people push me,” he said, swallowing. “My parents, my therapist. No one ever understands that I can’t talk about it when I don’t have anything to say. Even Grams, she wanted me to write, and for the longest time I couldn’t. I’ve finally gotten to the point where Icanwrite, but even that is hard sometimes because honestly…” his voice trailed off as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his athletic shorts. “Honestly, I don’t see what the point is.”

I frowned, stepping into him and wrapping my arms around his waist, my head falling to his chest. He sighed, hugging me in return, his chin propped on my head.

“I can’t tell you how much it meant to me that you didn’t leave, didn’t get mad, didn’t look at me like I was broken or sad or like you pitied me. I gave you nothing, but you understood.” He pulled back, the sun rising a bit in his eyes as they found mine. “You’re the first person to do that. You’re the first person to make me feel alive, Cooper. In a long time.” He shrugged. “Maybe ever.”

My heart swelled at the same time guilt seeped low into my stomach. I had left him alone, let him have his bad day, all the while using ammo from his journal to break down his walls a little more. It was an unfair battle, one he didn’t even know I was fighting.

“I’d like to practice with you,” he said, nodding toward my mat. “If that’s okay. I know yoga is important to you, and I know it helped you get through the hardest time of your life. I thought maybe it could help me, too.”

It was a resurrection, the way my heart stopped in that moment and kicked back to life with a new beat under my chest. To someone driving by, it would have seemed so insignificant — Emery’s towel spread beside my mat, the two of us enjoying a morning yoga session before getting back on the road. But I knew it was more, I knew it meant he was healing, and I was a part of it.

We started in a seated position, our hands at heart center, faces turned to the west as the ocean mist drifted up the rocks to greet us. The sun rose behind us, the water sparkling a deep blue under its shine, our backs warming as it rose higher. With every new stretch, every new breath, I felt our connection grow stronger.

Emery Reed wasn’t a stranger anymore.

Looking back, it doesn’t surprise me that I didn’t see the storm rolling in from the east, the clouds billowing up higher and higher behind the mountains. All I could see was the sunshine, all I could feel was his heart beating, and mine matching the rhythm, falling into sync without so much as a second thought of what would happen next.

We laid down in Savasana and I meditated as if that moment alone was enough to banish any worries I had before. I found a reassurance that wasn’t actually present, a promise never spoken.

I thought I couldn’t lose him.

But I could, and I would, in a way I never even imagined.

After yoga, we ended up staying the rest of the day in Big Sur, eating lunch by the river and hiking the falls. We got up close and personal with the redwood trees, and Kalo found more than a few furry friends as we explored.

The next morning, we took our time driving the rest of the way up the PCH, stopping once we reached Legget before traveling on to Grants Pass the next day. Our afternoons were mostly spent driving or hiking the areas we passed, and our conversations grew deeper with each day. Emery talked more in those few days than he had the entire trip, and I wasn’t tempted to read his journal anymore. Hearing the stories of his childhood and his thoughts on life from his own lips instead of those pages was better than I imagined, I only had to give up my need to know what hewouldn’ttell me — like what would happen when we reached Seattle.

“One day, I was just sitting in my bedroom and I noticed this mug of pens on my desk,” he told me when we’d finished our drive up the PCH. We were standing at the northernmost point of it near Leggett, our eyes on the setting sun over the coast. “And I remember beinginstantlyannoyed. Why the fuck did I have so many pens? I neededone,maybe two, just in case the first one broke. But I had seventeen. Why?”

I’d laughed, shrugging. “We just collect things over the years, I suppose.”

“Exactly. And it wasn’t just pens, it was everything. I looked around my room that night at all this…stuffthat I didn’t need. So, I went into the kitchen, grabbed an entire box of trash bags, and locked myself in my room for the rest of the night. I cranked my music, started at one corner, and by three o’clock the next morning I’d bagged up seventy percent of my shit to donate.”

I’d nodded, understanding him more than he knew. “I had that same kind of clarity when I was packing up to leave with you. I was standing there in my room trying to figure out what to take with me when I realized I didn’t need any of it. There was nothing there that I couldn’t leave behind and never think about again. So, I stopped packing.”