Page 2 of The Year of Us: August

“I insist,” Kale added. He raised his glass in a toast. “To Cory. May LA be everything you always wanted.”

CHAPTER 2

Reese

Seventy-two hours wasseventy-one hours too many. Cory was due back in LA at just before three in the afternoon. I’d offered to pick him up, but he’d turned me down, instead sending me an address and a keycode for a house in Studio City, not too far up Coldwater Canyon that looked like it could have been plucked right out of an Architectural Digest feature. Considering Cory’s line of work, the appearance of the house wasn’t surprising.

Make yourself at home, he’d said, the words a soft echo as I keyed the four-digit code into the keypad on the front door and let myself inside. The house was big, bigger than his place in New York, but the vibes were so similar the comparison was impossible to ignore. From the wood paneling in the dining room to the black slate in the bathroom and around the living room fireplace, even the natural rock yard built into the side of the mountain and overlooking the city…everything about the house was explicitly Cory.

His Rolex still sat heavy around my wrist, a comparable weight to the key he’d laced onto a ball chain necklace around my neck before his departure. I rubbed the key between myfinger and thumb, amused that the house was already furnished. With overstuffed velvet couches in the living room and a massive king bed in the sprawling primary bedroom, both spaces boasted a view I didn’t think I would ever get tired of.

“God,” Cory rasped from behind me. I spun around in time to see him drop a black bag onto the floor at his feet. “Look at you.”

“Look atme?” I arched a brow and headed toward him. “Look at this.”

We crashed together without another word spared between us, Cory’s teeth clashing against mine with as much ferocity as his strained and caged cock offered my thigh. He groaned into my mouth, wrapping his arms around my neck and lifting onto his toes enough to take control of the kiss away from me.

Control that I was happy to surrender.

“You look good here,” he whispered against my mouth, and I was helpless to do anything but bracket my hands over the swell of his slender hips and smile at him.

“With you?”

He hummed, taking a step back to study my face.

“Yes, but…” Cory paused, dragging his tongue across the front of his teeth. “I mean here, as well. Like…in this home.”

I think, in some way, I must have known it was coming.

Cory had uprooted his entire life, fired one of his biggest clients, and moved across the country to pursue a relationship with me. It shouldn’t have been a far stretch of the imagination that our next big conversation would revolve around who lived in his new house…him or us.

“But I like how you look in your apartment too,” he said, before I even had a chance to formulate a response to the first part of his statement. “I like how I look there with you.”

I led him to the door that opened onto the rocky patio that overhung the mountain. The weather in August made it my favorite time of year in LA, and even if it got chilly as the sunwent down, there was already a firepit tucked between the dark brown yard furniture. I sank down onto the couch and Cory sat beside me, leaning against my shoulder with a comfortable sense of familiarity that had a knot tightening behind my sternum. I stretched my arm behind his back and made room for him to tuck in against mine, blinking heavily as he molded his body against mine.

“My apartment is too small for the both of us,” I reminded him.

“And this place is too big for just me?—”

“But you couldn’t say no,” I finished before he could. “And I don’t blame you. This house is veryyou.”

He made an amused sound in the back of his throat, but didn’t ask me to elaborate on what I meant. We sat there together in an easy silence for what could have passed as either a lifetime or a second; I wasn’t sure which. At some point, I glanced down at my watch—his watch—and realized it was just barely two in the afternoon. His flight hadn’t been due to land for another half an hour.

“You’re early,” I murmured, resting my cheek against the side of his head.

“I couldn’t wait another moment to be with you again.” His hips lifted up from the cushion, just barely.

I hooked my finger under the collar of my shirt and pulled the key out, letting it dangle freely against my shirt. Cory raised his hand and grasped the key gently, inspecting it as if to make sure it was still in one piece.

“You just want out of that cage,” I said.

“Would you rather I stay locked up?” he countered. “Unable to please you?”

“I’m sure you can still please me.”

“Unable to come inside of you.”

“That is tempting,” I teased.