“I agreed to this,” I remind both Callum and myself. “He’s been completely upfront.”
“He knows you have feelings for him, Mia! It’s fucked up. I’m disappointed in him.”
“Does he?” I echo, mentally scraping my memories of the last two weeks. “I don’t know. Obviously my lady parts like his man parts. We get along really well when we’re not having sex, too. But what have I actually done or said to make him think I have feelings for him? Maybe he’s waiting for me to make that step? Or maybe he’s worried about my, uh, mental state?”
“Remind me to never date my psychiatrist,” grumbles Callum.
“We’re not dating! And he’s not my psychiatrist! Damnit, Callum. Can’t you say something that makes me feel better? That’s all I want from you!”
His laughter finally dies down. “There are two options. Option one, you tell him you want a relationship and see what happens. Option two, you don’t rock the boat. It’s as simple—and hard—as that. But I think the bigger question is who you want to be. Do you want to be the old version of you? Someone who smothers their feelings and acts out in other damaging ways? Or do you want to live an honest life?”
I shouldn’t have called Callum.
38
discombobulation
I mull over the phone call as I get ready to head to Leo’s house. I’m on autopilot. Not until I glance in the mirror do I realize what I’m wearing. A modest sheath dress and my only pair of heels. I even put on diamond-solitaire earrings. What the shit?
After a five-second existential crises, I rip off the dress and pull on cut-off jean shorts, a comfy T-shirt, and a lightweight cardigan. Battered Converse? Check. Instead of doing something with my hair, I stuff a beanie on my head. Instead of makeup, I put on chapstick and call it a day. I feel defiant. Borderline angry.
Because Callum was right. Despite my focus on the contrary, I’ve been blindly trapped in old habits. Obsessing over ways to get what I want from someone. A chameleon at heart who’s never felt safe enough to simply be.
“Fuck that,” I tell my reflection.
As I request an Uber and head outside to wait, I ignore the final dilemma. Tell him I want more and drive the train off the tracks tonight, or keep my mouth shut.
An hour and fifteen minutes later—because it’s Friday evening in Los Angeles—I knock on Leo’s front door. My hand has barely left the wood when it swings open.
“That was fas—”
His mouth swallows the final consonant. Arms sweeping behind my thighs, he lifts me up, shuffles backward into the house, and kicks the door closed. Hanging in his arms, I lose myself in his rough, needy noises and the heat of his tongue against mine.
When we come up for air, Leo rubs his nose against mine. “It’s so good to see you. Feel you. Taste you.” He punctuates the words with soft kisses on my cheeks and lips.
The smile on my face might be slap-happy, but I don’t care. Staring at the naked truth in his eyes, I don’t care anymore whether I’m a lovesick fool. I don’t care if he doesn’t want to date me right now, or even weeks from now. I’ll wait for him to figure out whatever’s holding him back. I’ll risk the possibility he never does. Because what I see on his face is a mirror of what I feel in my heart.
For now, it’s enough.
Pieces of our clothing leave a trail from the entryway, up the stairs, and down the hall to his bedroom. When I expect him to veer toward the bed, he turns instead toward the bathroom.
“I have a thing with you being wet,” he murmurs against my mouth, then sips from my answering smile.
We kiss as he fumbles for the shower knobs, caress and explore as the water heats. He is smooth, supple lines and hard angles. Remains of aftershave and delicious male musk. With his hands and mouth on me, I feel soft and small and pliable. Utterly wanted and fully possessed.
We make it into the shower, moving into the thick, decadent fall of water. A finger slips inside me, then another, as our tongues continue their slow, sensual dance. I rock against his hand, then hum in protest when his body withdraws from mine. Opening my eyes, I find him on his knees before me, my body blocking the spray from his face. The intent in his bright blues makes my knees quiver and sends a surge of blood to my core.
Leo leans forward, hands spreading my thighs for his viewing pleasure. “You were made for me, Amelia,” he growls, then kisses me right where I need him most.
Clutching his shoulder with one hand and the wall with the other, I gasp at the sensation, then again at the first flick of his tongue. He begins licking in earnest, diving between my folds and sweeping up to circle my clit.
My ragged moans make him ravenous. Mouth still pressed against me, he pulls one of my legs over his shoulder and braces me with strong hands on my ass. Then he draws back just enough to give me a heated glance.
“Ride my face, Amelia. Don’t stop until you come.”
I nod weakly. “No protest here.”
A wicked grin flashes my way before he…
goes
to
town.
I come with a strained cry, bucking against him, his name on my lips. There’s barely a second in which to reacquaint myself with gravity before I’m hoisted against the wall of the shower and impaled with every last inch of him. The invasion is exquisite, the burn only adding to my pleasure.
My legs lock instinctively around his waist, my arms around his neck. I find his mouth and feed on the taste of him, the taste of me, until we both gasp for breath.
“Has it ever been like this?” he whispers in my ear.
I’m past speech at this point, so I shake my head. With a low growl of approval, he lets loose. The wet slap of our bodies joins the billowing steam. My sense of time and place shivers and blows apart as he drives again and again to that place of deep, brutal pleasure.
“Fuck, Leo, I’m—” The rest is lost in a cry of surrender.
He stiffens, pressed tight inside me, and comes with a roar. Aftershocks rock my womb like little firecrackers. I twitch in his arms and relearn to breathe.
“Holy shit,” he pants. “I can’t feel my legs.”
I gasp a laugh. “Don’t drop me!”
His eyes, full of wonder and tenderness, find mine.
“Never.”
Takeout Chinese food boxes litter the coffee table. There’s a movie on but neither of us is watching. My head in Leo’s lap, I flip through an architectural magazine while he scrolls through emails on his phone.
Staring at an ad for a tropical resort with a tagline of Find Your New Oasis, a question pops into my head. “Hey, do you know if Preston is okay?”
Leo freezes for a moment, then looks down at me. Sensing his discomfort, I sit up quickly. “It’s okay. Sorry I asked. I just, uh, never got his number and was thinking about him.”
His expression softens. “He’s fine. Doing really well, actually.”
I sigh. “Good. Great, thanks.”
For the rest of the night, we ignore how close we came to acknowledging the elephant in the room.
39
the elephant
Saturday afternoon, Leo and I lie entwined on his bed, which has fast become one of my favorite places in the world. The sheets and pillows are on the floor, victims of our recent passion. His head rests on my chest, facing away, and for the last few minutes his fingers have been playing on my abdomen. I know what has his focus—the three small moles just beneath my belly button.
“It’s Orion’s belt,” I murmur, stroking the hair at his temple. “Jameson has the rest of the constellation—minus the belt—on his right shoulder.”
Leo turns over and looks up at me. “Really?”
“Yep. My mom first noticed it. She was obsessed with the idea that we carried missing pieces of the other. When we fought, she often told us that no matter how far apart we felt, we would always complete each other, that it was a code written on our bodies. I remember one day she came home super excited from the craft store. She was
always getting weird, artsy ideas, most of which ended up in the garbage. But this one came out pretty cool. She used tracing paper to mark our moles, then showed us how our combined constellation compared to the actual one.”
“And?”
I smile with the memory. “It was pretty darn close. Kinda freaky, really. For our seventh birthday, she presented each of us with framed copies of the constellation as it appears on our bodies. She did it so it looks like an actual map of stars.”
Soft lips press against my breastbone. “Do you still have it?”
I nod. “It’s in my bedroom.”
“I want to see it next time I’m there.”
My fingers pause in his hair, my gaze on the vaulted ceiling of his bedroom. “Okay,” I force out.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Come back.”
I meet his eyes with effort. “I’m here.”
He sits up and I follow, scooting back against the pillows and pulling the sheet over my breasts.
“What’s wrong?” Leo asks gently.
I shake my head. “Nothing. I’m good. Memory lane, you know. It’s a trip.”
“Amelia.”
I smirk. “Yeah, Doc?”
As soon as the nickname trips from my mouth, my stomach sinks. Stupid, Mia. Sure enough, Leo stiffens.
“I wondered how long we’d avoid the issue. Does it bother you a lot, that I was your therapist?”
I disguise panic with a laugh. “Shouldn’t that be my question?”
Leo sighs, turning away and dropping his legs off the bed. It’s late—sometime after midnight. We’re both tired, but for some reason we haven’t tried to sleep. Sex before dinner, sex after dinner, and sex for dessert. We’re insatiable, each time somehow better than the last. More intimate. More profound. There were moments tonight I forgot we weren’t together, that we hadn’t always been together. That we’re a landmine waiting for a single misstep.
My slip of the tongue is the misstep.
“Yes,” he says finally. “It bothers me.”
Pain rings a discordant note in my heart. “Okay. I mean, I get it. Obviously. And I don’t want you to risk—”
“It’s not about my career, at least not in that way. Sure, if someone dug deep enough, they’d find out we were at Oasis at the same time, but the place is basically wallpapered in nondisclosures. Nothing would come of it. And I only treated you peripherally after your accident in 2016.”
“Then I don’t understand,” I say helplessly. To my horror, tears fill my eyes. “Am I not good enough for you?”
He swivels toward me, features etched in horror. “What? No! Jesus, why would you even say that?”
I laugh shrilly. “Because you don’t want to date me, maybe? Is it the pink hair? The eight-year age difference? The fact I’m a waitress with a useless art history degree? That I’m not long-term material? That I was at Oasis in the first plac—”
Leo grabs my shoulders. “Sweetheart, stop. Please stop.”
I suck in breath, my chest tight, my heart stampeding against my ribs. Leo’s face comes into focus as I blink away tears. My face burns with embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” I choke.
“Never apologize for telling me how you feel,” he says sharply. “I’m the one who should apologize, for not realizing you might feel rejected. None of what you said is true, Amelia. I don’t care what job you work or about your education or anything like that.”
“Then why?” I whisper.
His eyes shutter and he looks away, but not before I see it. Guilt.
And I know.
“It’s because of what happened between us at Oasis, isn’t it? That’s what bothers you, what you can’t deal with. That you were technically my doctor when we slept together.”
His hands fall from my shoulders. “Yes,” he admits mutedly. “I’ve tried, Amelia. There are moments I even forget about it.”
“But it was consensual,” I say, even though I know that’s not the issue for him. His conflict is deep and personal, and one I can do nothing about.
Turning distraught eyes on me, he murmurs, “Do you remember the conversation we had about power? I knew how hard it would be for you to open fully to me, and I asked you to trust me not to abuse my power.”
I shake my head numbly, totally helpless. I can’t make a valid argument against his point. There’s no use. So I tell him the truth.
“It was my fault, Leo. Mine. I’ve been breaking people for twenty years. You were by far the hardest, but you still broke. I got what I wanted and this is my punishment. You’ll never forgive yourself, will you?”
“You’re still looking at yourself through the wrong lens,” he says softly, eyes tender on mine. “You aren’t—have never been—the destructive person you think you are. You’re… a force of nature. A perfect wave. Everyone who has tried to ride that wave has wiped out, but mark my words, every one of them would give anything to ride it again. Even for a few seconds.”
I want to bask in his words like a cat in sunshine, but I can’t. Not when our train’s wheels are throwing sparks. Not when the conductor is screaming for everyone to jump off. Not when my brain can only think in stupid fucking metaphors.
“What the hell does that mean?”
He drags a hand through his hair—once upon a time he would have removed his glasses.
“Can you blame a wave for crashing to shore?”
I throw my hands up. “For the love of everything good in the world, will you stop with the metaphor?”
He cracks a tiny smile, but it only lasts a second. “I don’t blame you for what happened, Amelia. I can’t blame you. I was responsible. I could have said no. Should have said no. But when you stood up, the way the moonlight… I lost my fucking mind.”
I recoil physically and mentally. “So that’s it, then? It was a mistake, you blame yourself, you’ll never get over it, the end? Having sex with me now is what, some sort of self-flagellation for your sin?”
He rubs his face roughly, muttering, “I don’t want this.”
For once, the truth is easy to speak.
“Neither do I.”
We dress. He drives me home.
40
island escape
Jameson is the only reason I make it to Sunday breakfast. Last night I told him I wasn’t going because I didn’t have money for an Uber. It was kinda true—I’ve been spending way more than usual—but still a bullshit excuse in his estimation. To avoid a lecture about money management, I thanked him for the offer to pick me up, promised to be ready at nine, and hung up on him.
The main reason I didn’t want to come this morning is currently staring at me with concerned eyes.
“Quit hovering, Dad, I’m just tired.”
“You’ve been sitting on this couch watching football for an hour. You don’t even like football. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yep. Totally good. Is there any more salsa?”
Dad nods, and with a final, worried glance, heads for the kitchen where Jessica is making sandwiches. A gummy bear hits the side of my face. I glare at Jameson, sprawled on the other end of the couch.
“What?” I bark.
“You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The fake-person-who-doesn’t-feel-anything thing.”
“Suck it, Jaybird. I’m not repressing anything. Like I told you on the drive over, I simply don’t want to talk about it. Why do you want to know anything about my sex life, anyway? Freak.”
Another gummy bear bounces off my shoulder. It joins the first in my mouth.
“You’re right. The thought of you having sex makes me want to hurl. I’m still not over you growing boobs.”
“Wow. So mature.”
“I know you don’t want us to treat you like glass, Meerkat.” His serious tone pulls my gaze begrudgingly to his face. “But I think we’re entitled to worry a little when you look like that.”
I frown. “Like what?”
Jameson cocks a brow
and points at different parts of me. “Your hair hasn’t been brushed in days. You’re wearing a bright-red shirt, yellow shorts, and socks with sandals. You’re a retirement home in Florida.”
Candy goes down the wrong pipe. I bend in half with a coughing fit, but I’m also laughing so hard I can’t breathe even if I wanted to. Jameson pounds on my back. Dad and Jessica run from the kitchen asking what’s wrong. It’s a shitshow.
When Jessica steps forward with her Nurse Face on, I hold up both hands. “I’m okay,” I say hoarsely, wiping tears from my eyes and swallowing past a sore throat.
Looking up at the three people watching me like they don’t know whether to call an ambulance or find a straightjacket, I pull myself together.
“I’m sorry I look like a retirement home,” I tell them.
“Say what now?” asks my dad, while Jessica tilts her head, eyeing my attire and nodding thoughtfully.
Jameson ruffles my gross hair. “She’s okay. You’re okay, aren’t you?”
I nod, sighing. “I was seeing someone for a laughably short period of time, but I really liked him. It ended last night. I’m just sad. It was my first mostly sane effort at a relationship.”
Jameson and Dad exchange a glance of abject terror. Jessica rolls her eyes at them, then perches beside me. “Oh, honey,” she coos, “I know just what you need.”
“What?” snaps my dad. “What does she need?”
Jessica gives me a conspiratorial grin. “An afternoon at the spa.”
I knew I liked her.
When Jessica and I arrive at an upscale day spa in Malibu, I’m expecting a Swedish massage. What she signs us up for instead is called Island Escape, which is three hours long and includes a tropical bath soak, hour-long massage, custom facial, and a mani-pedi.
As Jessica hands over my dad’s credit card, I whisper-hiss, “Are you sure he’s okay with this?”
The Fall Before Flight Page 18