Holy shit.
I think she’s going to forgive me.
Harlow emerges about ten minutes later, again wrapped in the robe but her hair is wet and loose and her face is scrubbed clean of the mask. I feel like I can’t properly inhale, like the sight of her has short-circuited my most basic instincts: breathing, blinking, swallowing. She looks unbelievable.
“Did you touch my underwear?” she asks, walking to her suitcase.
With effort, I close my mouth, inhale, and swallow so I can speak. “Yeah. Rubbed it all over my sweaty chest.”
She snorts and throws me a dirty look. “Don’t flirt. I’m mad at you.”
My smile vanishes without effort. “I know.”
Reaching for a brush in her bag, she pulls it through her hair, watching me. “It’s hard to stay mad at you when you come in here looking like that, though.”
“That’s . . . good, right?” I look down at my faded UW T-shirt, my old 501s, my favorite old red Chucks. I don’t see anything special, but the way she’s looking at me makes me feel like I’m wearing a tux. The knot in my chest loosens.
“Is this easier?” she asks quietly, adding, “Seeing me here in a fancy restaurant, or fancy hotel wearing a masque with a q-u-e, rather than trying to fit in down by your boat?”
The knot tightens again. “I was mad, Harlow. It made me act like a dick.”
“I know. I’m just an insta-forgiver. If someone I care about says they’re sorry, it’s done.”
“I’m not like that,” I admit. “You’d already left by the time I decided you were forgiven.”
She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and sucks it, eyes wide and vulnerable. I know she has no idea she’s looking at me this way, and it makes me want to open up my chest, let her see how fast my heart is beating.
I lean forward, looking around the room. “You know I’ve never stayed overnight in a hotel except for that Vegas trip?”
She stills, breath catching. “Not even for Bike and Build?”
“No. Some people did, but we stayed with host families or camped.”
“Wow . . . that’s . . .”
“That’s been my life. Aside from the two years I spent in college, I was always here. I sounded like a dick when I said you looked out of place, but I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t like seeing you there. I just meant my world doesn’t look like this. Doesn’t look like you.”
She puts the brush down and turns to rest back against the desk.
“I don’t go out drinking every Thursday night and buy Starbucks every morning,” I tell her. “I don’t go on vacations and I couldn’t call up a producer friend to come drop a ton of money on fixing my boat.”
“You could now, probably,” she says. “Your life is going to change completely.”
“I know,” I say, bending to rest my elbows on my knees. “I guess that’s what I’m saying.”
“That you’re scared?”
I laugh, turning my attention down to the carpet. “Maybe not scared, really, just stepping into an unknown. It takes trust.”
“You don’t have to navigate this all on your own. I know I screwed up with you and Sal, but do you trust me?”
I look up at her and nod. “I do.” She watches me, eyes softening and I repeat, “I absolutely do.”
“All right. Then I’m getting dressed and you’re taking me to a lumberjack bar.”
My heart stalls, and then revs back to life as I sit up straight. “Just like that we’re done fixing this?”
She nods. “Just like that.” Swallowing, she adds, “I love you. We don’t need to rehash. I messed up, you messed up. I’m sure we’ll mess up again, it will just look different next time.”
She grabs jeans and a sweater, underwear, and a bra from her bag and turns as if she’s going to leave to change in the bathroom. Before I know it, I’m on my feet and moving across the room.
“Don’t get dressed.”
Harlow stops, backing into the wall. I slow a little, taking the last few steps to her over the span of what feels like a million rapid-fire heartbeats. I can see her pulse in her throat.
“Finn.” She leans her head back against the wall, looking up at me as I step so close I’m only a few inches away from her.
“You love me?” I reach forward, finger the tie at her waist.
“Yeah, you idiot.” She licks her lips, and then bites the lower one because, fuck, she knows it makes me hard. “I told you that already. You think it goes away after a few days, like a temporary tattoo?”
Laughing, I bend, pushing the heavy terry cloth aside to kiss her collarbone. She smells like shampoo and the soft smell I couldn’t forget in a million years: honeysuckle and warm stone, Harlow and mine.
I loosen the knot at her waist and pull her robe open, groaning at the sight of her bare skin, golden and smooth.
Her eyes close and she moans hoarsely when I run my palms from her hips to her breasts and back again, pulling her forward into me.
“I’m sorry,” I say into the warm skin of her neck. “I’m glad we’re not rehashing, but I want to say it anyway. I’m sorry I split town, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you yesterday. And I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t call to find out if we were pregnant.”
She pushes me away so that she can look up at my face. “ ‘We’?”
“Fuck, Harlow, you didn’t do it alone.”
Laughing, she agrees with a nod. “I’m sorry, too.”
“Baby, that was two weeks of fucking miserable.”
She falls silent, pressing her face into my neck. After a few seconds, she hiccups and nods wordlessly and I realize . . . she’s crying.
I pull back to look at her, cupping her face. “Hey . . . no, don’t. I—”
“I thought it was done,” she says. I wipe my thumbs over her cheeks. “At the boat? I thought you were done with me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get over you. I’ve never had to get over someone before.”
“I wouldn’t have let it be done.”
“You left, though.” She looks up at me and two more tears run down her cheeks. “You just left and then wouldn’t talk to me and it was terrifying because with you I realized I’m that person who finds their guy and that’s it.”
My chest twists and I tug my shirt over my head in a rush before pulling her against me. I need her skin on mine, need to get my heart as close to hers as possible, and she shrugs out of her robe, pressing into my heat, her arms going around my neck.
The Harlow everyone sees is a force to be reckoned with. This vulnerable Harlow is rare. She’s just told me she feels what I feel—this is it, I’ve found my girl and that’s it—and I don’t want to fuck it up with her.
“We talk about everything,” she promises into my shoulder. “And you don’t ever leave me like that again. Promise me.”
“I promise.” I pull back and kiss her, a glancing touch across her lips. I mean it to be small, a seal on a promise, but her mouth opens and the sound that escapes is a sob mixed with a moan and fuck me, it’s the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard her make because it’s so raw.
In an instant her tongue is sliding over my lips, my teeth, my tongue and her pleading little noises are filling my head. She slides her hands down my body and presses her palm to the front of my jeans and I was already quickly getting there but under her touch I harden, needing her so much it feels like a match has been lit beneath my skin.
She slips free the buttons and digs her hand in, under my boxers, and, with a tight gasp, curls her hand around my shaft. I need my fucking jeans down at my ankles and her legs up around my waist.
I need her skin and her sounds and the sharp burst of her breath on my neck. I need her taste on my tongue and—
“I’m on the pill now,” she says between her wild, sucking kisses. “I started it the day I got my period.”
“Jesus fuck,” I groan. “There is no better combination of words in the history of time.”
She laughs, shoving my jeans down,
and I kick them off with my shoes, stumbling against her and pressing her into the wall.
“I’ll be slow later,” I tell her, reaching between her legs. My fingers slide across her clit, down into the unbelievable slickness. Fuck me. “Later, I’ll take my time but I just—”
“Stop talking,” she says on a tight exhale. “I know.”
Lifting her, I pull her legs around my waist and she holds herself there, watching me reach between us, rub the head of my cock over her. Up and down, barely in—fuck, fuck—barely out again.
“Look at that.”
She sucks in a tight breath. “I’m looking.”
The slight give of her body as I ease just in and out is a torture of bliss. My arms are shaking with how much I want to pound into her but she mistakes restraint for strain: “I realize this hotel thing is a novelty, but this one does come with a bed.”
Laughing, I walk the two steps over to it and lower her onto her back, following closely so I don’t lose the feel of her for one single second.
Her legs come around my hips and she pulls me down and in, guiding me inside her so fucking slow and hot, I have to stop when my hips meet her thighs because honest to God I could come right this fucking second.
She’s staring right at my face, straight into my eyes; our faces are close enough that we’re sharing a breath, back and forth. I lift my chin just slightly and I’m kissing her, and it’s too intense somehow but I can’t look away. I’ve never felt this. I want to tell her that but it sounds clichéd and plain. This feeling is so much larger than some trite words like never before and no one else.
“You’re it for me,” I tell her.
“Yeah.” She nods, her upper lip glistening in the warm room and maybe also under the strain of this shared tension, this need to move and dig deeper and feel. I’m just terrified if I pull back even once, I’m coming.
Harlow writhes beneath me, rubbing and fucking up into me and I’m holding still, trying to keep my shit together but it’s a losing battle. It’s not going to take long for either of us. I’m so hard I’m nearly busting in her. She’s swollen, hot and so fucking wet and I can tell by the flush of her chest that she could get off in under a minute rubbing on me like this.
She plants her heels into the bed and arches as I slide my hands beneath her shoulders, digging my hands into her hair, pressing my face into the damp strands. And then, under me, covered by me and filled full of me, Harlow fucks me like nothing I’ve ever had in my life. With her nails digging into my ass to hold me still, she circles and rocks up and grips me so tight—her body sucking all around me so wet, so good, holy fuck—gasping into my neck as she moves and growls and rubs herself right where she needs it, squeezing and tugging my cock while she gets herself off on me. She’s grinding, I’m shoved in deep, and her mouth is pressed right to my ear like she’s pushing every word in there, giving them only to me.
“So good,” she gasps. “God, it’s so good.”
I’m barely hanging on; just waiting to hear the sound of her quick breaths and hungry little gasps that will tell me she’s coming. “Get there,” I manage.
She hiccups, and moans, nails digging into my skin, and with a relieved exhale, she comes so hard she shakes in my arms, pulling me over the edge with her. I can’t be still anymore. I pull back and stab back in, fucking her hard now in long, urgent strokes as I start to come and she cries out into my neck.
I don’t want it to be over. I don’t want to move off her but for as long as her legs are, she easily weighs eighty pounds less than I do and so I roll to the side, falling beside her on the mattress.
“You know how gross hotel comforters are, right?” she says, breathless.
I close my eyes, still feeling warm and liquid beneath my skin. “What?”
“People who have sex in hotels—”
I reach over; press my palm over her mouth. “Shh.”
She giggles under my cupped hand and licks me and fuck, I’m over her again, tickling and pulling her arms over her head and sucking at her jaw and her neck and her breasts. The relief hits me in a burst, like the wind has knocked open the window and blown across the bed: I’m here with her. The business may not have been saved in the way I wanted, but we won’t lose our boats. My life is moving forward and I have the love of my life naked beneath me and everything will be okay.
But then I halt my mental uncoiling, because there’s one thing we haven’t discussed at all. “How’s your mom?”
She stills under me, giving me a look that tells me the best time to ask this was maybe not when I was nuzzling my face between her breasts.
“Sorry, I swear I wasn’t thinking about your mom’s chest. I was thinking about how relieved I am and how everything seems to be sorting out, and then I thought about what you’re going through. We haven’t talked about it yet.”
Harlow pulls my face up to hers and kisses me so thoroughly I have to pull away to get some air. “Thanks for asking me that.”
“Well?”
“Let’s get dressed,” she says. “We can talk about it over beers.”
She stands, and I follow her into the bathroom, sitting on the lowered toilet seat and running my hands up her legs, resting my head on her navel while she rubs some lotion on her face, ties her hair up in a messy bun. Now she smells like she did before, but also like the clean smell of her sweat and sex.
“You’re thinking about how much you love me right now, aren’t you?” she asks.
“Yep.” I run my palm over her hip and between her legs. She shivers when I slip my middle finger into her, stroking slowly. Kissing her stomach, I mumble, “Fuck. Fuck that’s hot.”
“What?”
I look up at her. “I can feel my come in you.”
This makes her laugh. “You’re a dirty, dirty man.” But she doesn’t step away. And she can’t hide the way her chest flushes and nipples grow tight.
“I like it,” I admit. I want to see it. I don’t admit that yet, though I don’t know why. Maybe because if I give voice to the thought, I know we’ll never leave this room tonight.
Her hands slide into my hair. “I like it, too. I like a lot of things I didn’t know before.”
There’s a moment where I wonder if she’s talking about the sex, or the rope, or something else, something bigger. Stepping away, she reaches for a washcloth and holds it under the faucet. “But don’t get any ideas. You’re taking me out.”
IT’S A HALF-HOUR drive from her hotel to my neighborhood bar but the trip seems to fly by in only a matter of minutes. What Harlow is going through with her mother is nearly identical to what I went through twenty years ago. Except she has the emotional maturity to deal with it far better than I did, and treatment is better now. Mom was diagnosed when I was ten, and I was alternately terrified of losing my mother and irritated by the responsibility I was left with because of her illness: Levi was only four, and when Mom died two years later, I was left to run the household for the two years it took my father to get his words back, to stop burying himself in sixteen-hour shifts on the boats.
If I could go back and do it all over again, I would do exactly what Harlow does, and I can tell by the doubt in her voice—Is she going over there enough or too much? What will her mother need when this second round of chemo starts? How long can her dad be the sole caregiver before he burns out?—that she needs to hear me say it out loud.
“You’re doing it just right, Snap. If I could do it all over, I’d want to handle it just like you.”
Her head whips to me. “Really?” she whispers.
“Really.”
“I’m scared it’s going to get worse.”
I pull into the small parking lot behind Dockside and shut off the engine. “It probably will for a while. But you don’t have to navigate this all on your own,” I say, repeating her words back to her. “I know I screwed up with you when I left town, but do you trust me?”
Harlow leans over and kisses me once, full on the mouth. “I do.”
For a Tuesday night, the bar is pretty busy, and I know it’s because the weather has been unbelievable. Nothing makes for a thirstier town than warm weather in October, no rain, and a day of big fish.
We enter Dockside to a burst of cheers and shouts, congratulating me on the show. Fuck, I really hadn’t considered this. I’d been so wrapped up in Harlow, I’d forgotten for a second that no one here would ever look at me the same. Leading her to the bar, I pretend I don’t see every fucking head turn as she walks by.
The questions everyone wants to ask come from the bartender, Nick, who graduated a year before me in high school, went to Harvard, and returned here because he couldn’t find a more beautiful place in the world to live. “Finn, who’s the guest?”
“I’m Harlow,” she answers before I get the chance.
“You Finn’s long-lost sister?” says Kenyon at the end of the bar. “Please say yes.”
Harlow winces with a playful apology. “I’m the mail-order bride. He told me he has a castle. Does he have a castle?”
“Sorry, kid,” Kenyon says, laughing. “Just a fancy television show and a lot of groupies.”
“Groupies?” Harlow asks, looking at me.
I order two beers and a basket of peanuts. “Come on.” I guide her to two empty seats at the quieter end of the bar.
She sits down and turns to face me. “You have groupies already?”
“Kenyon is a shit stirrer.”
“Because there were groupies?”
Laughing, I tell her, “There were some girls down at the docks today when the announcement came out.”
“You mean the girls who are over there playing darts and staring at you?” She lifts her chin and looks across the bar.
I tilt my beer to my lips, surreptitiously looking at where she’s indicating. There are a half dozen college-aged girls staring directly at us. “Yeah. That’s them.”
“Pretty sure they read between the lines on that Variety article.” She lifts her beer and drains half of it. “Bet this bar is about to get a lot more business. Bet every place in this town is about to get more business. And I bet those girls are all over Twitter talking about you being here.”
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