by Serena Bell
The boys fly back up the front path. “Dad, can Madden sleep over tonight? Pleeeeeeeease?”
Sawyer looks at me. I shrug. I’m thinking, If the boys are in the same house, Sawyer and I can be, too…
He sees it on my face, and he raises an eyebrow and smirks. He, too, shrugs. “Sure, bud.” He turns to me. “I’m going to head home for a bit, decompress, all that. I’ll text you and we can get some takeout for the boys and us, too, if you want?”
“Sounds good.” I say it nonchalantly, but secretly I’m all, he wants to keep doing this, he wants to keep doing this, we’re going to keep doing this.
“Very nice to meet you, Elena, Matthew,” he tells my parents.
“Very nice to meet you, too, Sawyer,” they say in unison.
When he’s gone, my mother turns to me. There’s an expression on her face I don’t like.
“Elle.”
She says it very gently. The last time she spoke to me that way was the day Trevor left. It’s the Concerned Mom voice. “His wife just died.”
“Two years ago!”
“Lucy’s parents seemed to feel that he was very much not over her. They said he’s still a wreck.”
“He’s doing fine.” My voice is brittle. Defensive.
My mother fidgets, wringing her fingers. “They said he adored her. Doted on her. That he was destroyed by her death. They said they worried more about him than each other or Lucy’s sister, or even Jonah.”
“Leave her alone, Elena,” my father says. “She knows what she’s doing.” He rests a hand on my mother’s shoulder.
I cast a grateful glance in my dad’s direction. “I know what I’m doing, Mom. I won’t get in over my head.”
But I’m remembering the wrecked look on Sawyer’s face as he thrust into me, the shocking sense of connection, and how much I wanted it to mean that he felt the same way I felt, and a voice inside me says, You’re already in over your head.
Chapter 40
Sawyer
After dinner, with dusk falling, the boys join a group of neighborhood kids in a tag game, and race around until they’re completely spent. They don’t even protest when we tell them it’s bedtime, and their lids are already sagging by the time they slip into their sleeping bags. We kneel beside them for “tuck-ins.”
I ruffle Jonah’s dark hair—noting that he’s overdue for a trim (Lucy wouldn’t have let it go this long)—kiss his forehead, and say good night. As I’m getting up to go, he tugs my sleeve. “Daddy,” he says. “If you and Elle got married, would Madden and I be brothers?”
Across the expanse of nylon sleeping bag, I feel Elle freeze.
I’m frozen, too. I’m not sure how to answer. Is Jonah asking if marriage would, factually, create brothers of the two of them? Or is he asking, obliquely, if such a thing might come to pass?
Trust a nine-year-old to make you have to answer a question you haven’t even let yourself ask.
I wish it had occurred to me before this to consult with Elle about how we’d deal with questions like this. I realize, kneeling there, that we’ve made one of those dumb adult mistakes. In our heads, if the boys weren’t aware that we were romantically involved, they wouldn’t develop any expectations. But they’re not old enough to really understand romance anyway. They just see their friendship and our friendship developing in parallel—and that’s enough to make them ask questions.
I need to nip those raised expectations in the bud, to make sure that the boys don’t get hurt if things don’t work out between Elle and me.
“Yes,” I say carefully. “If two single parents get married, their kids become step-siblings.”
“That’s what you guys should do,” Jonah says. “Madden would be a good brother.”
“I have no doubt at all that Madden would be a good brother,” I say. “But please don’t get your hopes up that that is going to happen to you and Madden. Elle and I have both been married before, and neither of us is in a hurry to do it again.”
I let myself peek at Elle, but she is bent over Madden, kissing his cheek, and when she lifts her head, if she has an opinion about the answer I’ve given, it doesn’t show on her face.
I push myself to my feet. Elle gives Madden another quick kiss and rises behind me, following me out of the room and up the stairs. When we get into the kitchen, I close the door behind us and turn to her.
“Hoo boy,” she says, not meeting my eyes. “Wasn’t ready for that one.
I touch her arm. “What I said—I hope you know why I said that—we don’t want them asking us every five minutes if we’re going to get married.”
“Oh, Jesus, Sawyer, of course, that was exactly the right thing to say to them,” she says, flashing me a smile. “You were a superstar. I was totally blank, but you said exactly the right thing.”
Her smile, though, is fading, and there’s an expression on her face that reminds me of how she looked the first night I met her, at Maeve’s. Unsure. Well, fuck yeah she’s unsure. There are still a lot of unaddressed questions in the room.
“It has nothing to do with you,” I tell her. “I mean, it’s not anything about you that makes me feel like it would be a long time before I’d ever want to marry anyone again.”
“No, I know.” She nods. “It’s Lucy. And I respect that. A hundred percent.”
“And it’s not like you want to jump into anything. After what happened with Trevor.”
“No. No.”
“And I respect that.” I reach for her hands and hold them. “But I do care about you so much, Elle. This weekend was amazing. And not just because of the sex. I had such a good time with you.”
A smile crosses her face then, and warmth fills her eyes. “Me, too. Thank you for, you know, rescuing me during the toast.”
“You didn’t need any rescuing.”
“Yeah, well, it felt good anyway.”
She looks like she wants to say something else, but she doesn’t. Instead she squeezes my hands and asks, “Do you want to play a quick game of Scrabble or something, until the boys fall asleep?” She gives me a sassy smile.
“Absolutely.”
She beats me soundly, and then she checks on the boys.
“Out cold. Snoring. Beached like whales.”
“Wanna come upstairs?”
“Yeah.”
I grab the bag containing the two books I picked up at Powell’s in Portland so I can toss them on top of the already precarious pile on my night table and follow her up the stairs. We lock the bedroom door behind us and turn to each other at the same time. She rises onto tiptoes and I lean down, and our mouths meet, and just like that, so fast, it’s like the first time—okay, the first two first times—all over again, like we can’t slow down, can’t get enough. Like it’s been a year instead of just a handful of hours. The hungry way she kisses, the noises she makes, and the press of her body against mine make me so hot. She plucks at my clothes, ineffectually trying to get them out of her way, then her own, struggling to get herself naked, and I help her strip us both. She leans her head against my chest and I play between her wet folds, my fingers toying and circling and caressing, slipping and sliding in her liquid heat. When she’s panting and trying to fuck my hand, I pull her down on the bed with me. I draw her on top of me and start in on her breasts—I am positive that if I am patient I will be able to make her come just by teasing her nipples, and I’ve gotten her most of the way there when she jerks back and says, “Now, Sawyer, now,” and lunges toward the night table to retrieve a condom.
She topples the whole pile of books onto the floor, but neither of us can stop to pick them up. I grab for the condom, because all I can think about is getting it on and getting inside her.
Once I’m sheathed she climbs over me, and as soon as I penetrate her, she comes, crying out, a flush washing up her chest, like she’d been
teetering on the edge and that extra pressure and stimulation was all she needed. Well, that and the fact that my mouth is full of her breast. I roll us over so I’m on top and begin fucking her as gently and slowly as I can—as slowly as I can stand to, really, because what I want to do is push and pound and thrust and—but it’s good, it’s so good, because this way I can watch the effects of each thrust, each inch, on her. The little sounds, the color changes, the closed eyes, the open, startled eyes, the bitten lip, her hands clutching the sheets. There’s a wild confusion in my chest again—lust and something fiercer and needier and way more complicated. Our gazes lock, and there’s no way I can look away. She’s asking me something with her eyes, and I try to answer. Yes. Yes, I’m here with you. I’ve got you.
You’re mine.
I’m not sure where the thought comes from, but almost as if she heard me she wraps her arms tight around me, pulling me closer, pressing her soft cheek against mine. “Sawyer,” she whispers, her breath against my ear. My chest constricts, but it’s not a bad feeling—it’s a sweet, half-forgotten sensation that makes me feel like we’re connected everywhere, not just where our bodies join. Like we’re one person, not two. “Oh, God, Sawyer—” She tips her hips, changes the angle on me, her breath warm in my ear, and damn it, I can’t hold back—we both come, clutching each other.
Dimly through the spasms of pleasure wracking me, I know I can’t let go of her.
I’m holding on in the vain hope of somehow not getting lost in the tumult inside.
Chapter 41
Elle
He rolls away from me, taking the condom with him, and goes to discard it in the bathroom. For a moment I just luxuriate, stretching out in the warm sheets, feeling the reverberations in my body of our intimate connection, the bonelessness, the full, sated sensation.
Sex with Sawyer is amazing.
Everything with Sawyer is amazing.
Starting slowly, quietly, that little bubble of giddiness rises up in me. The one that, if I don’t try to push it down and squash it, might, just might, tell me that I’m falling in love.
And I don’t squash it.
I let myself trust it, and it fills up my whole chest and does a little ecstatic dance in my bones.
Maybe, maybe, I could let myself do this.
I make up my mind to tell Sawyer how I feel. To ask him how he feels, if there’s room in his heart for something new. Something lasting.
Meanwhile, I start, slowly, to pull myself together—I’m going to need to go home; I can’t be here in the morning when the boys wake up—and once I’ve found all my clothes, I begin picking up the books I knocked off Sawyer’s nightstand. Most of them are just paperback novels, but there’s one lying open on the ground, a spiral notebook full of handwriting, and I Swear. To. God. I. Don’t. Mean. To. But I can’t help seeing the first line of the entry spread out on the page in front of me.
Dear Lucy, I love you. I will probably always love you.
My stomach lurches.
I know I shouldn’t, but I start reading.
It’s dated six months ago. Before I met him. So that’s okay.
Except my racing pulse and the sick feeling in my gut tell me that it’s not.
Because I know, now: I am in love with Sawyer. And I want him to be in love with me.
The journal is a letter to her, his dead wife. He tells her everything that happened that day. What he had for breakfast, funny things Jonah said, even a question Jonah asked him. He asks her to help him figure out how to answer. He asks her to help him figure out what to do about moving out of the house they shared. He tells her what makes him happy, what hurts him, how much he misses her.
I can’t bear to lose any more pieces of the life we had together. I am going to be one of those men who never gets over his dead wife.
My heart is pounding, and I feel sick. And I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it: I start paging forward, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker until I reach the last entry, which, like every other one, begins:
Dear Lucy, I love you. I will probably always love you.
It’s dated three days ago. Friday. The night before we went to the wedding.
He still loves her. He will probably always love her.
I hear the toilet flush, water run, and I immediately drop the journal back on the floor with the other books and go to the mirror over the dresser to begin straightening my hair. I am shaking all over. I can’t stop.
“You’re going to blow my mind every time, aren’t you?” he asks, coming out of the bathroom, grinning at me.
And then, pausing, stopping: “What? Elle, what? What’s wrong?”
I should have known I wasn’t going to be able to pretend that nothing had happened. He follows my gaze to the journal on the floor. Picks it up. Clutches it to his chest.
If there had been any doubt in my mind about the meaning of the journal, seeing that possessive gesture erases it.
I turn away.
“Elle.”
“You don’t have to explain. You don’t have to apologize. You were honest with me the whole way. I just thought—”
That all the little signs that he was still in love with her didn’t mean anything because maybe he was falling for me, too.
Sound familiar? Trevor and Helen much?
I bury my face in my hands.
“Elle.”
I look up at him.
“It’s just a thing I do,” he says, gesturing with his chin at the journal. “I write to her—a therapist said it was a good idea, and it is. It helps. I tell her stuff—I guess you saw that.”
“I’m sorry I read it. It was just there, and I—”
“No, I get it. It’s not like you snuck into my bedroom and started going through my stuff.”
“I’m just being a baby. When you love someone the way you loved Lucy, you don’t just—two years isn’t very long, is it?”
He’s shaking his head. “No.”
“I’m sorry, Sawyer. I’m so, so sorry you lost her.” My face is wet, and I can’t figure out why. “If I could bring her back for you, I swear to God, I would. I mean that. If I could make it so you and Jonah could have her back, I would.”
The moisture on my face is tears. I’m crying.
He takes a step toward me, like he wants to comfort me, then stops.
I gulp air, trying to slow the flow of tears, unsuccessfully. “It’s okay,” I say to him. To myself. “I’m okay. It’s just—I think it might be too soon. For both of us. You still love Lucy, and that’s okay. That’s good. And right. And healthy and normal. I’m the one who’s fucked up. Trevor did a number on me, and—the thing is, Sawyer, I just don’t think I can do it again.”
“Do what again?” he asks, looking bewildered.
“Be with someone who wishes he were with someone else.”
He’s frozen. And because I know him as well as I do, I can tell: He’s thinking about it. Because he’s Sawyer, because he listens, because things like this matter to him, he’s really thinking about it. Asking himself if it’s true.
The room is so quiet I can hear the hum of the heat pump outside and the sound of Sawyer’s breathing, rising and falling.
He takes a deep breath. Exhales it in a long sigh.
That’s when I realize I’m holding my own breath. Waiting for him to deny it, to say, I don’t wish I were with Lucy. I only want to be with you.
Of course he can’t say that. One of the loveliest things about Sawyer is how truthful he is. How incapable of deception, of himself or anyone else.
“I do care about you, Elle. So much.” He says it earnestly. Fervently, even. His eyes tell me he means it.
Something inside crumbles, the scaffolding I’ve used to hold myself up these last few weeks, despite my doubts. And I just barely keep it from showi
ng on my face. It hurts enough that I want to wrap my arms around myself to hold the pain in.
I nod. “I know.”
I also know what I’m about to give up. The best sex of my life, one of the best friendships I’ve ever had, the illusion that maybe someday whatever’s between us would grow into something more, that Sawyer and Jonah and Madden and I could be a family. It’s a lot to walk away from, but I am determined to build on a sturdy foundation the next time around, and that foundation starts with me being honest with myself.
It’s my turn to take the deep breath and sigh it out. “It’s been so good, Sawyer. So good. I’m grateful. I really am. And I’ll miss you.”
He closes his eyes, and an expression I can’t read crosses his face. Then he opens them again. “I’ll miss you, too,” he says, and I can hear how much he means it.
“I’m going to, um, head home. Text me if Madden needs me?”
He nods. “Sure.”
I make it all the way back to my own bedroom before I cry again.
Chapter 42
Elle
Madden is sleeping at Jonah’s and Sawyer’s. And, well, I’m not.
It’s Friday night, five days after the book slide and breakup. Since Sunday, Madden and Jonah have zigzagged back and forth between the two houses as usual. I’ve kept myself busy with writing. I haven’t seen Sawyer.
It seems ridiculous that anyone can get under your skin that fast, that you can go in a matter of weeks from barely knowing someone at all to wanting to tell him every little thought that crosses your mind…
It feels the loneliest at night. That’s when I miss him the most, when the urge to text him or, worse, to run over and ring his doorbell is so strong I almost can’t resist it. But so far I have managed not to give in to weakness. Each time, I remind myself how strong and self-reliant I’ve been since Trevor left. I was fine without Trevor, and I’m fine without Sawyer.
The tough love seems to be working. Each time I’ve felt close to spiraling into self-pity, I’ve watched a few hundred episodes of old television shows, deliberately filling my head so it can’t be swamped with memories of Sawyer—smiling, laughing, raising an eyebrow at the sight of me in my pajamas and apron, pinning me with a dark look that promises pleasure.