When We Break

by Piper Lennox

  “Knew you’d give up first.” He shifts; I feel his lips press against the inside of my thigh. My hips rise to meet him, my sex tense and ready for the heat of his breath, the friction of his tongue.

  Finally, he gives me what I need.

  “Orion,” I whimper, my orgasm sweeping through like the creeping flames of a wildfire, billowing under the wind.

  When he surfaces, panting and scrambling for the condom he set on the nightstand, I can’t help but reach up, grab his head, and drag him down for a kiss. More than release, I always crave this closeness afterwards: the moment I’m at my most vulnerable, ready to wrap myself up in him and never climb out.

  He sinks into me before the kiss is over. The fullness is sudden and electric, while the feeling of his arms encircling me, drawing me to him as his hips rock and retreat, grounds me in something so raw and real, I lose my breath.

  “I’m close again,” I tell him, voice catching in my throat.

  “I know.” He reaches between us, just like our first time together, just like so many nights since. It’s his favorite tactic. And no matter how many times he does it, it still catches me off-guard. Like a wave you don’t notice until it’s already breaking overhead.

  “Orion....” My moan gets cut short; the second orgasm paralyzes my lungs. My back arches and my nails press into his shoulders, even harder when I feel him thrust all the way inside as he whispers that he’s coming.

  In the heady afterglow, he kisses me again and pulls out, disposing of the condom before stepping back into his boxers. “I can’t remember the last time we had non-silent sex,” he jokes.

  “I can’t remember how we have non-silent sex.” I pull a pillow across my face, just to feel the coolness of the fabric against the full-body flush he gave me.

  I hear him bumping around in the nightstand. “Are you getting another condom? Because I’ve got to tell you, I need a little more time than that.”

  He laughs. I feel him slide into the bed with me, pulling the blankets up to my chin as I roll onto my side. His arm snakes around my waist.

  His hand presses something into mine.

  “What is this?” I drag my hand out of the blankets and hold the object above us for inspection.

  It’s a ring box.

  “Oh, my God.” I sit up, practically elbowing him in the face, and stare at it in the pool of covers where it lands.

  He kisses my neck and takes it back. I’m in some kind of stupor, watching him kneel on the floor beside me.

  “I know,” he says, but laughs in a nervous rush of air when he opens the box and I start crying, instant. “I know we haven’t been together that long. Like...it honestly sounds crazy to me, asking you this after only a year.”

  He takes my hand. Laces his fingers into mine, filling the space between.

  “But you,” he says, exhaling again, “were willing to give me a kidney—to give London me—after even less time. Before you and I were even together. So this might sound crazy...but it doesn’t feel crazy.”

  His fingers slide the ring from the box and hold it out to me, angling it in the light. I barely glance at it. In the morning, I’ll memorize every cut of the stone, every spot where the white sun of Kona gets trapped and reflected in a perfect glimmer.

  Right now, I’m memorizing his face: the film of tears on his eyes, searching mine, and the small upturn of his mouth as he wets his lips and asks, “Colby Harlowe...will you marry me?”

  “Yes!” I grab his face and kiss him so fast, he drops the ring. Tomorrow, this will become our friends’ favorite part of the story, their laughter filling the lobby like their cheers and congrats. They’ll love the image of Orion and me groping around the hotel carpet together, teary and smiling, until I come up with the ring and pass it to him, so he can slide it onto my finger.

  But for right now, it’s just us here, the story still unfolding. I watch him push the ring into place, right the stone, and bring my hand to his mouth for a kiss, before drawing my face to his for another.

  “I do have one condition,” I whisper, after we’ve climbed back into bed. He presses himself against my back and lifts my hand in the moonlight, feeling the ring with his thumb.

  “Yeah?” He kisses the back of my neck. “What’s that?”

  “I don’t want to be London’s stepmom.” I turn in his arms to face him. “I want to adopt her.”

  The film over his stare comes back. He lets me wipe the tears away with my thumbs, one under each eye.

  “Deal,” he whispers, and holds out his hand. We shake.

  I roll back over and feel his arms tighten around me, then loosen again when he drifts to sleep. My breathing syncs with his: an easy, deep inhale and the long, stretching exhale, before it begins again.

  Also by Piper Lennox

  Love In Kona Series:

  Pull Me Under

  Crash Around Me

  Standalones:

  All Mine

  Teach Me

  The Road to You

  It’s Complicated: A Novella

  (Subscriber Exclusive)

  Turn the page for a preview of Piper’s friends-first, second-chance romance,

  All Mine

  Sneak Peek

  All Mine

  Blake

  She shows up at my house soaking wet.

  It’s not entirely surprising, since she’s got no car and has to bike everywhere—but it is pouring down rain, so all I can say when I open the door is, “Are you insane?”

  “Move, I’m cold!” Mel pushes past me and heads straight for the stairs. “I’m gonna take a shower,” she announces, kicking off her sneakers as she goes.

  I shake my head and shut the door. “You can borrow some of my clothes till yours dry,” I call up to her. She calls back that she was going to, anyway.

  Back in the living room, where I’ve basically been living for the last two days while Dad’s out of town, I silently thank God she didn’t notice the porn on the big screen. I muted it when I got up to answer the door, figuring it was our neighbor. His dog tends to go missing during thunderstorms, hiding out under people’s porches.

  I put on MTV. Mel’s going to change it to that anyway, so I might as well.

  “God, that feels so much better,” she sighs when she comes back. “Cozy.” She falls onto the couch with me, our feet tangling together under the blanket. “Thanks for the clothes,” she says, kicking me gently.

  “Why did you bike here? I could have picked you up.”

  Mel shrugs and picks some lint off my sweatshirt, which is huge on her. It’s actually pretty big on me, too: I’m lanky and tall, the kid everyone calls a beanpole. Dad said he bulked up his senior year of high school, but I’ve yet to see much change, even with high school an entire month behind us.

  “Just thought it would be nice,” Mel says, already sucked into whatever crap is on TV. “You know, biking in the rain. It sounds like such a good idea until you actually do it.”

  “Like crack,” I add.

  “Sky-diving.”

  “Sixty-nining.” She laughs really hard at that one, kicking me again.

  We’re both full of it, of course, which makes it even funnier. We’ve never tried a drug stronger than weed, never jumped out of planes or off bridges, or done anything particularly daring in our lives.

  We’re both total virgins, too. At least, I am. Mel dated her prom date for a few weeks afterwards, but I’m not sure if anything really happened with them. I do know they made out a lot, because I had to watch that shit at my graduation party and pretend I didn’t care.

  “So,” she says, tucking her feet under my butt, “how’s it been? Having the house to yourself, I mean.”

  “Boring,” I tell her. It’s the truth. I thought a weekend alone would be full of awesome, cool stuff: takeout every night, giant bowls of cereal whenever I deigned to wake, late nights of video games and porn right here in the living room.

  Okay, it’s actually been kind of cool. But it’s also
been lonely, not much different than when my dad is here. I realize I’ve missed Mel more than I let myself admit.

  “When’s he get back?” she asks.

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Cool. Can I stay over?”

  I nod. The rain isn’t supposed to let up until tomorrow, anyway, so unless I feel like driving her home in a tsunami, it just makes sense for her to crash here.

  The other factor: I never say no to Mel spending the night. She’s been doing it—and lying to her folks about where she really is—since middle school. Nothing ever happens, even when she sleeps in my bed beside me, but I like the opportunity. Too bad I’m always too chicken to take it.

  “We should get drunk,” she whispers, wiggling her toes under me. She doesn’t even realize what she’s doing to me, shifting around like that.

  “Nah. Dad noticed the Bacardi missing last time and made me weed the whole backyard by hand.”

  “Well, look, I’ll pick something he hasn’t even opened yet, and then I’ll get my brother to replace it before he gets back, okay?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. She usually doesn’t.

  I listen to her clanking in the kitchen, raiding Dad’s bar cart while I try to tame my erection. It’s gone when she comes back and sets two shot glasses on the coffee table, but seeing her in my clothes gets it going again.

  “You pour.”

  I pull the blanket with me and lean forward, pouring the tequila into our glasses. We toast, tap them to the table, and drink.

  “Fuck,” she croaks, eyes watering. “That’s rough.”

  I feel like coughing up a lung, but Dad always says this stuff has a good bite, so I say it too. I’m hoping to impress her, which is stupid, because Mel’s known me practically my entire life and never thinks I’m smooth, even when I am.

  She gives me a look like I’m crazy. At least I didn’t bike two miles through a thunderstorm.

  Melanie

  Blake and I met when we were four, the day he got lost in the mall and ran up to my mom, brother, and me, crying his eyes out.

  Mom has a voice like simple syrup being poured into tea. Thick but easy, the kind of voice and touch on your arm that makes you fold into her like a trust fall. I remember when Blake sputtered, “I—I’m lost and m-my dad always says to f-find a mom with k-kids,” only he didn’t really finish the last word, because he looked at me and my brother and just burst into a wail that echoed down the mall.

  Then Mom touched his arm and got to his level, the way she talked to us all the time, and said in her syrupy voice, “It’s all right, sweetheart. Let’s go find him.”

  I don’t remember how the play dates started. I think my parents felt bad for Blake and his dad. Blake’s mom had just died of cancer. He needed a friend.

  At first, they tried forcing my brother to hang out with him, because they were boys and it just made sense. Boys like trucks. Boys like dirt.

  Blake didn’t like trucks, though, or getting dirty, or baseball. He was three years younger than Josh, but the same age as me. We both liked art and scary stories and small, quiet spaces, like coat closets with flashlights. We were used to people jumping when we walked up beside them. “Oh, honey, you scared the daylights out of me! I didn’t even see you.”

  So then, we were friends. We got teased in school all the time for it; boys and girls can’t be best friends. Just wait till puberty, old ladies clucked at my mom in church, their painted-on eyebrows furrowing with disapproval as Blake and I played Rock, Paper, Scissors and scuffed the backs of the pews with our feet.

  I’m actually thinking about Rock, Paper, Scissors right now, because both our hands are clenched in fists after the second shot of tequila. Double-rock. A tie.

  “Remember the last time we got drunk?” I ask, sucking in a sharp breath of air to cool my throat. “Really drunk, I mean?”

  He laughs. “God, I wish I didn’t. That was a long night.”

  I laugh, too. “That party out at Elliot Gull’s house,” I say, even though we both remember, and I don’t have to say it. “They had that dented-up keg of shitty beer. Never again.”

  “It wasn’t the beer.” He nudges me with his foot. “It was because we drank that moonshine Gull’s brother made before the—”

  “It was the beer,” I interrupt, my voice way louder than his, our norm. We argue about this a lot. He’s probably right—in fact, I’m positive he’s right—but it was my idea to drink the moonshine that night, sipping it straight from the jars and catching the fruit on our tongues. I had blackberry. Blake had strawberry. When we threw up together behind the Gulls’ carport later, it looked like pancake toppings and smelled like cough medicine.

  “Never again,” we both said afterwards. We chewed a pack of gum and slept on Elliot’s sofa in the basement until dawn. Blake drove us home while I puked into the Target bag he handed me.

  There’s a part we don’t talk about, ever, even in our blow-by-blow retellings to each other, out of our parents’ earshot. Behind the carport, when I knelt down in the gravel and felt it digging into my knees as I coughed up all that sugar and alcohol, Blake knelt behind me and held my hair back.

  It could have been nothing, just a best-friend gesture: I’d have done the same for him, wouldn’t I? If his hair was long, or if he were a girl. Point is, it wasn’t a big deal.

  But there was something about his touch that made it different from what a friend would do. His fingertips lingered on my neck. When I finally stopped, he hooked his chin over my shoulder and slurred, “It’s okay, Mellie. That’s it, you’re okay.”

  I looked at him. We were in a dirty pool of light from the floodlight on the carport, like thieves crouching against their next mark.

  And I was sure he was about to kiss me. I’m still sure. Even though I’d just thrown up twenty-four hours’ worth of food and drink, he was leaning into me, his eyes closing.

  Then it hit him. He shot to his feet and stumbled to the other side of the carport. I heard his puke splash onto the siding.

  We don’t talk about it, but I think about it a lot. Did he mean to do it? Was he just wasted? Does he even remember, or is he embarrassed?

  Would I have let him do it?

  I mean, aside from the totally disgusting factor of having just been sick, it’s not like the thought of kissing Blake repulses me. But there’s a line we don’t cross, pacing the friend zone where we belong, where we’ve always been.

  I’ve never looked at him that way. He’s just...Blake. My best friend.

  “It wasn’t the beer,” he says again, shifting on the couch like he can’t get comfortable. I shake my head and throw a paperclip at him, while we channel-surf and listen to the storm flail against the house.

  Out loud, that’s the end of the story. We don’t say the rest. Maybe I’m the only one of us that even remembers. Who knows?

  Blake

  I remember.

  I’m not sure if Mel does, but I think about it plenty. Even after puking her brains out, she was still so beautiful, and I was just drunk enough to not care about germs or bad breath or even rejection. Just gone enough to be brave.

  It’s the closest I’ve ever come to kissing her. Which, after fourteen years of friendship and at least six of this secret crush, is pathetic.

  We flip channels for a while. I think I’m doing a good job of ignoring her feet under me, or how cute she looks in my clothes, but no dice: when I try to scroll the channel guide, distracted, she laughs and points out I’ve been turning the DVD player on and off.

  “Here,” I say, sliding her the remote. “You pick.”

  She starts scrolling, and I hate myself for handing it over, because she’s pausing at all these chick-flick channels and sappy made-for-TV movies. She hits Info to read each one’s description.

  Then, I hate myself even more: she’s in the porn section. Big Busty Sluts VII. MILFs Get Torn Up. Virgins in Vegas.

  “Look at this shit,” she giggles. “Who watches this?”

  Me, I
think, my heart racing, face filling with blood. I watch this shit. I was watching it and touching myself when you rang my doorbell.

  She gives me this look, the kind she gets when she has a terrible idea that could be a lot of fun, or a total disaster. Like sneaking into a movie, or stealing Dad’s booze, or chugging homemade moonshine in somebody’s basement before chugging their cheap beer.

  “We should rent one,” she laughs, “just to make fun of it. Yeah? You want to?”

  What can I say? I just sit there and shrug, praying to God she doesn’t pick Busty Sluts VII, because it’s mighty suspicious if pay-per-view gives you a “Resume” button instead of “Order.”

  She scrolls through more titles. “Do you ever watch this stuff?” she asks suddenly, like it just occurred to her.

  I shake my head, silent.

  “But you watch porn, right? I mean, all guys watch porn. That’s what I hear, at least.”

  “Yeah,” I manage, fumbling for the soda I left on the side table, “I watch porn.”

  Mel studies me a minute. “Weird question,” she says slowly, “but what do you watch, exactly? Like, what are you into?”

  Jesus, my face is on fire. Actual fire.

  “I don’t know,” I stammer, spreading my free hand before choking down cola to stall. “Normal porn, I guess. Why?”

  “Just curious. I’ve never seen any. I don’t know what it’s like.”

  “It’s sex,” I mutter, as I sink into the couch again. “That’s it.”

  She settles on Spring Break Slut Fest, laughing as she hits Order. “You think your dad will notice?”

  “No.” That’s how I get away with ordering porn in the first place: the old man gets a few titles a month but can’t remember all of them, and probably doesn’t want to call the company to quibble over Busty Sluts I-VI or Bondage Babes, anyway. So either he doesn’t notice the occasional purchase on my part, or pretends not to.