For Keeps. For Always.

by Haley Jenner

  “I hate her,” she spits, eyes trained on my lips. “I hate that she has more right to touch you than I do. I hate the way your hand rests against her lower back, touching her, guiding her.”

  “Like this.” Pressing my palm against her lower back, I pull her flush against my body.

  “Yes,” she breathes reluctantly.

  Our lips hover over one another’s, both too scared to take that fall into the unspeakable.

  We’re drunk. There’s no denying that. The champagne we’d overdosed on has lowered our inhibitions and pushed us into a place of pain and regret.

  Henley’s cheeks are flushed, the scattering of freckles on her face highlighted by the rosy effect of alcohol and the buzz my touch offers her.

  Her tits push against my chest, the hard cut of her nipples visible through the silk line of her dress.

  I watch the way her eyes remain fixated on my lips. The flare of desire and regret swirling into something dangerous.

  “We can’t.” Her tongue darts out to touch my top lip, and I swallow down the growl rumbling in my throat.

  “We could,” I counter. “We just likely shouldn’t.”

  She tastes like champagne when her lips close the distance between us. The sweet tease of bubbles that, when paired with Henley, sends me to insanity.

  Our kiss isn’t rushed. It’s not panicked, but it’s in no way delicate either. It’s dripping with lust, overruled by an overwhelming need to consume.

  The soft roll of her tongue hits deep in my mouth, and I groan.

  She pulls back. “We should stop,” she says as she reaches up, her teeth biting into my bottom lip and pulling on it painfully.

  A rumble echoes from my throat.

  “Today isn’t ours.” I let her tongue lick along the seam of my lips.

  She’s right. Of course. But today never seems to be ours.

  Not at seventeen.

  Not at nineteen.

  Not at twenty-two.

  And not now.

  Life has pushed us apart for years. And the sad reality is, it’ll do it again.

  “Tomorrow might be,” she whimpers, the hope in her voice a serrated knife in my gut.

  “Tomorrow in the future. Later,” I push, trying to make her understand.

  I caress her lips. “So when all of this.” I kiss her again. “Settles inside you, keep loving me, okay? Don’t let yourself hate me for hating what we’ve done.”

  Tears shine in her eyes, and she nods. “I could never hate you.”

  “You’ll hate me by hating yourself.”

  Her chin wobbles.

  “Before I kiss you, Henley, really kiss you, promise me. Vow that you won’t hate me.”

  “For keeps.” She closes her eyes, letting her tears fall.

  “For always.”

  I don’t waste another second. Hands bracketing her jaw, I pull her mouth up to mine.

  She opens up to me like a flower in full fucking bloom.

  She tastes like the rain and the sun.

  She tastes like the wind in our faces and second chances.

  She tastes like home.

  My home.

  The truth is, I’d give up everything if she only asked me to. I’d give up my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations. I’d let it all go for her.

  But she hasn’t asked. And she likely never will.

  Hands wrapped in the lapels of my jacket, she pulls me more heavily into her mouth. Needing more.

  Our lips fit like they’re two halves of a whole. Carved to fit only one another.

  Her tongue is warm. It’s soft but insistent as it rolls against mine with needy whimpers and impatient moans.

  My feet move of their own accord, pushing her against the wall on a strangled groan. Hands at her hips, I pull at the silk of her dress, needing to touch of her skin. Needing to feel it in my palms. Grabbing the supple flesh of her ass, I squeeze.

  Her lips break away from mine on a stuttered breath, and I chase her lips back down, l refusing to part.

  She’s a feather in my hands, and I lift her without the slightest exertion. Fitting her against the thick line of my cock—now pushed aggressively against my pants—I crowd her again, thrusting myself against the damp scrap of material between her thighs.

  “Oh, God.”

  Our mouths inch apart, our eyes catching in a more intimate way.

  Confident my hands have her, she opens the small bag between us, pulling a condom from the purse before dropping the bag to the ground.

  I don’t let myself think about the fact that the small foil packet between us was likely intended for Alex. I refuse to let my mind go there. Instead, I step us to the side, reaching out to hit the emergency stop button.

  As she drags the packet against my lips, Henley’s eyes don’t falter from my mouth. I catch the packet with my teeth, and she pulls at it.

  I spit out the foil left in my mouth, and she pulls the rubber from the small square, letting the empty packet fall to the ground.

  I don’t move my eyes from her face as her hands begin tugging at my belt, unbuckling it to free my top button. Her teeth catch her bottom lip as she pulls at my zipper, and my breathing comes on quicker.

  She doesn’t hesitate in pulling out my straining cock, rolling her thumb over the crown, making me jerk against her hand. A small smirk pulls at the corner of her lips, her teeth releasing it from capture.

  Sliding the condom over my length, I finally pull my gaze from her face, watching as her middle finger pulls at the lace covering her pussy. I growl as she comes into view, her bare lips glistening with the anticipation of what we’re about to share.

  Head to her entrance, she glances up at me through her lashes, and I let her sink onto me slowly.

  Her eyes close in pained pleasure, the intrusion of my cock filling her completely.

  “Deep,” she whispers, her hand coming up, her fingers dragging across my lips.

  I suck them into my mouth, and she whimpers.

  Her legs aren’t wrapped around my waist. She lets them hang loosely over my forearms. Sliding my arms outward, I open her wider, and she falls heavier on my cock.

  “Jesus,” she breathes.

  I roll my hips in an upward thrust, refusing to look away from her face.

  I need to catalog every blink of pleasure, taste every shocked exhale.

  I don’t just want to fuck my best friend.

  I want to fucking consume her.

  I want every breath of pleasure, knowing it belongs to me.

  “Brooks,” she pleads.

  “Henley,” I answer with two quick thrusts of my hips.

  “Brooks,” she cries. “More.”

  I’m so torn.

  I want to taste her.

  I want to fuck her so hard that when she moans from this moment on, it’s my name that breaks from her sinful lips.

  No matter where she is.

  No matter who she’s with.

  I want them to know I’m the keeper of her fucking pleasure.

  My hips thrust up, burying myself inside her over and over again.

  I want to destroy her.

  For denying me all those years ago.

  When I was eighteen.

  Again when I was nineteen.

  When I was twenty-two.

  I want her to feel pain like I have.

  I want her to nurse the rejection like I’ve had to do.

  I want to love her.

  I want her to hate me.

  I want her to love me.

  Unable to look into her eyes any longer, I bury my face into her neck, sinking my teeth into her skin to stop myself from begging her to do just that.

  Love me. I want to scream at her.

  Love me. I’d give up my dreams for you.

  Love me. Do it for me.

  Love me hard enough to fucking fight.

  I don’t do that.

  I’m a coward.

  I’m afraid.

  Petrified she’d tell me no.
<
br />   That she’d tell me she wasn’t ready.

  That now wasn’t the time she could love me.

  I fuck her instead.

  I love her body the way I’m not allowed to do with her heart.

  Bold.

  Wild.

  Free.

  “Brooks. Baby.”

  “Do it,” I grunt against the pulse in her neck. “Come for me, Squirrel.”

  She shatters at the endearment. Her scream of pleasure echoing through the elevator like a prayer even she’s not ready to have answered.

  24

  HENLEY

  I stretch awake, the soft touch of the hotel sheets caressing my naked skin. There’s an ache between my thighs that brings a smile to my face before my eyes even open. Every muscle in my body protests as my hands reach over my head and my toes point toward the end of the bed.

  Brooks.

  God. The things he did to my body last night.

  I bite my bottom lip in reminiscence.

  Fingers to my lips, I touch the swell his kisses made.

  Dragging my hand down my neck, I rub the tender spots pierced by his teeth.

  My nipples feel bruised, tender to the touch, but still, they ache for more.

  He was rough. And attentive. And desperate.

  His touch was insistent. His gaze constant. The way he worshipped my body felt cultish. Imposing without being forceful. Obsessive without being excessive. I would’ve devoted my life to our cause in those hours. Our pleasure was all that mattered. We overindulged—needing, wanting the relief only our connected bodies could bring.

  Space didn’t exist between us. He sat on the bed with me settled on his lap and let me ride him slowly, our breaths mingled, hands exploring. Then again as I lay on my side, his body pressed against my back as his hips rolled to dip his cock in and out of my heat, and he whispered the filthy ways he needed me into my ear.

  We fucked hard. Then we fucked lazily. Our slow and languid climax fired something inside us both, hurtling us back into a fiery and passionate tangle of limbs.

  Feeling along the cotton of the sheet, I seek the touch of his skin, but only his warmth remains. My eyes flash open, and I sit, pulling the sheet up against my naked chest.

  “Brooks?” I call out, searching around the room.

  “Brooks?” I repeat, throwing my feet over the side of the bed when he doesn’t answer.

  I listen carefully for any hint of his presence, but the room feels empty, and I feel cold.

  I scan the space, but his suit— that had last night decorated my hotel room floor— was gone. No trace of him left behind.

  I reach for my phone, but the smooth line of the hotel stationery meets my fingers first.

  The bedsheet drops as I open the folded page.

  Henley.

  I love you.

  I know that you know that.

  I know you love me back.

  We just can’t seem to do it hard enough.

  Why is that?

  I wasn’t lying when I told you last night wasn’t our time. I’m leaving, or more, by the time you’re reading this, I’ve left. Addy’s wedding was a fly in, fly out for me. I have a job that I was due at a few days ago. One I’d love to tell you about when I see you next.

  It’s a little remote.

  Like the Altai Mountains in Siberia type remote.

  I imagine it’ll remind me a lot of you. But then, most things do.

  Squirrel, you promised me you wouldn’t hate me. Fuck, I hope you keep that promise.

  Be happy, my gypsy girl.

  Tomorrow in the future?

  For always.

  B x

  I don’t know how long I stare at the scratch of his writing. Long enough for a coat of ice to secure itself around my heart.

  I’d spent the earlier years of my life as cold as fucking stone. Numb to all feeling. Good and bad. It was better that way. Removed, you didn’t get hurt. Keeping people at a distance, they couldn’t hurt you. They couldn’t disappoint you.

  Then Brooks happened.

  He thawed me.

  He opened me up to the promise of more. He offered me love and support and friendship.

  I introduced him to heartbreak in the same way he plunged me headfirst into it.

  We’ve spent the past few years drowning. Last night, I thought we’d finally hit the surface. But he’d just been tying concrete blocks to our feet, making certain I’d hit rock bottom this time.

  I stand on autopilot when a soft strum of knuckles taps against my door. I shove my arms into a hotel robe, my hand still clutching his letter as I move toward the noise. I’m still tying the terry cloth around my body as I open the door, coming face-to-face with the person I’d least expected to see.

  “Alex?”

  “I just need to grab my shit,” he murmurs evenly, refusing to make eye contact.

  “Uh, sure.” I step back to let him move past me.

  I don’t move away from the door as he moves around the space we shared not twenty-four hours ago.

  “It hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it?”

  I look up at him blankly. “What?”

  He looks how I feel. The bags under his eyes bulging with lack of sleep and clothes disheveled, he smells of booze.

  “He left with his redhead,” he declares superciliously. “It hurts to be made the fool. I’m glad you got to experience it firsthand.”

  His redhead.

  The paper in my hand crumples in my fist.

  Alex looks at it, then back at my face, a small smirk playing on his lips.

  I drop my eyes, shame washing over me. “I’m sorry.”

  It’s a weak apology, but it’s honest. I never meant to hurt Alex. Up until I came face-to-face with Brooks again, we were happy. We’d spent a year building a life, and I threw it away for someone who discarded me the first moment he could.

  “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” I tell him.

  He stares at me, his carelessly packed duffel held comfortably in his hand.

  “Did you fuck him?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  His bottom lip tips out. “Then you meant for it to happen, Henley. When you step over that line, it’s thought out.”

  He walks past me, and I place my hand on his forearm without thought.

  “You’re wrong,” I tell him, unsure why I continue to speak. “That’s the bigger problem. I didn’t even think about you,” I admit, a tear running down my face. “I don’t say that to hurt you, but as an explanation. Brooks owns a part of me that consumes me when I’m with him.”

  He watches the tear track down my cheek. “Maybe do the world a favor then, Henley. Until you work out whatever the fuck you and Brooks are, don’t involve yourself with anyone else. It’s not fucking fair.”

  I nod, knowing I shouldn’t need him to spell that out for me.

  He tugs his arm from my touch, and I pull my hand back awkwardly.

  He leaves without another word, and I watch the door close slowly at another failed relationship.

  He left with his redhead.

  I should feel mad. Angered by his blatant rejection. Broken by his what, betrayal?

  If I was brave enough to admit it to myself, I don’t know how I felt.

  Numb.

  Unsure.

  Confused.

  He’d arrived with Grace.

  It makes sense he’d leave with her.

  He made me no promises.

  There were declarations of love, sure, but they all came with warnings.

  Tomorrow in the future?

  When was that?

  Did he expect me to wait?

  Would I expect him to wait?

  Walking into the lobby with my suitcase wheels sounding noisily behind me, I smile tightly at the other wedding guests I met last night. Hoping like hell they can’t read my shame.

  I see Evelyn perched at a table in the lobby, her focus on her cell, coffee held in her hand. My feet move me toward her,
and I take a seat without asking.

  She lifts her head slowly. “You look like shit.”

  “I feel like shit.”

  Sliding her cell onto the table, she gives me her entire attention.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Brooks and I when I was seventeen.”

  I expected a million and one responses from her, but I didn’t expect the laughter that bubbles from her lips, forcing her to place her cup down to save it from spilling.

  “Oh, God. You can’t think I actually care about that.”

  I swallow down my embarrassment. “Maybe not now, but then—”

  “Not even then. Jesus, Henley, I hope you haven’t been holding onto that guilt for all these years.”

  I don’t deny it.

  “Girl, you need to move past that. I cared about what Brooks could do for my social standing at school. I had no feelings for him.”

  “Oh.”

  She sighs. “I was a bitch in high school.” She shrugs. “I’m a bitch now, to be quite honest. My pride was a little dented, but only because I was afraid other people would think men preferred you to me.” She said it as an insult, but I didn’t take offense to it. “It only took me a second to realize that it was only him.”

  Only him.

  “For some reason, Brooks has this unhealthy obsession with you. Maybe it’s love. I don’t know. Did you do it again?”

  I drop my eyes, afraid of her judgment.

  “You won’t find judgment here, Henley. Lift your head, for Christ’s sake. What’s holding you back? From Brooks?” she clarifies.

  “We’re toxic,” I murmur. “We hurt everyone around us.”

  Waiting for me to lift my head, she blinks twice, sighing softly. “A word of advice. You two are more toxic apart with all these unresolved feelings. Step in or step away. You might very well find you’re toxic together as well. But you each have one foot in and one foot out. How can you really know if it works when you both have an escape route planned?”

  I’d never looked at it like that.

  “We’re apart more than we’re together.”

  “Distance shouldn’t matter.” She stands, picking up her mug to swallow the last of her coffee. “Not if you’re meant to be. Distance is only mileage. Love is stronger than a measly ocean. And if you’re really meant to be together, you’ll find your way back to one another.”