Chapter Twelve
I got to the beach a good ten minutes before him, and for each one that passed, I wondered whether I’d gotten it right. It wasn’t until I heard footsteps hitting against the ever-fading path that I knew with certainty that I’d been right in following my gut feeling. I stood up from the small rock I’d been sitting on and tried to brush the sand from my black jeans. I could feel the skin on my nose pulling back as it wrinkled over the feeling of having sand between my fingers, but I pushed my discomfort out of my mind when I realized that Paul had stopped dead and was staring at me.
“I hope you don’t mind me being here,” I said loudly over the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks that separated this small paradise from the rest of the beach.
“Well, it is your spot,” Paul said with a shrug.
I lifted my eyes to his and met his gaze. It felt cold as it traveled through the space between us and seemed to slink its way into my body and burrow in my bones.
“Paul, can we talk?” I asked him, and I couldn’t even try to hide the desperation in my voice.
“We’ve got nothing to talk about,” Paul said with the same cold stare he’d been giving me since he’d arrived.
“Okay, can I talk? I mean, I know I have stuff to talk about; you can listen,” I said as I gestured for him to come closer to me.
“Do you think you have anything I want to hear?” he asked me with a cruel mocking in his tone.
I frowned at him. This wasn’t the Paul that I knew. I mean, I was making allowances for the fact that his mom had just died, but Paul had always been so kind, even when I was being a cold, hard bitch to him, so what had changed?
“What’s happened to you?” I asked him with surprise as I heard the accusation in my own voice as I spoke.
“What’s happened to me?” Paul asked with a sneer.
“Yeah, what turned you into such a jerk, Paul? You used to be such a nice guy. I mean, I’ve spent the last six years wondering how the hell I could make up my behavior to you, and here you are acting like me, only we’re not children anymore, Paul, and it isn’t okay,” I said with a steadily increasing voice.
“Don’t lie to me, Isabella. You didn’t even bother to get in touch with me. You spent six years pushing me further away than you had ever done before, and all because I told you I loved you. Do you have some kind of sick mentality that forces you to push away the people who love you? Are you really that stone-cold that you have to be completely alone?”
“You think I didn’t get in touch because I didn’t care? You really think that after everything you said, I would just push you out of my life like that?”
“I don’t think that, Isabella—I know it, because you did.” Paul’s words fell heavy across the distance between us.
For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. All the numbness that I was used to was gone and in its place was a raw, deep aching in my chest. I could feel angry, prickling tears forcing their way down my cheeks, and they scorched my skin as they fell. “You never came home,” I said in between the heavy sobs that were forcing their way out of my chest. “You left before I had a chance to speak to you, and then you never came home. What was I meant to think? What was I meant to do with that? I thought you never wanted to see me again. I thought that you wanted to cut me out of your life, and I didn’t blame you. I wasn’t going to force my way back in when I’d spent a lifetime pushing you out. What kind of person do you think I am?”
“I think you’re the kind of person to let six years pass without ever getting in touch,” Paul said, but some of the ice had thawed from his tone and I could feel his eyes starting to examine me with a curiosity instead of hatred.
“You let six years pass too,” I said weakly, and then I let the tears and sobs take over my body. I could feel myself shaking under the pressure of my sadness, but I forced myself to continue standing. I could hear Paul’s footsteps as they disturbed the sand, and then felt his hand as it fell to my shoulder, but I pulled away. I wasn’t crying for him. I wasn’t crying so that he’d feel sorry for me or pity me. I was crying because, even after all this time, he still didn’t understand how I felt about him.
“Please don’t cry,” Paul said softly, and I could hear the old Paul, the Paul I knew shining through in his voice.
I tried to pull my sobs back, but it took a while for them to respect my wishes. “Paul, I need to tell you something. I should have told you this the last time that we were here, but I couldn’t. I was too scared. I thought you’d think that I was lying. I thought that it would make everything too complicated, but I shouldn’t have let fear stop me. I love you. Not as a brother—never as a brother. I loved you in this deep, profound way that’s grown even though I haven’t seen you in years. It’s like my heart has been waiting all this time for you and it knows that no one else could ever and will ever compare. You were always there for me. You came to my graduation, even though your life was turning upside down, just to make sure that somebody saw it. You were always putting me first, and I never saw it because I thought coming first was my rightful place. I know you have Adaline and I know that too much has changed, but I had to tell you. I had to make sure that you knew how I really felt, because it isn’t your rejection that will break my heart; it’s the idea of you never knowing and me never trying.”
Paul didn’t say anything. My words seemed to hang between us as he returned his hand to my shoulder and I didn’t move away. Even though I had a jumper covering my skin, I could still feel the deep warmth that seemed to be emanating from him. It sunk deep down into my skin and warmed up the cold chill that his cold gaze had left earlier on my bones.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you,” I said almost silently into his chest, as I turned around and wrapped my arms around his waist.
He still didn’t say anything, but I felt his head lower slightly as he kissed the top of mine. I turned my face up to look at him and found that the previous storm in his eyes had gone and the ocean spray I had always admired from afar had returned. He looked down at me and I saw a trace of a smile starting to play against his lips. “I’ve missed you,” he half whispered to me.
“I’ve missed you too,” I said as I watched his face come closer to mine. It was as if time slowed down. It was as if every sense heightened in my body and my brain suddenly thought it was a great idea to appreciate every single one of them. I could smell his cologne mixing with the sea air and it was sending me into a daze. My whole body was tingling with anticipation to be touched. His lips were coming closer to mine and I could feel my body reaching out to him. Our lips connected, and time stopped.
My senses were infused with the taste of peppermint and the rush that his touch was leaving on my skin. I could feel his hands sliding around my back as I stepped closer to him. His kiss started soft, but its urgency increased, and I could hardly breathe against the force of his lips on mine. I didn’t need to breathe, though, because no time was passing. We stood motionless against the backdrop and yet I could feel every fiber of my being changing under his touch.
His hands slid up my top and I could feel goose bumps marking the places that he had touched. I pushed my body against his and felt the wind stop against us, as we became one against the horizon, which was turning a pink-purple in its decent into night time. I could feel a soft noise escaping my lips as his hands laid out flat against my back and he pulled me closer than I thought possible. His hands quickly grazed down my back, until his fingertips were dipping below the waistline of my jeans. I could feel my breasts pushing against his firm chest. My nipples were getting hard in my bra just from the heat that was swelling all over my body, originating from between my legs.
His lips moved away from my lips, and for a moment, I thought about resisting and pulling them back, but then I felt the soft flutter of kisses slowly sinking down my neck and I had to put all my attention into keeping my legs from buckling. Another soft whimper fell out of my mouth before I could pull it back, and
I felt his hands sink further into my jeans.
My heart was hammering against my chest as his fingers drew soft lines across my skin and then started to pull away at my panties. There was a point where I was sure that it was going to break through my ribcage and clean out of my body when he slipped his fingers inside of me and I felt my knees buckling.
I saw him smiling as he shifted his weight, so that he was holding me up. He brought his lips back to my mouth, as his fingers dipped inside of me with an agonizing slowness that was making my body scream for more. I felt as he used his free hand to unfasten my jeans and then we both seemed to fall to the ground, but without a harsh impact, as though time slowing down had somehow altered the course of all known physics in the process.
His fingers started to slide into me faster and I could feel my chest falling heavily after every long breath I managed to take. I could feel his fingers fumbling with his pants as his body slid over mine. I knew what was coming next. When I’d thought about seeing Paul again in the six years that had passed, I had thought about situations like this often and I knew what had to come next.
He reached forward and kissed me deeply as he thrust into me slowly. I could feel every inch of him as he filled me in a way I never thought possible. I could feel myself pushing against his body, as I pulled him into me, and then he slowly started to rock back and forth until he had my back arching and my nails digging into his back.
*******
Chapter Thirteen
“Does this change anything?” I asked Paul nervously when the silence between us had become too much. I could still feel his touch tingling all over my body, but what had passed had passed some time ago, and the moon had found its way into the sky, so that our bodies could be soon only by the milky light that was bouncing from the waves that were nearly at our feet.
The wind felt cold against my skin, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was making the moment that we were sharing last for as long as I could. It seemed that, although time had stopped, it was quickly making up for it and that at any moment we would have to leave because the waves were taking away our beach.
“I think you know it changes everything,” Paul said softly into my ear.
His breath tickled against my ear as he spoke and I couldn’t help but smile at the pleasure it sent tingling down my spine. “What about Adaline?” I asked him as I turned to capture his eyes with my own.
He smiled at me and his eyes filled with a mischievous sparkle that I recognized from whenever he had pulled pranks on his mom. “I get the sense that you two don’t like each other?” he asked in his best innocent voice.
“Is that how it came across?” I asked with mocked shock on my face. “I can assure you,” I added as I raised my hand to my chest, “that we actually get on famously; in fact, we speak so often that I’ve zarted to zound like zis,” I said as I mocked the heavy French accent.
“Oh, well, I stand corrected then,” Paul said. “I’m sure you’ll find no satisfaction at all in me leaving her for you?” he asked with eyes that dug deeply into the core of my very being.
I frowned at him. “I should hope that you know me better than to think that I’d get any happiness from it. I might not like the girl, but that doesn’t mean she deserves to have her heart hurt,” I said, shaking my head.
Paul shook his head. “You’ve come a long way from the girl who used to rub her conquests in my face,” he said with a look of disbelief.
“I guess I kind of realized there were more important things than coming first,” I said with a little shrug. I pulled my legs closer to my chest, as the cold ocean spray started to lap against my toes. “We should probably go,” I said as I shivered under the spreading cold.