“I know you are. I accept your apology.”
I feel my body relax, my chest not as tight and my jaw relaxing. I was wound tight, torn up inside from all the fighting. I know damn well if we were a couple without any history at all, we would have ended things right here and now, but history is just that—history. Shay and I have a long history and walking away isn’t always as simple as it sounds.
“Can I tell you something? About my mom, something I’ve never told anyone?” I ask sincerely. Talk through it, Trey, tell her.
“Anything.” I help stand her up and then switch places, so now I’m on the couch. I pull her into my lap to straddle my waist. She willingly sits down and waits patiently for me to talk.
On an exhale, I start talking. “That day—my graduation.” She nods. “I found a letter in my dad’s office. It was to him…from my mother.” Her eyes instantly sadden, and I take a moment to absorb her sympathy. Most people don’t crave it but I welcome her pity. I will accept and take her any way she will give me. Happy, sad, angry, fucking pity—I don’t care, I want all her feelings and I want them for me.
“Go ahead, Trey. Open up to me.” She grabs my hand and places it against her heart. I feel the strong beat thump and pulse against my hand. The strength of a thousand men pump through her chest and straight into my veins, igniting my willpower to continue.
“I almost ignored it, my hands hovered above it for what felt like hours. Finally, I couldn’t take it and had to know what it said. Something was wielding me to open the fucking thing and read it. So, I did.” I push hard against the wave of tears that want to fall, swallowing past the dry lump. I clear my throat. “It was her good-bye letter. The one she wrote my dad the day she left him.”
She doesn’t interrupt me, but she does tighten her hand around mine, which still sits above her heart.
“The letter said a bunch of terrible things. She said how much she pretended to love my dad, until something better came along. How she despised him for his lack of trying to make a better life for himself. Shit, that told me then why he did what he did when he found his way as an entrepreneur.” I take my other hand and busy it on her bare thigh, her warm, satin skin feeling good against my palm. “At the end of the letter she said she regretted having me, and that I shouldn’t have been born, because it pushed her and him apart even more. She blamed me, Shay.” I let myself feel, let the pain rip at my heart.
Dropping my hand, she clasps my face in her delicate ones. “Trey! That isn’t true. My God that isn’t true. Please don’t tell me you believed her?”
“Obviously I did, since it’s causing me to have such a fucking problem with trust and jealousy.” I am not telling her this so she will excuse my behavior, I’m telling her this so she can understand it and I can accept it, to help me move on.
“It’s not true, Trey. She left on her own. Your mother and my mother could be best friends, I swear.” Shay’s mom didn’t walk out, but she did become an absentee parent, so she has an inkling of what I am going through. “Our mothers live in the world of narcissism, they think they are perfect and deserve noting but the best. She left because she was a selfish human who didn’t have a heart big enough to love someone as amazing as you and Pops.” She leans in and kisses the tip of my nose, I feel like a child, craving a love I missed out on when I was younger. Shay is the nurturing type. I swear she will be the best fucking mother.
“That’s something I need to realize and work on, Shay, but I can only do it with time and your help. I will never act like that in front of Evan again,” I make a promise to her, sealing it with a kiss.
“I will help you, as a lover and a friend, I will help you.”
Her words are my undoing, drawing me into her. My lips connect to hers and a bolt of electricity shoots through my body, waking me the fuck up. I feel my cock slowly growing hard. Tilting her head, to tangle our tongues, we battle for dominance, hungry for one another. I drag my lips away and kiss down her cheek before giving her neck some attention. “Mhmm.” I don’t stop kissing on her. I want to leave my mark on her neck and claim her with my brand.
“Make love to me.” She moans, her head tilted and her neck open to me. She is still sitting astride me, grinding herself against me.
My lips come to a halt, and I’m almost sure I didn’t hear her correctly. Did she just ask me to make love to her? No way. I must be so turned on, and still reeling from our fight, that I’m imagining her offering me the one thing I would kill to have.
“What’d you say?”
She chuckles and repeats herself. “I’m in love with you too, Trey, and I’m ready to give myself to you completely. Make love to me?”
Hell yes, I’m not just dreaming. This is happening.
“Are you sure? I mean if you feel I need this, I don’t.” Instantly, I wish I could reach out into the air in front of me and grab the words back, before she could have the chance to hear them. Observing her face, my words obviously stung her. She thinks I’m telling her I don’t want her, yeah fucking right. I want to rip her clothes off and bend her ass over the couch and fuck her into oblivion. But I don’t want her to think it’s something she has to do to please me or keep me satisfied.
“Baby, baby, look at me.” I move back slightly and take her face in my hands. “All I meant was that I don’t want you to give yourself to me because you think we need to after our fight, or that I need it in order for you to keep me. I can wait as long as needed. I just don’t want you to do it if you aren’t ready.”
She gives me a doe-eyed look and asks me in a voice barely above a whisper, “Do you want to? I mean, are you ready?”
“Are you kidding?” I dissolve into a small laugh. She can’t be serious. “Yeah, I’m more than ready. If I could, I would make love to you whenever I have the chance. Making love to you will become my favorite pastime.” Her face flushes a soft shade of pink.
“What if I’m not good at it? You know I’m a virgin, obviously. But you’ve been with tons of women, probably all Barbie doll vixens, and here I am the inexperienced virgin. What if you hate it?”
This can’t be a conversation that we’re going to indulge in, is it? I know I have insecurities, but she’s a damn ten. Shit, a twenty. I’m the only one who should be worried. Her being insecure pisses me off, honestly.
“I’ve been with a lot of women, yes. I’m not going to lie or try to hide that from you, but none of those women have had my heart. This will be the first time I’ve made love, and if I have it my way, you will be the only one I ever make love to.” My words ignite a fire; she wraps her arms around my neck and thighs tighten their grip against mine. Our lips lock and we lose ourselves, kissing each other with such an intensity I don’t think I can go slow.
“I fucking want you. I want to show you how amazing it will feel,” I rasp into her neck
then flip us over so she is under me and I’m laid out over her tight little body. Leaning up, I balance myself on my knees then reach behind my head and pull my shirt off. I swear I’ll never get tired of the way she looks at me when she’s turned on. It really is a sight.
Tossing the shirt to the ground, I spread her legs and readjust myself to kneel betwe