Chapter 32

32

I spent most of the week with myself. Every day I found myself in a different place with my camera in hand, held high to the sky or the nature on the ground. I think I needed it, a moment in my own company to sort through my thoughts and fall even more in love with photography.

Contact with Reece was few and far between.

Three days after our day in the city, I finally received a text from him. But me being me, I ignored it and decided to get out of the house. I locked my phone in my drawer and grabbed my camera, with the aim of forgetting and clearing my head. Surprisingly, it seemed to do a lot of good for me that I just kept going and adventuring to new places.

I did end up messaging him back, but my conversations were sporadic, and he seemed to sense that.

The truth was that I scared myself. Words I avoided ever saying out loud had been so close to spilling from my lips that day, and I didn't know what to do to myself. Even though I loved the idea of love and seeing it in the movies, it just wasn't the same or as realistic in real life. It was a fairytale I could live in inside my head, but feeling it and saying those words had my fight-or-flight response flaring.

Those three words had become permanently buried behind a concrete wall that it had become a foreign feeling for me to say. I know how easily they can be taken advantage of. I'd seen it with my dad. I'd felt it with Mum when I was younger. Whenever I told her I loved her, all she ever replied with was, ‘That's good, sweetie'. It made me slowly lose hope for the promises those words gave you. Slowly, those words began to slip from my vocabulary. I didn't even say them to my friends. The closest I got was replying ‘you too' when they said it. The only person I had ever been brave enough to say them to was my dad.

So the fact that I had almost let them slip with Reece had me retreating into myself in hopes of never coming out again. I was protecting myself.

It was late in the evening when my phone buzzed with an incoming call. My heart skipped a beat as I hesitantly grabbed it, reading the name written across the screen in bold. I held my breath, bringing the phone to my ear after clicking the green button. His breathing filtered through the speaker and an immediate sense of comfort washed over me just like it always did from feeling his presence from the other side of the line. I'd missed it.

"Hi," I whispered into the receiver, hesitance and vulnerability filtering through my words.

There was a moment's pause. A heartbeat that had me clinging the phone closer to my ear so I didn't miss his voice or even a single breath.

"Hey." Reece's voice floated through my ear, and that single word made my whole body lose every single ounce of tension it was coiling into.

There was another pause. Silence stretched through the space between us.

I chewed on my lip, trying to piece together something to say, but he spoke before I could.

"Are you alone?" he asked.

I nodded before swallowing, remembering he couldn't see, and forced my mouth to open to speak. "Yes."

"Good. I'm out front. Let me in?"

I didn't answer. I just took the stairs by two with my phone still stuck to my ear before I whipped the door open. As soon as it was opened, I watched Reece, with his confident and purposeful stride, make his way up the steps of the porch while ending the call and pocketing his phone in the back of his shorts. He was standing in front of me then, but he didn't stop. His hands came to frame my face as he entered my space, and I stumbled back into the door just as his lips pressed against mine, purposeful and desperate.

When his lips found mine, I could pretend the pressure in my chest that I had felt all week never existed and that my feelings for Reece weren't developing into something real and dangerous. I could forget all that and shut it to the back of my mind just to be able to have moments like these where he could consume my existence with the touch of his lips. I could deal with physical and surface-level feelings. I could deal with lust, desire, and physical attraction.

He kissed me once, twice, all the while walking me backward into the house. The third time his lips pressed onto mine, he coaxed my lips apart with a swipe of his tongue before it tangled with mine in languid strokes, and it brought tingles to my skin from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

"I'm sorry," he whispered against my lips, pausing his assault as he hovered them above mine.

My heart cracked at the whispered apology. I was just as guilty as he was. But I've heard him apologise many times now. It was like it was all he did. I wanted to believe him, but it was getting harder to trust he meant them when his actions were starting to speak above his sweet words. I needed him to show me more. To step up and show me he means what he says.

But at this moment, I just wanted his lips on mine, his hands on my body, and his breath mingling with mine. I'd hold my breath for now just to be with him. I knew it was a discussion we needed to have, but it wasn't something I could brave right now, knowing it could go one of two ways. I feared I already knew which way it would go.

So, I sacrificed what I knew was best for me and dove deeper into what felt like an escape.

"Just kiss me," I whispered back, pulling him back down to me.

No matter how scared I was of feeling this much for someone, I trusted him. He had slowly, and all at once, gained my trust when he walked back into my life, and I knew he would never let me fall. The sneaking around and hiding in the shadows would disappear, and we would tell my brother and Liam, and all would be okay. If he felt the same way as I did - which I was sure he did - I knew we would be okay. So, I leaned into him and pushed aside the anxiety I felt just to be with him. Because it felt too right not to.

He walked me further into the house and kicked the door closed before his hands smoothed down the sides of my body to cup under my thighs, lifting me to him. My legs wrapped around his waist, and my hands dove into his hair as I consumed myself in all of him. It's all I knew how to do. When he was this close, I couldn't help but put him into the centre of my orbit. To have all my desires and whispered sighs answered by the dominant stroke of his tongue, and the exploration of his hands along my body and in my hair. He knew exactly where to touch me, where to kiss me, where to drag his tongue to get a reaction from me. To have me in a puddle in the palm of his hands.

He made his way up the stairs, never parting for my lips. His steps were sure like he knew every corner of this house as if it were his own. And I guess he'd been there enough times that he probably would.

He was so quick that in the blink of a moment, he had laid me flat on the edge of the bed as soon as he opened the door. He kissed a path down my neck as he stood in front of me, his body hovering over mine and sending sparks skittering across my skin with every brush of his lips and tongue over my skin. He was just as consumed as I was, and I basked in the admiration he praised into my skin.

He made quick work of my jean shorts and underwear. My eyes met his, and as a slow smirk transformed on his lips, he slowly lowered himself to the floor, kneeling in front of me.

I was way too pent up from the moment his lips met mine, and I ached for him, needing him more than I'd ever needed anyone. It was almost obsessive feeling this much for someone, needing them and wanting them to need me too.

His smile was like he read exactly what was playing through my mind, and so he put me out of my misery, lips punishing me as soon as they lowered to my core. It was torture and absolute bliss at the same time. With every kiss, lick, swirl, and suck, I fell harder and harder into the abyss.

The magic he spun between my thighs had me right at the edge in no time, and I was falling off the edge with wave after wave crashing into me.

He spent the next half an hour rocking me into another orgasm with slow and steady thrusts, his heavy-lidded and wild gaze never wavering from mine.

That bond that had tied us together over a year prior had only strengthened over time, and it only left me wanting more. I wanted to know more about him. I wanted to learn everything about him. I wanted him to see exactly what I saw. I wanted to talk to him about everything and anything under the moonlight.

And in his gaze, vulnerability showed and it was like he was showing me all that he could offer me. Devotion, desire, hope. It all wrapped into one, and it sunk deep into my heart, making the muscle swell with emotion.

It was a symphony of our moans, sighs, and groans echoing off the bedroom walls, and that, combined with the way he looked at me, had me crying out as pleasure overrode my entire being. He curled into me, his head tucked into my shoulder as he spilled his release, the condom confining each drop. With his chest on mine and our hearts beating in unison, all of him and all of me, I felt each part of us intertwined. It felt bright, and warm, and promising, like the golden daylight that I knew him to be.

But as I was drifting off in the peacefulness of his arms, he slowly peeled himself away from me, leaving me with a quick, feather-light kiss to my temple before he quietly made his way out of the house. My heart yearned for him to come back to where he belonged as I watched him jog down the street.

The sweet, gentle moment we had together, was ruined by the quick retreat he made in an effort to keep us secret.

And suddenly, through the rose-coloured glasses I had worn the past couple of days, sinking into the hopes and daydreams I held didn't feel as good as I wished it would now that we were here.