Chapter 32

32

The first time doesn’t hurt like I thought it might. It feels enveloping and unusual but good. Really fucking good. Cooper explores my body, and it transforms from something that holds nothing but fear and anxiety into a conduit for electricity. As he pushes into me, I rise my hips up to meet him, feeling more comfortable with every thrust until I’m the one who quickens the pace.

When Cooper comes, he presses me so tightly against him that I feel his heartbeat reverberate through my entire chest.

We lie back together on the bed, breathless and dazed.

Cooper leans up on his elbow and grins at me. “Whoa.”

I nod, waiting for the stars in my eyes to abate. “Whoa.” I laugh out loud.

Cooper chuckles. “Why are you laughing?”

“I never thought the first person I slept with would be the downstairs neighbour who told me to fuck off because I asked him to turn down his music at six in the morning.”

Cooper frowns. “Huh? I didn’t do that.”

I nudge him lazily with my shoulder. “You did. It was five years ago. The morning after Halloween. I remember because you had pumpkins lit in your window. You’d had a party, I think?”

Cooper inhales. “I don’t remember saying that to you.”

“Still drunk?”

He shakes his head. “No. That was actually the morning Em died. My head was…I was somewhere else.” He strokes my shoulder, causing my whole arm to break out in goose bumps. “Your skin is porcelain.”

“Like a plate?”

“Like a figurine. But sexy. A hot figurine.”

I shrug. “I’m an indoor cat.”

“I didn’t think this would ever happen either,” he says. “Although I do know you thought I was handsome.”

“Oh really? How’s that?”

He laughs. “That Christmas Eve after I first moved in. I accidentally opened one of your packages—a box of paints, I think. I brought them up to your flat, and you were clearly pissed, open bottle of sherry on the table.”

The old bottle of Christmas sherry I found in the cupboard. I had been sad that night. Lonely.

“Shit. What did I say to you?”

Cooper’s eyes glint. “You told me I was handsome on my face. I hadn’t remembered the exact expression until you said it to that bouncer earlier.”

I bury my head in my hands. “Wow.”

“I liked it,” he laughs. “I told you that I thought you were pretty on your face. But then you told me to get out because you were a lone wolf, unable to love or be loved. Something like that. You told me to leave, so I did.”

“Mortifying.”

“I thought you didn’t care what people thought of you.”

“Most people. Not all people.”

He smiles at this.

I sit up. “I don’t think I’m gonna be able to get to sleep.”

“Me neither. Do you want a drink?” Cooper stretches up like a meercat and looks over towards the kettle. “There’s…tea. Only tea.”

“Tea is perfect.”

As Cooper stands up and wraps the other bedsheet around him, I push the pillows against the headboard and sit up too, watching as he boils the kettle and dunks tea bags into the big yellow mugs that have been provided.

“Sugar?”

“What am I? Twelve years old?” I say, mimicking him. “I’ll take two, please.” I won’t be needing healthy teeth anymore, so what does it matter?

Cooper hands me the mug, and I take a sip, exhaling contentedly. “It’s a good brew.”

“Like I said, being an author is a lot of making hot drinks while you panic about what to write next. I’m well practised.”

Cooper climbs over to the opposite side of the bed and leans his pillow up against the endboard so that we’re facing each other. I flip the bedside lamp on, his face lit in full colour. His cheeks are pink, his lips redder than usual, like all the blood has rushed into them.

“Why are you not a writer anymore? Did you get bored of it?”

Cooper looks down into his mug and bunches up his nose. “No, I stopped writing after Em died. It’s like my brain just forgot how.” He gives a small mirthless laugh. “No amount of hot drinks helped. Every time I sat in front of the computer, my heart just felt empty. Like nothing mattered unless Em was there to talk to about it.”

“Did she read your books?”

He nods. “She’d read all my first drafts. Crime wasn’t her kind of thing, but she was the first one to take me seriously. Before I got an agent or a deal. She’d read everything and send me notes. Good notes. Sometimes harsh, but good. She was so much more insightful than anyone gave her credit for. She’s the reason there’s a love story in my first book. Said no-one would give a shit about a bank robber unless he had something real to lose. Unless he had love.”

“She sounds smart.”

Cooper smiles sadly. “She was brilliant. You’d have liked her, I think.”

“How did she…?”

“A blood clot on her lung. She’d just flown back from LA, she’d been to a convention there. And apparently she’d gotten a DVT. The doctors said it was quick and painless. That’s good, I guess.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know how you’d ever get over something like that.”

“You don’t. Or at least I haven’t. I never will. I was with Em from the moment of my birth and she was with me. Even when we weren’t together, we were, you know? I always sensed her. When she was excited, or sad or angry. She was the same way with me.”

“Did you…did you know when she had died? Like, did you feel it?”

He nods. “I’d been having a party. The Halloween party. At about six in the morning, I got this feeling. Like my heart sort of fluttered and a surge of sadness just swarmed through my entire body. It was so strong it woke me up. I tried ringing Em immediately but, of course, there was no answer. I knew it was crazy for me to think that something had happened to her, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I turned on my record player as loud as I could, trying to distract the terrifying thoughts. I think that’s when you knocked on the door? I can’t fully remember. But I knew. I knew something was missing.”

I put down my mug and take his hand into both of mine. “I bet wherever she is she’s doing alright.”

Cooper laughs sadly. “For about a year after Em died I would see her everywhere—in the street, in the background of a movie I was watching, in my dreams. And every time I realised it was just my mind playing tricks on me it was like the shock of it hit me all over again. Mum wanted us to get a psychic, can you believe it? People truly lose their minds when their hearts get broken.”

“So you definitely don’t believe in an afterlife then?”

“Ha! No. No I do not.”

“I never used to believe either,” I murmur.

He turns to me. “So what changed?”

I open my mouth to speak. He’ll think I’m crazy. It is objectively crazy. I clamp my lips together. “I, uh, I watched this incredible show called Ghost Whisperer?” I say, deadpan. “Convinced me.”

Cooper laughs out loud and shakes his head. “Dark, Delphie. Very dark.”

“Can I have another cup of tea?” I say, handing my mug to him. “This time with three sugars?”

Cooper tells me about the time he did a reading at Waterstones and just one person turned up—a woman who had wandered in for a place to rest her bunioned feet. I tell him about the drawing class and the hilarious splits pose Kat did, and about how when I was ten I badly wanted to have a nickname, so I told all the teachers to start referring to me as Lil D and didn’t understand why they absolutely refused to allow it.

I tell him how I miss my mum. He tells me about how his heart feels cracked. Like he could plaster over it with friends and family and books and life and joy, but that he knew it would never really be mended as long as Em wasn’t in the world.

When he asks me about Gen and Ryan, I swiftly change the subject. I don’t want them in my head anymore. Instead I tell him about my top-five TV shows and how the light outside my window at 7:00 p.m. during the final days of August is so perfectly lilac that it takes my breath away every single year. I ask him what the best thing that ever happened to him was, and he tells me it was when he taught Em to ride a two-wheeler and how they’d spent the whole summer of their tenth year wheeling around Hyde Park together with their grandparents, stopping to swim in the Serpentine, eating ice cream, and reading paperbacks—Goosebumps for him, Judy Blumes for her.

In between the talking, we grin at each other, giggling because the sun is starting to come up and we shouldn’t be awake. But we really don’t want to sleep either.

“Come here,” Cooper commands.

I do as he says, crawling across the bed and yelping as he pulls me onto his lap, the sheet falling away from me, exposing my breasts in the brilliant golden light of the dawn.

Cooper’s eyes feast on me. “Fuck, you’re beautiful.”

“Shuddup.”

“No.”

I narrow my eyes. “Don’t use your lines on me.”

He moves then, his hardness straining beneath me. Feeling bold, I reach my hand beneath his sheet and touch him, the hot smoothness making me bite my lip. I move my hand and he pulses thickly beneath my palm in response.

Cooper leans his head back against the endboard. “Christ.” His voice is all raspy and so deep that I swear I can feel the vibration of it in my belly.

He grabs a condom from his wallet and rolls it on. I straddle him and slip down onto his dick, gasping as he fills me.

I tentatively start to rock, slowly at first and then quicker as I get into a rhythm. Cooper watches me, his eyes as dark as coal. I watch him watching me, and the intensity of it, the sun bright on both of our faces, our bodies, makes my heart pound, adrenaline enveloping me.

His fingers dance lightly across my rib cage. Then he presses his palm against my breast, softly flicking his middle finger over my nipple. He raises his head and takes me ever so lightly between his teeth.

“Oh my god.” The most gorgeous ripple of sensation starts to spark in my gut.

Cooper responds to my exclamation by flipping me over and pinning my arms above my head, pushing into me so deeply that it makes me gasp. We find a rhythm and move against each other as Cooper growls, “Fuck,” over and over with each new drive into me.

“Oh my god,” I cry out again as the spark in my belly ignites across my whole body, flames of pleasure licking at every limb. I am only flesh and wetness and pure electric energy.

Cooper groans, his forehead pressed against mine, eyes looking right into me. Seeing me.

We catch our breath. Cooper licks his plump bottom lip. I stare at him and conclude it’s the sexiest bottom lip I’ve ever encountered. How had I never noticed that before?

Cooper gazes at me like I’m the first woman he’s ever had. There’s a slightly puzzled flicker behind his eyes. Of course I know I’m one of many. But I can’t help but like the way it feels when he looks at me like that.

Shit.

Things have gone wildly off course.