stroke. Her eyes are staring straight at me and I blink away, hating that she has the ability to see too much. To see everything. To see that I’m struggling just as much with this being the end of us. That it’s the end before there was ever really a beginning.
“Stay with me, baby,” she whispers, pulling my face back to her. “Don’t think about what comes after this. Stay in the moment. It’s just you and me and nothing else matters.”
But that’s the thing. Everything matters. We have a whole life at home that matters. A life full of people who will absolutely find fault with the fact that we spent an entire weekend fucking all over the beach house I bought for her mother.
I am the fucking worst. Not only to the memory of her mother, but to Stassia, to my in-laws that see me as the son they never had, and to every single person that deemed me trustworthy.
“Stop,” I tell her, and as gently but as forcibly as I can, I pull her off of me. “This was a mistake.”
“Wha—what?”
“You and me. This,” I tell her. “I can’t think like this.” I begin to pace back and forth in front of the bed as I can see the emotions written all over Stassi.
“You don’t…you regret doing this with me?”
“No.”
“That’s what a mistake is, Dominic. Something you wish you hadn’t done. Didn’t you go to graduate school for English, Principal Callahan?”
If I wasn’t so completely fucked up from this situation, I would find humor in her sarcasm, but I feel like a volcano ready to explode and I know I need to get away from Stassi before she’s caught in the explosion.
“I need to take a shower. You should start getting ready.”
“Are you serious?” She stands up. I try to ignore the slickness between her legs that is a mix of both of us, but my eyes jump there on their own and my mouth waters for a taste.
I am in fucking hell.
“Fuck you, Dominic. Fuck you and fuck this. You’re so freaked out about something that no one is EVER going to know about!”
“I KNOW ABOUT IT! Isn’t that enough?! Is your moral compass that fucking skewed that you don’t feel bad at all about this? Is your pussy really blurring your conscience that fucking much?” I snap and instantly regret taking that tone or using those words. I’m not angry at her, and I’m not angry at her for not showing her guilt. I know she feels guilty. She knows this is wrong. She just asked for one more time. She wanted closure.
This is why I want to get the fuck away from her.
The tears threatening to fall down her sweet face shatter me, and when I take a step towards her and she takes a step back, she grabs the sheet and wraps it around her naked body to shield herself from the pain I’ve flung at her.
“Stassi…I didn’t mean.”
“No, you meant it.” She shakes her head. “I get it, okay? You feel guilty, but don’t take that guilt out on me because you certainly weren’t feeling that when we were sixty-nine-ing on the floor downstairs or when you pinned me to the floor of the shower and full on mounted me like a fucking animal. The fun is over, and the shame or whatever it is, is washing over you and you want to lash out at me. I feel guilty, yes, but I also feel…so many other things. Maybe in five or ten years, I’ll hate myself or you for doing what we did, but right now I’m just trying to process everything, and right now I’m processing the fact that the man I lost my virginity to, who also happens to be the man who claimed to love me, is telling me that what we did was a mistake. That I am a mistake, so forgive me for not rolling over and taking that bullshit because you’re better than that and so am I.” With a shaky breath, she marches out of the room without another look back at me.
* * *
Stassia hasn’t said one word since she stormed out of my room and now we are preparing for an eight-hour car ride that I imagine will be icier than the Arctic. I’ve just finished packing up the car when she comes down the stairs, furiously typing into her cell phone and I take a second to admire how beautiful she