Not You It's Me (Boston Love #1) - Julie Johnson Page 0,113
of breaking it… he just lets it beat.
Thump, thump, thump.
Gemma, Gemma, Gemma.
Chase, Chase, Chase.
His hands are planted on the countertop beside me, my fingers are in his hair, our mouths are pressed together. We’re not even kissing — we’re just breathing each other in, our lips skimming and parting, skimming and parting, like the million stones I’ve skipped across the waves in Rocky Neck. I stare into his eyes as he pushes me over the edge, and with each stroke of his body, each touch of his hands, each lingering look, he takes my fragile heart and breaks it a little more.
Not by pulling it to pieces; by filing it with so much emotion, it’s nearly bursting. Until it’s so full of us, there’s simply no room left for all the years of pain and sadness and unworthiness that defined me before.
He loves me, and it breaks my heart…in the exact way it needs to be broken.
When I was little, Mom and I drove past a burning field, the plants scorched down to the earth, the blaze so bright, no life could possibly survive it. I asked her why the farmers would do such a thing to their own crops, and she said, Slash and burn, baby girl. Slash and burn.
Sometimes, you have to raze things to the ground before you can start over. Sear away the past, to pave the way for a bright future.
At age five, this concept made no sense to me.
But with Chase slowly breaking me apart and building me back together with sheer force of will, with his hands and his touch and his words fitting my fractured pieces together better than they’ve ever done before, I finally see.
You have to rebuild a broken heart before it can love again.
So, I don’t fight it. I let him slash me open, burn me down to my most basic levels, beneath the barriers, beneath the scar tissue and damage built up by years of disappointment. Down to the very heart of me.
Then, I let him piece me back together, thrust by thrust, our gazes locked, until there are tears streaming from my eyes at the sheer beauty of the moment.
And as my heart, whole and healed, beats strong inside my chest, in perfect sync with Chase’s pulse, I know I’ll never be the same after this. After us.
Thump, thump, thump.
Us, us, us.
***
Later, we’re sprawled in Chase’s bed, skin bare and limbs tangled, our eyes long-adjusted to the darkness of his room. I’m tracing circles on his naked chest with my fingertip, while he plays with the ends of my hair.
On the surface, it sounds like a simple moment: the casual aftermath of two lovers on crinkled sheets, doing nothing at all exceptional or exciting. But there’s nothing simple about the way I feel when he touches me — thoughtlessly tender, with absent affection. And, really, it is kind of exceptional that we’re here — Gemma Summers and Chase Croft. Two people who don’t make sense on paper, whose broken, blunted pieces shouldn’t fit together.
And yet, here we are.
Fitting.
A week ago he was a stranger. Now, I’m beginning to wonder how I ever made it through the day without him.
I suppose I didn’t know what I was missing.
“Tonight kind of sucked,” I murmur eventually.
“Ah, just what a man likes to hear when it comes to his sexual prowess.”
I lift my head to look at him. “Not you, dummy. I meant tonight, the gala. You know, before the staggering show of sexual prowess.”
He snorts. “Glad to hear it.”
“I just mean…” I sigh again. “Between Rat Bastard Ralph conniving with Bat-Shit Brett, meeting my half-sister, nearly coming to blows with Vanessa in the bathroom, and then Jameson’s Grey Goose sponsored speech—”
“Back up.” Chase’s eyes narrow on mine. “You bumped into Vanessa? You never mentioned that.”
Shit. I hadn’t meant to tell him about her.
“Didn’t I?” I ask, my voice innocent.
“No.”
“Huh, that’s odd. I could’ve sworn—”
“Gemma.” His voice is stern. “Cut the shit. What did she say?”
I feel my cheeks start to heat with color. “Nothing.”
“Gemma.”
“It isn’t a big deal.”
“Then why are you blushing?”
Damn.
“She was very predictable, really — nothing I hadn’t heard before. It didn’t bother me at all.”
“Then tell me.”
“It was just a little something about me not being good enough for you.”
“That sounds far too magnanimous for Vanessa,” he says bluntly. “Gemma, tell me what she said.”