finding each other in a kiss that probably shouldn’t happen until our teeth are brushed. It never matters because I want him in any way, shape, or form. Stinky breath, bed head, and all. None of that matters when you get to crack your eyes open to see the person you love sharing your space, your heart, and your mind.
I whisper, “I think about you all the time too,” smiling into his neck when I recall what he told me.
“Mmm. I know.”
I nip the skin closest to my mouth. “Did you also know that I used some of your own quarters from your desk stash to buy your cinnamon buns?”
His body shakes in gentle laughter, causing me to squeeze him tighter. “Well, I figured it was that or a student was picking the lock of the drawer and helping themselves.”
I grumble out a, “Know it all” before releasing a content sigh.
Reece’s response is so soft I nearly miss it, but the words dance in my head the rest of the night and the many, many more that follow. “I love you, and I’m glad you’re both my first and last.”
I could say I know and even the scoreboard, but I don’t, because part of me had doubts about where we’d be a month from now, a year from now, hell, five years from now. He could decide that his love for me has faded and find somebody else to experiment with. I hope that day never comes, so I hold onto the moment now, onto the pure happiness of tonight and all the days that have involved Reece Nichols and leave an open-mouthed kiss to his shoulder blade. “I love too.”
Chapter Nineteen
Reece
I don’t know if thirty is a good age for wisdom, or if I’m just more inclined to believe in things now that I do in myself, but everything has changed. My perspective on life, on other people, is no longer filtered with hesitation or cynicism, and I know a large part of that has to do with the man currently sleeping beside me.
With Christmas less than a week from now, we’ve talked holiday plans since our families both live out of town. He told me his are going on their yearly cruise to the Caribbean, one they haven’t missed in ten years, while mine are throwing their usual intimate get-together. Our traditions couldn’t be any more different. Mine involve watching A Christmas Story on TBS all day while we open presents and argue over what the best holiday movie is, and his have always been isolated minus the few times Della or his former coach on the Bentley U team invited him to join them.
Asking him to come with me to meet my family is hard despite everything we’ve been through together. I’m not scared they won’t like him, because Lawrence McKinley is impossible not to love. My mother won’t be immune to his charm, and I doubt my father will be either. Jamie is a different story, and if we see Donna, whose phone calls have eased after the anniversary of Brea’s death, I don’t know what she’ll say.
Ren and I spoke about him tagging along, but the conversation veered to touching, more touching, and eventually sex. Not that I’m complaining. There is nothing better than the sting of pain-turned-pleasure Lawrence gives me when he positions himself over me, behind me, in me. Still, I plan to bribe him with a big breakfast to agree since he’s yet to give me a firm answer. Getting a ‘yes’ out of him when he was coming didn’t really count in my book, because I could get him to do anything. Hell, commit murder if I wanted. Maybe he’s nervous to agree, maybe I’m pushing too far to take this step, but I don’t want to leave him in Exeter when there’s somewhere he can go to celebrate.
It could have been an overshot, but I called my mother yesterday asking if it’d be all right if a guest joined me, and the joy in her voice told me it was more than fine before she said so herself. The last thing I want is my mother getting her hopes up only for me to dash them. Again. I want Ren there, around my family, laughing at the jokes Dad makes that aren’t that funny, and teasing me over all the awkward photos Mom has hanging on nearly every wall of me and Jamie. Hell, despite the lack of communication I