isn’t fair. It’s playing dirty to get him to stay so she doesn’t have to be alone. “Maybe I haven’t loved you the way you deserve to be loved, but I love you the best way I know how. I’ve always loved you, and I will always love you.”
He’s wavering. She can see it. She places a hand on his inner thigh, stroking the bulge there with her forefinger. She can feel it.
“You have to promise not to hate me tomorrow.” Sal’s voice is hoarse. “Because I couldn’t live with it if you did.”
“I could never hate you, no matter what,” she says. “Don’t you know that by now? You’re the only person I have left in the world who I trust, Sal.”
To anyone else, it would have been just words. But it’s the exact thing Sal had said to her the night his father died. He was a mess, screaming, hysterical, near incoherent, and it had taken him a long time to calm down. Marin did most of the talking when the cops showed up. She’s the reason he was never arrested. You’re the only person I have left in the world who I trust, Marin.
This moment is probably the closest they’ll ever come to speaking of that night, and it wasn’t even intentional.
He reaches for her and undresses her slowly, his eyes feasting on a naked body he last saw on a twin bed in his college apartment. Then he undresses himself, and the sight of his body is comforting to her, largely unchanged since the last time she saw him this way, other than maybe a bit more body hair and a lot more muscle.
He’s not a college kid anymore. And neither is she.
They find each other again, tangling in the sheets, until a moment later when he pulls back and asks, chest heaving, “Do you have anything?”
It takes her a few seconds to understand what he’s asking. It’s been so long since anybody’s asked her that question. She hasn’t used any kind of birth control since she was probably in her late twenties, when she and Derek started actively trying for a baby.
“No, I don’t.” She pulls him back to her. “It’s fine.”
It took four rounds of IVF and a hundred thousand dollars to have Sebastian. She’s not worried about what might happen today. All she knows is she needs this, more than she’s needed anything or anyone in a long time.
Sal enters her slowly, his gaze fixed on hers, and it feels so good to be filled up, to not be empty anymore. She loses herself in him, and it’s better than she remembers. They’re both better than she remembers. Tender at the start, animalistic near the end, and exactly what she needs.
He’s pulling his pants back up as she’s falling asleep in the messy bedsheets. It’s getting dark outside now. He leans over and kisses her lips, and it’s long and lingering, filled with unspoken words and a desire for her that she now understands never really waned but was only suppressed. She kisses him back, all the while knowing that this will be the last time they’ll ever kiss like this. When they broke up all those years ago, they didn’t know that their last kiss was the last one.
But today, Marin knows. This can’t happen again.
“I love you,” he whispers.
She smiles at him in the dim light and strokes his face. “I love you.”
They’re the exact same words, but they mean totally different things.
* * *
An hour later, when she’s woken up by the soft ping of her phone, the bedroom is dark. It’s not the Shadow app. It’s her regular iMessage. Derek has finally bothered to check in, and Marin props herself up on her elbow to read his text.
Hey, I’m delayed in PDX another night, invited to dinner with the investors. Wish I could say no. I’ll be home tomorrow night instead.
Lies. Lies lies lies. He’s not in Portland. He probably just got to the hotel here in Seattle, whichever one is their “favorite.”
No worries, she responds. This is why they pay you the big bucks.
I’ll be home in time for dinner tomorrow, promise, Derek texts. Make a reservation anywhere you want to eat. I’ll surprise you with something nice ?.
The stupid thing is, he really will. His last trip to Portland, he came back with a pair of knee-high Valentino boots for her. It wasn’t her birthday. It wasn’t Christmas. He’d spied them in the window at Nordstrom and