of man, of Sam. I lift a hand, rest it just above his solar plexus. His breath jerks, his hand comes around my wrist.
“Not like this.”
“Like what?” I spread my free hand out. “In the middle of nowhere?”
“Not when you’re pissed off.”
“I’m the one who’s pissed?” I say, laughing sharply.
He drops my hand and tilts his face up to the sky.
“I’m not pissed, Sam. I’m conflicted.”
“That’s better?”
It’s another match to pavement—he thinks he gets the only say in when or how this happens? So I step closer, slide my hand up and around his neck. I raise up on my toes and hover there, just an inch away from his lips. He smells like water, and wine, and the strawberries of dessert, and it’s like a knife to the ribs to remember that day in the park, when he tasted like berries, and we ate them under a tree and then he laid me down so carefully in the bed, sliding a towel under me.
He’s shaking, shaking under my palm at the back of his neck and my other hand pressed to his chest, feeling his heart under there. It’s like a treasure in a fortress, this heart. I wonder what it’s felt, how many times it’s beat painfully enough to make him wonder whether he’s dying.
He did that to me.
Am I really the only terrible thing he’s ever done?
I shove him once and he stumbles back, landing against the side of the truck. My hands come to the front of his shirt, pulling the cotton into my fists, and I want to tear it off, dig my hands into the skin underneath and pull his heart free.
His hands come slowly to my hips, steadying me. “What do you want, Tate?” He lets his eyes fall closed. “You want me to leave? You want me to stay? I don’t know the right answer here.”
I don’t want to have to say it. He’s smart enough to figure it out. I’m exhausted enough that the truth pushes past any barriers of mental self-preservation: I want him to want me. I want it to eat him up inside, like a cancer that can’t be cured. I stand there, looking at him, watching his eyes open again and his expression go from indecision, to hesitation, to that melting of relief, and he bends in jerky, halting movements, as if he wants to give me time to change my mind.
His lips meet mine, so soft, just resting there, but it feels like I’ve been ripped open the way everything pours from me. He lets out a hoarse sound of relief, and I remember this, how it felt to stand on my tiptoes, to reach for his neck, to pull him down to me, wanting more and deeper, wanting that slide of his tongue and the way his groan felt like it came from a fairy tale, the giant begging for something precious.
His hands grip my waist, holding my hips to his thighs and against my stomach he stirs, his teeth brush against my lip—deliberately, a gentle tug turns into a bite, and fourteen years of anger and unresolved hurt pour out of me. I have two fists in his hair, tugging his head to the side so that I can bite his neck. He cries out, wrapping one arm around me and lifting me roughly, flinging me to the side so he can open the back door.
He all but tosses me in, watching as I scoot back and he’s a predator, or maybe I am, the spider luring him in here, hoping to give him something he’ll never get again.
I want every wish he ever makes to be for this. A penny in a fountain. The first star. An eyelash. Eleven eleven. Just for one more time.
The door slams shut behind him, and he’s too big for the space but he doesn’t seem to care. On his knees, he slides the skirt of my dress up over my hips, pulls down my underwear, and looks at me like he wants his mouth just there, right there, but there isn’t room for him to lay me down, stretch out between my legs.
Instead his hand comes to his trousers, unbuttoning, unzipping, and I’m there to help pull him free; and for the first time I can’t hold the sound back, that sharp cry when I remember this, too. The weight and heat of him. The noises he makes, helpless but deep.