When that first sun rose over that deserted beach on the East Cape and my fingers captured that moment, that feeling—hazy, grand, messy, warm—I felt like my heart rose as well.
I was shining on the inside.
It’s all because of Josh. All because of this funny, sexy, handsome, generous, adorable man who knows my body better than I do, who sees the real me underneath the ice and isn’t afraid of her. Who believes in who I am and what I can do, more than I can believe it myself.
That morning he showed me what he saw in me, and it was beautiful.
That morning I realized I love him. Deeply, desperately, dangerously.
I am in love with Joshua Miles, and it’s bringing me to life.
It’s killing me.
It’s making me crazy.
I think I love that part, too.
It twists and loops around us, tying us to one another. It steals my thoughts and makes me think of him. It steals my hands and makes me touch his skin. It’s brutal and kind and sharp and soft and warm and cold and freeing and imprisoning. It’s an incognito imposter taking over my world, spreading itself like a disease.
It’s a million and one things, and it’s real to the bone.
It’s in my bones.
It’s love. And I have no idea what it’s going to do next.
I can only hope that I’ll have the strength to keep it in line.
I stand outside, lost in my thoughts until the black fades to blue and the sun spears my eyes. I hear Josh stirring inside the bus.
“Baby,” he calls out, voice hoarse with sleep. I’ve started to love it when he calls me that. He doesn’t say it often, but when he does it is so sincere I can’t help but melt.
“Yeah,” I answer, sliding open the door. He’s sitting up with a mess of hair and my eyes dance over his bare chest, his tattoos, his wide, expansive shoulders. I drink him in, my hands itching to touch him.
I step inside Mr. Orange and climb back into bed with him. Now that he’s awake, I don’t have to be alone with my thoughts. Now I can breathe. Now he can distract me.
I run my finger over his forehead, down the bridge of his nose, stopping at his cushiony lips when he playfully bites me.
“Last morning of the year,” he murmurs around my finger. “What are you doing up so early?”
I grin at him. “Trying to figure out how to make the last morning of the year . . . memorable.”
His expression turns cocksure. He raises his brow and looks me up and down. My breasts are practically falling out of the flimsy camisole. “Sweetheart, just you here like this is already making a memory I’ll fall back on again and again.”
“Calling me sweetheart again, are you?” I tease.
“Only because it makes you wet,” he answers with a knowing smirk.
He’s right of course. But in this case, I love it when he’s right.
I take his hand and guide it down the front of my underwear to prove his point. I don’t mind feeding his ego. He deserves it.
Morning sex is the absolute best. We’re both so sleepy and slow that it’s like lazily discovering a new day. My hands find their way to his rigid cock and stroke it languorously. He sucks on my nipples while his fingers explore me in and out. We tumble into the bed, rolling, reaching, quietly yearning. It’s a slow dance of tangled sheets and warm limbs and easy smiles. He guides himself into me, eyes half-closed, mouth wet and open. We kiss through our stupor. He fills me to the brim and I expand to let him in. Push and pull. Give and take.
In the mornings we take our time, relishing every lick, pinch, stroke, squeeze. When I come it’s through shaky breaths and hushed groans, like it’s a subtle surprise. He’s louder but softer, and there’s a moment where it’s so easy to just fall asleep all over again, with him still inside me, and have another morning when we wake.
But we always have places to go. I tear myself away from him, clean up, and slip into shorts and a singlet, pulling my hair back in a ponytail. Lately I’ve been going makeup free and he seems to love it, always counting the freckles on my nose.
Soon we’re hitting the road, stopping at a takeaway shop for coffees and sammies in the town of Whangarei and piloting toward my grandfather.
“Where are we going again?” Josh asks as he peruses a road map. “I mean, the name of the place.”
I eye it briefly. “It’s probably hard to find on the map. It’s up in the Bay of Islands, a place called Bland Bay.”
He snorts. “Bland Bay? How exciting.”
“It’s not so bland, you’ll see.”
Two hours later we’re coasting down a hill toward a small peninsula. On one side of us is the bay, with its beautiful crescent moon of white sand. On the other side of the narrow neck is the protected Whangaruru Harbour. There’s not much here except for a strip of road, a small store by the campground, and a scattering of holiday homes, all bordering the harbor.
My grandfather’s place, where he lives with Uncle Robbie and Aunt Shelley, is past the narrow isthmus and up a gravel road that takes you across a crop of rolling farmland to his house at the very end. It’s a large, isolated plot of land bordering the edge of the white-sand bay.
I put Mr. Orange in park beside my uncle’s car, an old, shiny Datsun. The house, a white, sprawling one-level, sits behind a row of spiky flax and ornamental wind grass. Two giant pōhutukawa trees, their flowers still a brilliant pinkish red, flank the house on one end.
“This is it,” I say. “End of the line.”