“I’ll be at the hotel. I need to leave tomorrow anyway.” Callan stands and looks at nobody but me.
He leans over and sets a kiss on my cheek, and I curl my fingers into my palm to keep from pushing them into his hair and feeling the warmth of his mouth on mine.
My room is upstairs, and though my parents could probably sleep through the apocalypse, I hear Tahoe and Gina’s rough lovemaking. I guess my brother needs the outlet, because they’ve been at it for a while.
I toss around in bed and everything reminds me of her. Everything makes me crave him.
I grab my phone and text him at 12 a.m.
I wanted you to stay.
I’d sleep in the tree house with you.
You’re missing out on cramped shoulders and a permanently injured back, boo.
My phone rings, and my heart leaps as I see his name on the screen. I answer and hear his voice, husky, though I’m not sure if it’s husky due to sleep or something else.
“I’m game if you are.”
I lie there and say nothing, praying my brother hasn’t scared him away. I don’t want to hang up. I whisper, “How about we sleep on the hill just past the house?”
“A night sleeping on a hill?”
I bite my lips, hearing the amusement in his voice. Please God, don’t let what my brother said scare this guy away. I say, “Yes. With you.”
“I’ll be there in twenty.”
“I’ll see you there.”
I leap out of the bed and take a quick shower, blow-dry my hair, pull it back into a ponytail, and slip into comfortable sweatpants and one of my sleeping T-shirts.
I leave a note on my pillow just in case Mother peeks into my room.
I simply say, I’m sleeping on the hill.
I grab a tote bag and go raid the kitchen, adding water bottles, two blankets, then tiptoe out of the house.
I walk up to the figure on the hill, his shadow making everything inside of me bubble with an odd longing I’d never before felt in my life.
“Hey,” I say fake cheerily, “I brought blankets. Two. One so the ants don’t get us, another for you and me.”
His shoes are next to his wallet and rental car keys and hotel key. He’s barefoot. Freshly showered, jeans hanging low on his hips, and a T-shirt that looks so soft and inviting, I want to nuzzle myself into his chest.
I pull out one of the blankets and he takes it from my hand, his eyes meeting mine in the dark before he whips it out and spreads it on the ground.
I sit on it and he drops next to me, the weather too warm to use the extra blanket for now.
We stare at the hills around us. “It makes me humble. Being outside. Nothing man can create can equate to this.”
Callan’s amused half-smile and the twinkle in his eyes appear. “Well, it took billions of years to become this, scientifically speaking.”
I smile. Him and his stats. I don’t think he’s thinking of stats, though. He leans forward and sets his hand on my back, pulling me close. I absorb the way he smells and the way it feels while we’re surrounded by all this stillness, the sights and scents of the woods.
He drags his nose over the back of my ear, scenting the spot where I dabbed perfume. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s only you.”
It feels so natural, and also primitive.
“They say new, unfamiliar experiences release dopamine in our brains and we feel happy. Am I the unfamiliar to you, Callan?”
“In a way. But you’re familiar enough I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. Wanted you before this life.”
Do you want me enough . . .? I want to ask.
I don’t ask it.
I just want to live for this moment without worrying about tomorrow.
He’s stroking his hand under my top as if he wants to feel my skin.
I lean a little into him and hook one of my legs over his. His hand spreads wider on my back as he drags his nose down my jaw to nuzzle me. He kisses my cheek, a sweet, almost chaste kiss. I sigh and lean in even closer, wrapping my arms around his neck and tilting my head up to his.
He touches his lips to mine. I’m so still, as still as the stillness around us, disturbed only by a little breeze. But my pulse is fluttering inside me as I let his lips open mine. I swallow back a moan and grip his T-shirt in my fists as I open my mouth a little.
His mouth tastes like mint and coffee and caramel, and his warm tongue strokes mine as if he’s never kissed me before.
I moan, and he inhales sharply in response. He holds my face with one hand and kisses me, hot and wet and deep and achingly tender.
His other hand slips under my T-shirt again and his fingers spread wide as if he wants to touch all of my skin, the touch warm and gentle as he rubs his tongue to mine.
He eases back, and I don’t know my name.
Olivia. Olivia Roth. Livvy. Is that me?
I look up at him and we are both silent.
His face is surreal in the moonlight. I blink, wondering if it’s really Callan gazing at me like this.
He’s breathing hard. A muscle starts working in the back of his jaw. His eyes shine with fierce tenderness and some emotion that I can’t place. My fingers are still holding fistfuls of his T-shirt, his chest expanding with every breath.
He shuts his eyes and lays his forehead against mine.
We stay this way for a couple of long, exquisite minutes, the air I breathe warm from his breath.
I stand up and pull my shirt over my head, then shuck down my drawstring pants.
Then I’m naked, and lowering to my knees as he sits up on his arms, his eyes heavy-lidded.
His irises have turned to pools of heat and darkness.
“I just want to be close and feel alive,” I say as I kneel back down on the blanket.