It was too much. As if my entire system were overloaded and short-circuiting.
My legs shook so badly that I had no choice but to slide to the shower floor. Water pelted down on me, but I wanted it to hurt—I wanted my body to hurt the way my soul did. At least after the shooting, after Holt left, my outsides matched my insides.
My fingers found the scar between my breasts, the one where they’d cracked open my chest and rearranged my insides in a bid to save my life. Now, it was like I was in the middle of open-heart surgery but with no anesthesia.
Memory after memory slammed into me. Holt’s voice telling me he loved me as I woke up after surgery. Mr. Peterson’s kind expression as he asked me how I was holding up. Gretchen’s wide smile as she recounted all the ways the shooting had made her grateful for her life.
The sobs came faster. Harder. I couldn’t take in any air. It was as if there wasn’t any in the room around me.
The shower door jerked open, and the water cut off. I couldn’t find it in me to care. All I could do was rock and gasp for the air.
A second later, a towel wrapped around me, and someone lifted me into strong arms. The world around me blurred. I thought there was a blanket then, too. A bed.
And then I was drowning in Holt. He was all around me—that pine and spice.
“I’ve got you.”
I felt the words against my skin as much as I heard them, a gentle brand that sliced to my very core.
“Do you?” I choked out, my voice raw.
Holt held me tighter against him. “I’m so sorry, Cricket. You’ll never know how much. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
His words only made me cry harder.
“Cricket.” My nickname was an anguished plea.
There were no more words. Only soft caresses. His lips ghosting across my forehead. His hands skating up and down my back.
The last of my walls came tumbling down. Because the truth was, the only thing that could bring me comfort right now was Holt—the tender way his fingers moved, the feeling so achingly familiar. The way his mouth uttered nonsensical things in a language that was all ours.
I wanted nothing in this moment but him. Needed to lose myself in the man I had never truly let go of.
I released it all. The what-ifs. The pain. The grief. And I let Holt soothe every wound that had been festering for a decade.
It wasn’t just one action or whispered prayer. It was all of it, coming together from the boy he had been to the man he was now.
I gave myself over to it. As the tears subsided and the trembling ceased, I still couldn’t get close enough. I was a woman starved. Cut off from the most beautiful thing I’d ever experienced and finally feeling it again for the first time.
“Holt.” His name was a hoarse whisper—a rough plea.
His hands brushed my wet hair out of my face. “Tell me what you need, Cricket. Anything.”
“I need you.” They were the hardest three words I’d ever said. Terrifying and painful, yet full of hope.
His body went rigid. “I don’t think that’s a good idea—”
I was already pulling away, the sting of rejection too strong. But Holt caught me, bringing me back to him. “Look at me, Cricket. See me. I’ve thought about you every damn day. Wanted you with every breath. Nothing will change that. Ever. But I won’t be able to live with myself if we go there, and you regret it tomorrow. You’ve been through hell today—”
I pressed my fingers to his lips, stopping the trail of words. “Trust me, Holt. Trust me to know my mind. To know what I need.”
Right now, that was to remember that I was alive. Breathing. That even if I didn’t have Holt forever, I could have him for this moment. Maybe we could live our forever in this room. In the moments that passed from one breath to the next.
He stared at me. Searching.
Slowly, I pulled my hand away from his mouth and leaned in. My lips hovered a breath away from his. I waited for one beat. Two. Then I closed the distance.
I sank into the familiar heat that was Holt. I’d kissed those lips a thousand times. Felt their coaxing warmth and gentle pressure.
This kiss was different. It was a mix of deepest want and coming home. There was a desperation in it that had never been there before. His fingers tangled in my hair as I sank into the melding of our mouths. I wanted to disappear in the taste of him.
Holt’s hand dipped under the blanket, the towel, and then his fingers were on my skin. They danced over my waist, moved to my hip, pulling me flush against him.
I’d always loved the feel of his roughened fingertips against my more delicate flesh. The way they sent waves of pleasant shivers flying through me. That wave was back. Only this was more.
Holt broke away from the kiss, but his mouth still hovered over mine. “Tell me you’re sure.”
I brought my eyes to his, letting him see the truth burning there. “I’m sure.”
“Wren.”
I felt my name on his lips, and the vibrations carried through the air and landed on my skin, burrowing deep.
Holt peeled the blanket away from me and then the towel. The blue in his eyes sparked and swirled as he stared down at me. His fingers skated over my skin as if he were imprinting the image in his mind forever.
Then he leaned over me. Holt pressed his lips to the scar over my heart. That heart seized in a stuttering beat. His lips traced the long line over my sternum, trailing down.
“Holt,” I breathed, starting to squirm. I wasn’t ashamed of the scars or even embarrassed. But here? Like this? I felt exposed. Like one raw nerve ending.
“Your strength only makes you more beautiful,” he said hoarsely, his lips still skimming. They followed my rib cage down and then rose to my breast.
I arched into Holt, searching for more. More contact. More him.
His tongue flicked out, tracing my nipple. “Your skin is like heaven—silk and you.”
My fingers tightened on his shoulders and then moved to the buttons on his flannel. I trembled, struggling to pull the fabric free. The need to feel him against me, all of him, was so strong that I couldn’t seem to get my hands to cooperate.
“Wren,” Holt whispered, his hands framing my face. “We’ve got time.”
But I wasn’t sure we did. None of us was promised forever, and I couldn’t expect Holt to stay in a place that held so much pain for him. I didn’t tell him any of that. Instead, I gave him another truth. “I need your skin against mine.”
His eyes searched mine as if he sensed there was something more. But then he sat up, his fingers deftly undoing the buttons. As he stood, he shrugged off the flannel and pulled his white tee over his head.
I couldn’t help but drink him in. It was my turn to burn an image into my memory. And I knew this one would ruin me for all others. Holt was lean muscle wrapped in lightly tanned skin—the color of the sun on a wheat field, a fading gold.
My fingers tightened around nothing at all. Because they ached to touch. To trail through the dusting of hair on his chest. To slide over the dips and ridges of his abdominals.
Holt’s fingers went to his jeans, his boots already removed somewhere along the way. Then his jeans were gone, too. I swallowed hard as Holt tugged at his black boxer briefs.
And then he was standing there, nothing but air in between us. God, he was gorgeous. Not just for this body, but because of the heart I knew beat beneath that muscle.
Holt moved toward the bed, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching up, my fingers ghosting over his chest, letting the sensations wash over me.
Closing his eyes, Holt breathed deeply. “Been dreaming about your hands on me every damn day.”
The same dreams had haunted me in sleep. I’d wake tangled in the sheets, restless and too hot. I’d try to take the edge off, but it was almost worse that way somehow.
He brushed the hair out of my face. “You have protection?”
I blinked up at him. “You don’t?”
The corner of his mouth kicked up. “Cricket, there hasn’t been anyone in a long time. I realized it wasn’t fair to go there with a woman when the only one I wanted was you.”
His words carved themselves into my heart, ripping me open and searing me with the most beautiful pain. A tear slid down my cheek, and Holt swept it away with his thumb. “Hey. What’s that about?”
“There hasn’t been anyone for me in a long time. And I’m on the pill.” The truth was, there had only been one. A drunken night I’d regretted with everything in me. But I’d wanted that stigma of virginity gone.
Holt pressed a kiss to one cheek, then the other, before moving to my forehead and finally my lips. “Thank you for trusting me.”
My heart cracked, and I found myself wanting to give all the pieces to him.
Instead, I kissed him deeper. I lost myself in his taste and feel.
Holt’s hand slid between my legs as I arched into him. I gasped into his mouth as his finger dipped inside and then moved in long, languid strokes as if he were in no hurry at all.
But I was. I didn’t want to waste a moment. Not with Holt.
My hand wrapped around his length, and Holt let out a groan as I stroked him, up and down.
“Heaven,” he growled.
My finger skated over his tip, feeling a brush of wetness.
Holt’s thumb circled that bundle of nerves, and I let out a mewl as sparks lit under my skin. But I forced myself to pull away because this wasn’t how I wanted to come apart. I wanted Holt moving inside. Needed to feel him everywhere.
“Not like this.”
Holt searched my eyes.
“I need all of you.”
That blue flashed in understanding, and then Holt was rolling on top of me. He pressed another kiss to the scar above my heart and then his eyes didn’t leave mine. Not for a single a second.
Holt’s tip bumped my entrance, and then my legs encircled his waist. Everything stretched as he slid inside. A delicious ache, just shy of pain.
His forehead pressed to mine as I struggled to keep my breathing even. “You with me?”
My thumb traced his lips and then trailed down his throat, the stubble there prickling my skin. “I’m with you.”
Then Holt began to move. Slowly at first—shallow, testing thrusts.
My hips rose to meet his, finding a rhythm. I didn’t worry about what was right or expected. I trusted my body to find Holt’s in whatever was supposed to be ours.
Holt tilted his hips, arching deeper into me. My mouth opened on a silent plea as my fingers pressed into his shoulders, nails digging in.
Something about the move broke Holt’s reserve, his worry about how breakable I might be. Some of that earlier desperation found us again. The need to be closer. To remember and to never forget.
Everything in me quivered as Holt hit that spot deep inside. The one that made light dance across my vision and had tears leaking from my eyes. I only wanted more. We met each other again and again, clinging to the need building between us.
“Are you with me?” Holt growled, his hand dipping between us, thumb circling my clit.
“With. You.” I had to sneak the words between breaths.
Holt pressed on that bundle of nerves. It was too much. The rightness of Holt moving inside me. The overload of emotion. Sensation.
All it took was one last spark.
Holt arched into me, impossibly deeper, and then I was falling. But there was no fear because he fell with me. Whispers in the air all around us. Whispers of him. Of us. Of the past. Of the present. Of forever.
I let them take me under, embed themselves in my skin, and carry me away.
Wave after wave crashed over me as I held on to Holt. Gripping as if I’d never let go.
A hoarse shout tipped his lips, and then Holt was spiraling, too. A twisting swirl of sensation. Both of us trying not to miss a single thing.
Because a fear still lived down deep; one that told me the whispers of him would be all I ever had.
