Falling Into You (42 page)

That was a fantasy
.
The reality was somewhat different.

“It’s fine.” I just want
the conversation to be over.

“I’m not coming back to Greenview,” she says flatly. “I’m going to stay in New York.”

“I’m sure you’ll be happy there.”
I’m not angry with her anymore. I never want to see her again, either, but it
seems
as though I’ll get that wish.

“Thanks.
”

I’m about to hang up the phone when she adds one last thing.

“You should give him another chance. He really cares about you.”

And she
hung up
.

T
here’s a knock at the door and I grab my purse, thinking it’s the Chinese.

“How much do I owe…”

Chapter 30

CHRIS

I spent the last five hours
staring out
airplane windows and
thinking about what I would say. I came up with a pretty good speech, I think. But she’s there and so achingly beautiful that every thought in my head
is
gone.

She whispers something and she st
ill isn’t looking me in the eye
. She says it
louder
now.

“No.”

The door closes on me and I almost walk away.
Ben
’s words haunt me, have haunted me. I will hurt her, I sudde
nly realize, and she’ll hurt me. T
hat’s what people do. That’s what we’re made to do.

And
the realization that it’s all worth it makes me
pound on the door so
hard that she can’t ignore it. She opens it again and she’s
standing in the middl
e of the tiny room in bare feet and she’s looking at me with big sad eyes and I need to take the sadness away.

She turns to take a step away from me but then she’s moving closer, as if she’s drawn in by a magnet.

I pick her up and bury my face in her neck, her hair.

“I’m so…”

I don’t ever get to finish because her hands are around my neck and we’re lost in each other and words don’t matter anymore.

I’m kissing her hard and she’s kissing me back and I’m overcome by my need to have her right there and then. I’m lifting her onto her desk and I throw everything off and her legs are wrapped around my waist and she’s yanking at my shirt and it’s tangled up and I rip it off.

She runs her hands down my body, running a trail of kisses on my torso and legs. I can’t take it and I grab at her greedily.

I wanted to make love to her, gently and slowly, but nothing about this is slow or gentle. I’m rock hard and pushing against her insistently.
I rip her shirt in my frantic fumbling to get it off, to see all of her in front of me and I’m attacking and I want to be slower but it’s impossible.

I run my tongue over her lips and thrust it inside, and she still taste
s
like honey and mint, just like the first time we kissed
,
but it’s not enough. My hand cups her breasts and I moan a little bit, moving my mouth to take her nipple in my mouth and she’
s groaning and grabbing at me with her hand, tearing at my pants and boxers until she gets what she wants.

I pull off the rest of her clothes
and rip the package from my pocket and she takes it from my hand and runs her fingers against down my length
and slides it over me
.

I start to say something but she puts her finger up to my lips and wraps her legs more firmly around me. Her lips are wet and her eyes are heavy and glazed with need and desire and I can’t hold myself back. In one long thrust I’m inside her and I think I’m going to come from just the feel of it, warm and tight.

Her head
is thrown back and she is wild—
her
fingers and mouth are everywhere, and we fall to the floor, and she’s on top of
me then, head still thrown back. S
he’s the most perfect thing I’v
e ever seen and I can’t take it anymore, so I throw
her roughly beneath me.

I can feel her body tense and I slide my fingers lower, touching her
where we’re joined together
and
she’s convulsing all around me.
I catch a glimpse of her face, contorted and beautiful and
my whole body explodes.
I know I’m screaming her name over and over and I can’t
stop.

I’m still shaking minutes later when she pulls herself away from me, grabbing the blanket from her bed and wrapping herself in it.

Chapter 31

HALLIE

I think I’m still shaking but I manage to recovery the tiny shred o
f dignity that I’ve left myself.
I push him away and grab the blanket, wrapping it pathetically around me.

I’m on my feet and he’s still dazed. I’m wondering whether the campus is deserted enough so that no one would notice a totally naked girl running across the grass. What the hell was I thinking?

You weren’t
, I say.
I think
those are
the first words I’ve said
aloud
but I can’t be totally sure. We had fallen into each other, lik
e we had since that first night. T
here wasn’t any thinking involved whatsoever.

He’s on his feet
too
.
I bite my lip and look away because I don’t want him to say anything to me.

No matter how earth-shatteringly good it felt to have every piece of him, to let him crawl inside my skin entirely, I still can’t look.
When I manage to
glance
up again, he’s put some of his clothes back on and I’m halfway wishing he hadn’t done that. He crosses to me again and wraps himself around me and we’re there for long minutes just like that.

He pulls back finally and places hands on either side of my face, trapping me and every other muscle in my body is trying to flee
,
but I’m paralyzed.

“No,” he says to me. “No. Not until I get what I came for.”

He just got what he came for, I think, biting my lip again.

“I am hopelessly, crazy, absolut
ely, perfectly in love with you.
”
His
eyes
are
locked on mine
, and he’s not givi
ng me any room to breathe
.

“I love you. I love you.”

I think he keeps saying it over and over and over. I finally break away and I’m sitting on the floor and
he’s holding my hands with his
.

“I am so, so sorry,” he adds, brushing his lips against my fingers. “I just want you to know…”

I pull my fingers away and raise them to his lips instead. “I know.”

I know that he’s sorry. And I know that he loves me.
The knowledge of it has been sitting in the marrow of my bones for the past week, while I’ve wondered how he could have thrown what we had away
.

I can’t give him the words he wants to hear so
I lean in slowly and kiss him. I pull back and try to say what I need to.
“Chris…”
My voice is hard and
cruel,
and he’s crumpling in front of me
and trying to grab his things
. I shake
my head, because I don’t want him to leave and I don’t want him to stay and I don’t
know what I want.

“No,” I say, more clearly this time. We are going to have to talk about it eventually, but not now. Not this instant. I pull him close again and the blanket falls away.

He doesn’t hesitate. A moment ago, we had been crazy wit
h need and crazy for each other. He’s slow and
deliberate
now, watching me as he
traces the outline of my collarbone
with his fingertips. He
moves them lower over my belly. He slides a finger into me, moaning a little bit and kisses my mouth. I try to reach for him, to pull him closer
,
but he pushed my hands away
and I’m leaning back, sighing.
It doesn’t take much
before
I’m tw
isting my fingers into his hair and
making guttural n
oises.

My body is a traitor to my head. H
e must know how badly I’ve wanted, needed this. He smiles at the look on my face and kisses my stomach and I’m
pulling him back to me.

We move together now, slowly and then more quickly and then slowly again and I feel like nothing could ever be this
perfectly right again, even everything else about the two of us is
wrong.

There’s only one thing that I have left to give as his breath starts to shudder and I feel myself giving in
to him
.

I grab his face with one of my hands, cupping his chin.

“I love you.
”

He had to know. I think I’ve known from the minute I saw him.

I close my eyes after I catch a glimpse of the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.
I’ll never recover. I know that he will break my heart irreparably and I
am
no longer strong.

But it doesn’t matter. Nothing does, not compared to the feeling of his skin in mine.

Chapter 32

CHRIS

I wake her up twice because I can’t seem to fill my need for her, no matter how many tastes I get.  It’s been hours and maybe even days and we’re locked together in her tiny twin bed. I can’t bring myself to wake her up because her hair is in an endless mess of tangles and her lips are swollen and raw and she’s perfect in that moment and in every moment.

She finally rouses herse
lf and turns to me. “Hey.
”
She’s
embarrassed for a minute
before her lips curl into a smile.

“Hey.”
I look around the room and it’s completely trashed. Papers and jars of finger
paint and
clothes are everywhere.

She follows my eyes with her own and she’s laughing, too. “Not exactly
a
penthouse hotel
suite, is it?”

“Well,
the
furniture
is
n
ailed to the ground, so I’d say that’s the first sign that the room service isn’t arriving anytime soon
.”

“It’s probably a good thing the fu
rniture is nailed to the ground.” She pokes
me in the gut. “You’re completely insatiable.”

“I’m blaming this entirely on you,” I say, poking her right back.

She opens her mouth again and then shakes her head. “Room servi
ce does sound good, though. Ugh.” She stretches
her arms. “I need a shower.”

“Go.
”
A plan starts to take shape inside my head.
“Get clean because you’re going to get dirty again.”

“Glutton.”
She groans and extracts herself from the bed. “Dorm showers are the worst.”

With one last look at me that’s filled with something I can’t quite decipher, s
he grabs her things and leaves th
e room
. I reach franticall
y for my phone and start dialing
. When she comes back,
she flops onto the bed beside me.

“I’m hungry.” She tilts
her head to the side. “I wonder whose fault that could be?”

“Let’s grab something to eat
, then
.”

“We could order in,” she says
suggestively, wiggling her hips. I
t takes
every ounce of determination
I have not to rip the clothes entirely off.

“I have a better idea,” I say, wrapping my arm around her waist.

***

A couple of hours
later, we’re in the penthouse suite of the swankiest hotel in Atlanta and she’s on the balcony with
a glass of champagne in a plush bathrobe
. The childlike gleam in her eyes when she saw the lavish surroundings was too much for me, and I had barely made it through the door before throwing her to the ground and taking her with me again.

Her hair is all wild and she smells like sex a
nd honey. I grab a tray of food
because I’m famished, and I set it on the table as
I join he
r and press my lips to the top of her head.

“I love you
.
”

“I love you, too,” she says, turning herself around to kiss me.