“It’s freezing!” she said on a laugh, but I pulled her into me, stopping the shivering of her teeth when I captured her mouth with mine. I kissed her with the rain pouring down around us, a bolt of lightning lighting the sky above. And I knew in that moment that she was the missing puzzle piece I’d been looking for all along.
I’d just had to walk the busted up, broken down road to get to her.
I picked her up again, twirling us in the rain before bending her back in a dramatic dip with my lips pressed to hers. Time seemed to stop with my arms around her, my lips pressed to hers, her hands fisted in the wet sleeves of my dress shirt. And when I pulled her back to stand upright, our chests heaving, the rain still pouring around us, I couldn’t help but smile at the woman who’d saved me, who’d chosen me, too.
“You know,” I said after a long moment, pulling her closer to warm her from the cold rain. “I’ve been writing a song for you, too.”
Her brows shot up. “You have?”
I laughed, nodding. “I started writing it after that first night I met you. But… it’s changed. It’s changed so many times since then that it doesn’t even sound cohesive now.”
“Well,” she said, running her hands up my chest, up over my jaw, back into my hair. “Maybe you’ll figure it out one day, and you can play it for me then.”
“It might take me a lifetime,” I warned, tightening my hold around her waist.
Sarah smiled, lifting on her toes and touching the tip of her nose to mine.
“That’s just fine by me.”
Sarah
Later that night, after my last shift at the restaurant, Reese held me with one hand while the other unlocked his door. Rojo bounded out as soon as it was open, licking my leg as she ran past me and into the yard. I chuckled, and while I watched Rojo, Reese watched me.
I felt his eyes on me like all the wonder of the universe was streamlined in a single gaze. He watched me with reverence, with care, with absolute awe. And I blushed, a smile creeping up on my face as Rojo ran past us back into the house. I finally met his gaze, and he pulled where he held me by the hand until I was in his arms.
“You should have taken a picture,” I whispered against his lips. “Would’ve lasted longer.”
He smirked. “I just can’t believe you’re here, that tonight happened, that you… that we…”
“Are moving to New York together?”
Reese chuckled. “Yeah. That.”
“You don’t have to come with me,” I said, eyes falling to my fingers as I trailed them down the buttons of his dress shirt. I stopped at the one right over the middle of his chest, tucking my fingertips under the fabric. “I know it’s a lot… you’d be uprooting your entire life here, and we haven’t known each other long, and—”
Reese’s knuckles traced up my arm, my neck, until they tenderly tilted my chin up so I’d look at him again.
“You’ve rendered time useless in my life, Sarah. One moment with you, and I question how I ever lived before I knew you existed. One month with you, and I lived more than I had in years. One summer with you, and there’s no going back to the man I was before. Not that I would ever choose to.” He shook his head, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “There is no life to uproot here. You are my life now.”
He lowered his lips to mine before I could even sigh, or smile, or blush, or insist I wasn’t all that he thought I was. And when he kissed me, that thought disappeared. I believed him — I believed in his care, in our love, in what we had survived before we knew each other and even more in what we would accomplish together.
There wasn’t a single question in my mind that Reese wasn’t just my first love, but that he would be my only.
And every part of me hummed with the desperation to keep him forever.
My hands fisted where they held his shirt, and I pulled him into me, deepening our kiss as I pressed up on my tiptoes. Reese’s arms surrounded me, warmth and comfort and care encompassing every inch until I was completely wrapped up in him. He pulled back, pressing a kiss to my forehead before holding me with a content sigh, and my heart kicked to life, beating hard and haphazardly against my rib cage.
“Reese,” I whispered, my cheek pressed against his chest there on his front porch. The night air was warm now that the rain had subsided, but I curled into him as chills raced down my arms.
“Mmm?”
I swallowed. “Take me inside,” I whispered, even quieter than before. Then, I lifted my head, capturing his eyes with my own. “Take me to your room.”
His hands slipped up over my arms, brushing my neck before they framed my face. And when he looked at me, his emerald irises thinned, pupils dilating as he searched my gaze.
“I want you to be my first, Reese,” I said, and my heart tripled its pace, the reality of the words I’d spoken hitting me in a mix of excitement and nerves. “My real first.”
Reese shook his head, pulling me into him in the next instant, his lips fastening over mine as he wrapped me in his arms once more. That kiss was so different from any we’d shared before. It was filled with thankfulness, with care, with love — and I found myself wishing to be kissed like that all my life.
He stepped backward over the threshold of the house, and I followed, our feet moving slowly as we kissed, and touched, and felt. His hands slipped between the buttons of my work vest, loosening each one with a new step, and I tried and failed to school my breathing as my heart raced under my chest. I couldn’t wait for him to touch me — really touch me — to erase every memory before him and brand me for his own.
My vest was undone by the time we made it to his bedroom, and he slipped it over my shoulders, letting it fall to the floor and kissing me for a long, sincere moment before he broke away long enough to put on music. The soft, familiar notes of Claire De Lune floated between us as he set his phone on the bedside table, and he smirked, reaching for me as soon as his hands were free.
“Debussy,” I mused, running my hands up and over his dress shirt to wrap around his neck. “My favorite.”
Reese smiled, kissing my nose before he pulled back, searching my eyes. “This is what you deserved your first time, Sarah. The first man to touch you should have cherished it, he should have realized in the moment you gave him permission to touch you that he was the luckiest son of a bitch in the entire world, he should have been so nervous that he couldn’t keep his hands steady when he reached for you,” he said, and as if to illustrate, his trembling hands tugged at the hem of my long-sleeve shirt that was tucked into my dress pants. He pulled it free, pressing his cool, shaking fingertips against the tender skin below my navel. “I can’t go back in time and change what happened, but I promise, I will spend tonight, and every night you let me, worshiping your body until every memory of that night is gone.”
My eyes watered, and I shook my head against the urge to let those tears loose. “Don’t make me cry, Reese Walker.”
He smiled, pulling me closer as his lips hovered over mine. His tongue snaked out, touching mine only briefly before he bit down on my lip and sucked it between his teeth. That sent a jolt between my legs, and I moaned, melting into him.