“Is that going to hurt?”
“It might a little.”
“Okay. I had my turn. Let’s do this.”
But even though I said those things, he didn’t rush me. His touch skimmed over my body, revisiting the highlights from earlier.
It wasn’t as intense this time, but it calmed and relaxed me. The feeling was sweet, like smelling flowers. Or the last strokes when you brush your hair, and it’s smooth and easy.
He rolled over me, bracing on his elbows. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He shifted my legs and pressed down.
This going into me was nothing like what happened before. My body resisted, and I took a deep breath to relax.
And he was right. There was a pinch, and the feeling of something filling me in a way I had never known.
But then he moved inside me, and the pleasure was like touching something silky, like a satin pillowcase gliding through your fingertips.
As he moved, I felt connected to him, as though everything that had come before had led to this.
Emotions sprinkled over me like a fresh rain.
I held onto his neck, tangling my fingers in his hair.
His eyes were closed with concentration, and his muscles shifted as he moved over me.
I felt on the verge of tears again, like when I heard the song. There would be more of this, so much more of it. The days ahead laid out like a path of flowers. Time with Tucker. Laughing. Cooking. Talking. And doing more of this.
As he said my name, everything in his body tightening, I knew exactly what he was feeling.
His eyes squeezed shut and I knew, even with my lost memory, that he looked more beautiful than I’d ever seen him be before.
I let out a small sob, so relieved that we had gotten here. He had been right all along. I was just too scared to listen. Too broken by what had happened before.
His eyes opened, and the wonder with which he looked at me made my whole body tingle, so much like the time that the sparkles fell from the sky that I washed over with pure joy.
“You were right,” I managed to get out. “You were absolutely right.”
He rolled beside me and drew me against him. “We made it, Ava.”
I buried my face in his neck.
I hadcome home.
Tucker and I saw each other often after that. I made Big Harry stop threatening to kick him out. Gram would sometimes come to the diner, too, and she and Tucker liked to eat there when the crowd was light.
He turned nineteen, then I did. We had parties, real ones, for actual birthdays, not fake ones making me think I wasn’t my actual age.
I had a family again.
But it was Big Harry who said I should go to college. We sat behind his bar during a slow day, rolling silverware.
“You’re young, Ava. Go to school. Learn some things.”
I placed a knife, fork, and spoon in a red napkin. “Right. Just so I can have a seizure and erase my expensive education.”