She shakes her head, her eyes tracing the curve of my lips. “No. Not this kind of smile. Not like you’re happy when you have every reasonnotto be happy.”
I can feel my lips tilt even more against her touch, and I want to nip at her fingers so badly, I want to take one into my mouth and flick my tongue against the tiny whorls and ridges of the tip until she’s whimpering for me to tongue her clit. I know any moment this will stop and she will walk away and I will never see her again, but maybe she wouldn’t mind one last little bite. One final kiss to last me the rest of my pointless, lonely life.
“You—I told you to stay away from me,” she goes on. “I told you I wouldn’t forgive you. And then you left your work, which is the only thing you’ve ever loved. You shouldn’t be smiling.”
“I’m smiling because I’m looking at you, darling girl.”
“But—”
It’s my turn to shake my head. “There’re no buts, Charlotte. No qualifiers. You are the very expression of the sacred. You are my holiness. Seeing you is like being transfigured, heartbeat by heartbeat, breath by breath, into light itself.” A tear slides down her cheek at my words, and I frown at it. “I know there’s no act I can lay at your feet to redeem my selfishness, and I almost don’t want there to be, because I don’t deserve even the comfort that it could be possible. But how could I keep living with the wages of my sins after knowing how much they’d cost you? These last four years, I’ve been sustaining myself on the lie that you were better off without me. But you weren’t. And I can’t serve any longer the idol I chose over you. You say my work is the only thing I ever loved, but it wasyou, Charlotte. How could I still pretend to chase God when I’d already let the divine slip through my fingers?”
Another big tear slips down her cheek, and I’m going to hell, but it’ll be worth it for this one stolen taste. I lean in and kiss that tear away, letting the salt bloom on my tongue, and she shivers against me.
“Don’t cry,” I murmur. “It’ll be okay.”
I start to pull back, and then she grabs the front of my sweater and twists her fingers in, holding me close. She’s still trembling. “It won’t be okay,” she whispers. “It can’t be okay now. Not when I need—”
She stops herself abruptly, and worry twists my guts. She needs something? Is there more financial worry? Is her father back and causing trouble? “Tell me and I’ll make it happen. Do you need money? Help? For me to leave right now?”
Her eyes meet mine in a scorch of silver. “I needyou,” she chokes out, and it stuns us both. It stuns me so much that I’m totally unprepared for her to yank me down to her mouth and kiss me like it’s the only thing that can keep her alive.
8
Charley
For a few gentle but breathless moments, Church’s mouth is pliant against mine. In fact, all of him is pliant—soft and surprised and yielding. I pull him closer to me, and he lets me, and I part his lips with my own to taste him, and he lets me. I slide my hands up so that I can wrap my arms around his neck and I kiss all of my need into him, all of my anger and hurt and loneliness and longing. The horrible tangle ofwantingto hate him, but knowing I’ll always, always love him.
And he lets me, he lets me, he lets me.
If I hadn’t seen the truth in his shattered gaze, if I hadn’t heard the honesty in his tired, smoky voice, then I would feel it in his body now: he didn’t expect this. He didn’t expect anything from me.
He meant everything he said.
His hands are slow and shaking as they touch my back, his body is totally frozen against mine. Through our clothes, I feel the pound of his heart, and when I break our kiss and open my eyes, I find his already open, watching me with something beyond awe, something purer than awe, because it’s stripped of all hope. It’s pure humility, pure adoration.
It’s worship.
I used to be the cleverest girl in class, but I’m all out of answers right now. Because he’s looking at me like that, his eyes are a deep ocean blue like that, and he’s stillsmilinglike that.
And what possible answer can I have? To him? To the strange and terrible and undeniable fact that I forgive him? Everyone I know would tell me it’s stupid, everyone I know would tell me that he doesn’t deserve it, that I deserve better, and logically, it all adds up: he hurt me, therefore fuck him.
But maybe...maybe logic isn’t all of love. Maybe it isn’t even half, maybe not even a quarter. Because I do love him, damn my eyes, and what I wouldn’t give for some new kind of logic, a logic that could account forfuck himand alsolet’s fuck him. A formula that could computeI love himandI can’t trust himandI don’t know how to trust him againbut alsoI’d like to try.
There’s no logic like that, there are no answers. Which means I’m only going to listen to the questions right now. Namely, one question.
What is the one thing I know I want with all my heart in this very moment?
That...that I do know the answer to, and I pull him back to me for a second kiss.
It’s like a match is struck.
Church’s pliancy burns clean away and blazes into something else. Something firm and fierce and possessive.He’sthe one to chase my mouth now, he’s the one fisting and yanking at my sweater, and he’s the one kissing with his whole body: his hands shoving at the hem of my dress, a hard thigh pushing between mine, an arm now banding behind my back so that I can feel his hardness everywhere. His erection, his stomach, his chest. Everywhere he is granite—if granite can be ferocious and greedy and hot.
“Little supplicant,” he breathes against my mouth. In just those two words, I hearhim, my Church, my angry god. And I also hear this new Church, this man so broken with love for me that he won’t even pray for atonement because he knows he doesn’t deserve it. I hear both versions of him, and I think I love both. I love him both godlike and mortal, I love him in his cold, marble perfection and I love him shattered.
“Please,” I kiss-mumble, trying to climb him, wishing I could climbinsidehim, wishing there was something closer than close. And I don’t even know what I’m sayingpleaseto, just that I need to say it, and I need him to hear it. I need him to know that I meantI need youin every possible way.
I’m not a small woman, but Church takes me easily in his arms, biting at my jaw and neck as he carries me to the corner of the room. Each bite sends sparks shivering across my skin; each bite reminds me of what I’ve always needed, which is this. Which is him.