“It was the fastest way down, and I had to pee.” She giggled, remembering.
“You were crying, and your knees were all scraped up. And I felt terrible because it was my fault.”
“You told me all of us women were suffocating you,” Mercedes pouted.
“I don’t think I said it quite like that. But I remember feeling desperate. I didn’t have a dad. My best friends were girls. Everywhere I looked, I was surrounded by women. Don’t get me wrong. You, Abuela, Alma . . . I had some amazing women in my life. Heather and Cora too. I had no complaints. But I needed a father figure. I recognized it in myself. I was hungry for it. Remember when that Air Force recruiter came to the school junior year?”
“You looked like you’d stuck your finger in a light socket.” Mercedes giggled again.
“Yeah. I probably did. He talked to me for a good hour. Gave me his undivided attention. I went home and cried I was so excited.”
“I never could figure out why you wanted to go. You had good grades and you could have gotten grants and scholarships and student aid. It just seemed dangerous and unnecessary.”
“It felt vital. Like . . . if I didn’t go, I was going to explode.”
“I always thought you were running away. I was mad at you for a while.”
“I wasn’t running away. I was running toward,” he said, a wry smile on his lips. “I was running for my life.”
“I just knew nothing would ever be the same. And I was right. You came back, and you were in love with Cora the way she’d always been in love with you,” Mercedes whispered. Her eyes were soft and sad, her dark hair spread across the pillows, and in the ruddy glow of the little lamp, she was so beautiful he could hardly breathe.
“She always needed me. You made it very clear that you didn’t.”
“Love and need aren’t the same thing, Noah.”
He nodded, staring down at her. The silence grew and swelled between them, fat with all the things they felt and weren’t brave enough to say. He leaned over her, hands on either side of her head, and her breath caught as he lowered his mouth.
He just wanted to kiss her. That was all. Just kiss her, like he had on New Year’s Eve, like he had Monday night. Like he had twelve years ago before their paths diverged. But he took one kiss and then he needed another. Soft lips, soft hands, soft sighs, and he knew this time he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself from taking more.
The room was shadowed and still, a quiet co-conspirator, keeping the world at bay, and for the first time they weren’t laughing or teasing or even comforting one another. Nobody was crying or scared. Nobody was saying goodbye. Nobody was pulling away. And Noah’s heart began to pound with hope.
But when Mercedes rose up suddenly and turned off the lamp, Noah realized she wasn’t yet ready to see the truth. She pulled his mouth back to hers, urged his body down beside her on the bed, but she was still pretending. She was pretending that what was between them wasn’t love. She was “giving him what he needed,” like she had the day she’d coaxed him into the shower, all the while denying he was what she wanted.
Noah knew her too well. Even in the dark, he saw her clearly. He saw her with his hands and his mouth. He smelled her skin, heard her thoughts, and felt her touch, and in his head, there was no pretense at all. She moaned against his lips, anxious, needy, pulling at his clothes and urging his body to settle into hers, but he refused to let her set the tempo.
Mer wanted a frenzied dance, so she didn’t have to feel too much for too long. Noah understood. But he needed to feel. He needed it so badly that his eyes teared up and his hands shook. He didn’t want to tease. He wanted to taste. He didn’t want to rush, he wanted to relish. Going slow would hurt, because caring hurt. And he cared about Mercedes. He cared deeply.
There was too much history, too much shared joy and agony not to care. But he welcomed it. He wanted it. He told her after they’d made love in the shower that he’d found comfort in a friend. It was true, but it had been more than that. She knew it, he knew it, and he was ready to admit it. Noah didn’t want comfort from Mer. Not anymore. This time, he needed it to be real. He loved Mercedes, and he wanted to make love to her. Making love demanded time, and if they raced through the act, Mer could claim it wasn’t love at all. She could flit away into the realm of friendship, where love was about safety and consistency, and no one got hurt.
“Slow down, Mer,” he whispered, withdrawing, and she stilled, her eyes coming open. Mercedes had beautiful eyes, and in the moonlit darkness they gleamed, questioning and cautious. Her head was framed between his forearms, her hair a black swath across the pale spread. Noah leaned in, inch by inch, his eyes on hers, demanding she pay attention, and he kissed her again.
“Breathe,” he commanded. She was frozen, her lips parted, her eyes wide. Her careful exhale fluttered past his lips and warmed his skin. He brushed his lips over hers—never increasing the pressure or the intensity—until her eyes closed and her body softened beneath him. Her hands rose to his face, reverent fingers exploring, savoring, as she opened her mouth and quietly bid him enter.
For a long time, Noah just kissed her. He kept his weight above her, kept his hands in her hair, kept his mouth on hers. Kissing is a thousand times more intimate than sex. He knew some people would disagree, but the first thing that goes when a marriage is coming apart is not the sex. It’s the kissing.
Mer’s hands were beneath his shirt, hovering at his waistband, pulling and pushing, and even as their clothes fell away, Noah didn’t stop kissing her. He didn’t neglect her mouth when her hands were rapacious and roving, pleading and punishing. He captured her wrists, urging patience, and when he finally began to touch her, it was not a means to an end. He caressed her because he loved the way her skin felt beneath his fingertips, the silken slopes, the soft swells, the warm scent of private places yet unexplored.
“Noah, please. Noah,” she begged, her hips rising, her hands escaping his hold to clutch and coax. He capitulated slowly, mouth to mouth as he sank into her, and was so overcome with emotion, he had to pause. He was Atlas, holding the weight of the world on his shoulders, suspended above her, reveling in the exquisite agony of servitude.
Mercedes yanked at his hair and dug her nails into his back, scoring it, pulling his hips into hers, trying to make him move, to lose control. But he murmured her name and kissed her breasts, lingering over the hollow of her throat and the soft skin behind her ears. It was then that he realized she was crying, tears running from the corners of her eyes and soaking her hair and the sheet beneath her head.
He pressed his lips to the corners of her eyes and sipped at the salt on her cheeks, tasting the feelings she tried so hard to keep from him. He didn’t ask her why she cried. He didn’t beg her to stop. He understood her pain, and he knew he was hurting her. Tenderly, gently, carefully . . . hurting her. For a moment she was with him, lost in the sweetness of surrender, sobbing his name against his lips. He rocked against her, lazy and slow, a porch swing on a summer evening, just the two of them with nowhere to go. Then she was fighting him again, tugging his lower lip between her teeth, nipping and biting, drawing blood before taking his tongue into her mouth, desperate to distract him, to distract herself, from the unraveling of her defenses.
His pulse pounded, and his body raged, wanting to succumb, to give her passion instead of patience, lust instead of longsuffering. But the anguish of adoration would heal them—he believed that—and he wasn’t willing to settle for less, to give her less, and he took the punishment, even as her body trembled and quaked around him, even as she begged him to release her, to hold her, to let her go, and to never leave.
“I’m right here, Mer. I’m right here with you,” Noah promised, his lungs raw, his chest tight, his will weakening. “And I’m not going to let you go. I’m going to follow you over the edge. Whenever you’re ready, honey, I’ll be right behind you.”
“Damn you, Noah,” she whispered, lips trembling, hands fisted in his hair, but her breath caught, her eyes found his, and for a moment they were together on the precipice, caught between falling and flying. Then her chin rose, her eyes closed, and her arms tightened around him. He watched as she fell, tear-stained cheeks and swollen lips, taking him with her into the inky afterward, where sensation peaked and pulsed, slowed, and finally, slid away.
He felt the moment she came back to herself. She stiffened in his arms, uncomfortable and uncertain, and her hands fluttered at his waist, anxious to put him back in his place. He rolled to his back, taking her with him—his reluctant best friend with silky limbs and tousled hair. He ran his hand from the top of her head to the base of her spine, stroking her back, smoothing her ruffled pride, and calming her troubled thoughts, until time tipped them over and they fell again, this time into sleep.
He didn’t let himself rest for long, the dawn was coming, and duty called. He came awake about an hour later, easing his arm from beneath Mer’s cheek, and carefully sliding away. He stood beside the bed, looking down at her. Mercedes in motion was beautiful to behold, but Mercedes in quiet slumber was like the Timpanogos peaks, peaceful and lovely, the same yesterday and today, outliving them all. She had that quality, as if the waves of the world could crash against her and she would hold steady. If Cora was wind, Mer was rock. Noah didn’t know what that made him, but he’d been changed by both.
He didn’t touch Mer again—he didn’t want her to wake and re-arm—but slipped soundlessly from the room, stepping into the sweats he’d discarded near the bed. He’d only wanted to kiss her. The thought made him smile. He’d wanted to kiss her. And he’d wanted everything that came after those kisses too.
He stopped in Gia’s room and padded to her crib, pulling her blankets back over her tiny shoulders. She would kick them off again. She always did. He worried about her getting cold, but she never seemed to. Her bow-shaped lips were parted in sleep, and her lashes swept the swell of her cheeks. Freckles were starting to form. Noah ran a hand over her soft hair, wanting to touch her, to tell her he loved her, even if he was the only one to hear. Her hair had grown in thick and smooth, just like Mer had promised it would. It wasn’t the flaxen fuzz she’d been born with, but silky and substantive, and shot with a definite strawberry hue. She was going to be a redhead like her mother.
“I’ve got to go to work, Bug. But Mer’s here,” Noah whispered. “Look after her, okay? She’s going to try to run away from your old man. But she won’t run away from you. It isn’t in her. She’s a forever kind of girl. Once she’s claimed you, you’re hers. You’re hers, Bug. We’ve just got to convince her that she’s ours.”
* * *
Gia woke her. The monitor Noah left behind was turned all the way up, and her little voice penetrated Mer’s dreams, pulling her from fragmented scenes and disjointed sequences to streaming sunlight and Noah’s spare bedroom.