The girl I’ve loved longer than I’ve loved any football team or car, still wants me.
The girl I love too much to let her do something stupid; like marry an asshole who cheated, or let her sleep with an ex on a rebound. Even if the ex is me.
The girl who woke in my arms, her beautiful ass spooned next to my cock and smelling like sunshine and forever. I vaguely remember tossing the pillow wall away in the middle of the night with some bullshit excuse about it taking up too much room. Still asleep, Liv rolled onto her side and when I snuggled close, she pulled my hand around her waist, and I felt home. Waking first, my fingers are now so tantalizingly close to cupping her breast that only the promises I made to her parents stop me from making a mistake.
Give her time. Give her space.
Did I say,FUUUUCK?
“Hunter,” she murmurs sleepily, lacing her fingers so I can’t roll away or leave.
“Shhh.” I adjust my hips so I’m not stabbing her in her sleep. “It’s still early. Get some sleep and we’ll talk. Breakfast on the beach and we’ll talk.”
It takes more effort and self-control than should be humanly possible, and there should be a fucking gold medal with my name on it for resisting the woman I love, but eventually, her gentle breathing becomes deeper and her body relaxes into mine as she falls back asleep.
Shit.
She rolls back into me and I’m stuck between two hells. If I wriggle back to stop my erection from digging into her in her sleep, then she’ll wake up. But if I don’t move, I’ll never get any sleep.
I don’t sleep, instead spending another night thinking over all the promises we once made—promises I made to Olivia—and broken.
If only it hadn’t seemed like our parents had thrown us together, salivating when we started to date. Even Olivia’s dad seemed okay with us going away for weekends. No one gave us grief when we arrived at the breakfast table with post-sex grins. We were of legal age, sure, but most of our friends were having to hide their sex life while our parents accepted we had one.
Back when we were a couple, we fit together like two gloves.
We’d been best friends before we fumbled around as first-time lovers. We learned together—finding out laughter was the best aphrodisiac and could cover most embarrassments.
Like—tangled condoms that refused to go on.
Like—mistaking pepper for cinnamon sugar when she sprinkled it on my cock in the middle of the night. That had taken more ice than laughter to recover from.
Like—being sent down to the shops to buy her feminine hygiene products. I didn’t have a fucking clue, and all the shop assistant could suggest was to add pain meds, chocolate and flowers. So, I returned home with all different sizes and types of pads and tampons. After making Olivia a hot chocolate with more marshmallows than should have been humanly possible to fit in the mug, we sat on her bed while she explained what she needed for four days every month. After that day, I kept a wheat bag, a hot water bottle, and a soft, snuggly blanket in my room. Hell, they were still probably still boxed up at my parents’ home.
The sex—fucking mind-blowing. At the time, I thought what we had was normal. Call me clueless. What we had, couldn’t be replicated—at least, not for me. Olivia could play my body like a piano and hers were the only fingers who knew how the keys came together.
It hadn’t been all about the sex.
If I wanted to go rowing and Liv didn’t, she studied in the sheds and waited for me to get back before taking her to breakfast. We’d chat about whatever she was working on, andI’d throw out some ideas. Olivia had been the smart one. The only subject she hated was English, which was the one subject that came to me as naturally as breathing. Back in sixth grade, there’d been some poem about the delicate beauty of rose petals. I remember thinking how the words captured precisely how I felt for my best friend, Olivia. From that moment, I’d found a love of words, because it was through them that I could tell Liv how I felt. I wrote poems and at one point fancied myself as a songwriter. If it wasn’t for my love of words, I would have been left with the same two-word sentences with girls as my friends.
I helped Olivia through English, she helped me through math. We’d study together in my bedroom, taking breaks to use my gym equipment or to fool around.
We loved the same movies, and I spent hours finding the next new restaurant to push the boundaries of her food tastes.
I loved hot and spicy Indian, so Olivia researched and found Persian restaurants to mix it up. She loved the subtlety of Thai, so I found a little alcove that served five-star quality street food.
We’d been each other’s firsts and only. The moment we finished our final exams, our parents sent us off to Europe for six weeks. Part celebration that we’d somehow survived our teenage years with parents intact, and part to give us a gift of time together before college and the reality of life took over.
Greece was amazing. Ibiza had been full-on party mode offering everything we’d expected and more. Both of us knocked back propositions from guys, women, and couples.
Later, when I tried to explain why breaking up was necessary, Olivia had accused me of wishing I’d taken advantage of the women throwing themselves at me back in Ibiza. I didn’t want other women. Not even when we were dancing half naked, fully drunk and it seemed the world was a massive orgy.
Not for one moment did I ever not want Olivia.
She lived through the pain of her parents’ divorce, and my parents barely scraped their marriage together after my father’s cheating. I refused to hurtle towards the same mistakes, ending up married because it seemed the right thing to do, only to have second thoughts ten years later. We deserved better. Liv deserves better.
Now, she’s here, and all I want is to hold her forever. But I can’t—won’t—let her make a mistake by rebounding with me. She needs to heal from Mitch’s betrayal and find her footing.
Almost as if to remind myself of why we’re here, I pull out my phone and go rehash yesterday’s message threads.
