I part my lips and a soft moan leaves my throat when Jonah slides his tongue to meet mine. Liquid warmth explodes in my body and I become lost. I release my grip and my fingers trail along his chest, feeling the plane of his muscles through his shirt.
Jonah’s hand runs up and down my spine, pressing me closer, and his kiss grows hungrier. That same hunger is mirrored inside me. With his hands on my hips, Jonah repositions his legs. With one foot between the two of mine, he gently urges me back. I slip my hands around his neck and let him lead me in this dance.
My fingers ease up to his head and I love the tickle of the short strands of his hair against my palms. I tilt my head and Jonah accepts the invitation to increase the intensity of the kiss. He guides it to a level where it possesses a life of its own. Lips taking in the other’s, tongues searching for more. Bodies begging to be closer.
The back of my legs hit the bed and my eyes snap open. With chests moving rapidly, pulses pounding at every pressure point, Jonah and I look at each other. He tucks a stray hair behind my ear and kisses my lips with the slightest, sweetest pressure.
“Now that we’ve settled that...” His voice comes out deep, husky, and I like it. So much that my toes curl lovingly with the sound.
“Settled what?”
Jonah slowly brushes his hand up my back and the caress causes warmth to spread in my belly.
“How we feel.”
“What about it?” I ask, not recognizing the soft sound of my voice.
“Now we need to figure out where we go from here.”
21
Jonah
We lie tangled together on my bed. Stella’s head rests on my chest and both of my arms keep her tucked close. The room is dark even though the window shade is wide open. After our kiss, we watched the sunset in silence.
“The sky was red,” she whispers.
“Yeah.” It was possibly the most beautiful sunset I’ve seen.
“That means there shouldn’t be a storm.” But there’s doubt in her voice and somehow I don’t feel like she’s referring to the weather. “I’ll need to go soon.”
I know. “Do you have a curfew?”
“Not really, but Joss gets upset if I’m not back before she leaves for work and I don’t like her to worry.”
I smooth Stella’s hair back and steel myself for the inevitable—the question of whether or not we will be an actual couple. The best way to start is to gauge how much Stella trusts me. “Who is Joss to you?”
Her body jerks and I close my eyes, hating that I’m ruining the perfect moment we just shared. She pushes back against my arms, trying to move, and initially I resist, but then I loosen my hold. This conversation has to happen.
Stella sits up and the moonlight beginning to filter into the room reflects in her eyes. “She was the last girl my dad dated while he was in town.”
I scratch the back of my neck, unsure what to say or ask next. There are too many questions and none of them will have easy answers. “You live with your dad’s girlfriend?”
“I’m leaning in the direction of ex-girlfriend, but Joss isn’t always predictable.” Stella shifts so that she’s cross-legged next to me and she fusses over a thumbnail.
“Where’s your dad?”
She shrugs. “He leaves. Comes back. Then leaves again. He sticks around long enough to con someone into taking care of me and when their patience runs out, he returns and finds someone else.”
I draw both hands over my face. What the hell has her life been like? What the hell is wrong with him? Pieces begin to fall into place. “Is Lydia your mom?”
“No.” She meets my eyes then returns her attention to her nails. “Dad won’t discuss my mom, but one of the girlfriends said he told her that she left after I was born.”
It’s like I’ve been sucked into a black hole and I’m flailing as I try to grab on to something solid. “Then why the cemetery, Stella?”
She wrinkles her forehead. “Will you take me back to Joss’s after I answer?”
Silence. I don’t like the finality in that question. “We’re together now. Just so you know. When we walk into school tomorrow, I’m telling Cooper that he can kiss my ass and our friendship good-bye if he ever says another word against you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she says quietly.
“I don’t. But I am.” I am making a decision to move forward. My heart falters. Since the accident, I had been trying to find a way backd the>
That interests her enough that she peeks at me through the shield of her short purple hair.
“You’re right,” I continue. “Going to the cemetery, it was messed up, but the truth is I was twisted and broken before I met James Cohen.”
I stayed silent when I witnessed things that I knew were wrong and each time I didn’t find the courage to speak out, a piece of who I should have been, the man I should have tried to become, died.
Stella places a hand on my knee. “What happened that night?”
My pulse thrashes in my veins and pounds at my temples, but if I expect Stella to open up to me, I have to offer her the same in return. “A tractor trailer crossed over the median.”
“Go on,” she whispers.
My eyes dart in front of me and I see the headlights of the truck, hear the shattering of glass. “My car spun when I hit the brakes and I turned the wheel to avoid a collision and I did it. I cleared the wreck, but when I got out of my car, he was there...on the ground...and there was blood.”
“James Cohen?”
I nod. “Several other people came up and some of them had blankets and a lot of them were on the phone, but no one went close. I did because I kept thinking that was almost me.”
Almost me.
“I tried to stop the bleeding, but it soaked through everything and it wasn’t like it was an arm or a leg that I could tie off....” The blood poured from him, from too many cuts and gashes. “He was dying.”
He had put his hand in the air and it had surprised me how much strength there was in his grip.
“Don’t leave me,” he begged.
“I won’t,” I replied, but I wanted to.
“What happened?” Stella asks, because somehow she senses that the story doesn’t end there.
“He didn’t want to die.”
“None of us do,” she says in a soothing way, but she’s pushing me. She knows that there’s more.
“He told me...” My mouth runs dry. “He told me he did it wrong. His last words, to me and on this earth, were that he lived his life wrong.”