Going Long (23 page)

“I’m so sorry, I meant to tell
you about that. It was a business meeting Dylan set up. She invited Jason and
Jenny to make it less formal, so we wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. God, I didn’t
want to go. But I had to,” I said, looking her right in the eyes. “And she got
a ride with Dylan, so she was just at the interview waiting around.” I paused
for her to take it all in, wanting to make sure there was nothing else standing
between her heart and mine before I moved on with the rest of my plan. Finally
satisfied, I moved on to phase two.

“So, do you want your presents?”
I asked, heading to the kitchen where I had them stashed in a cabinet. Nolan
put her hands over her face and turned red in an instant. “Uh, or not…” I
stopped in my tracks.

“No, no,” she said, shaking her
head and frowning a bit. “I totally want them. I’m sorry. It’s just that I
didn’t bring anything for you. I sort of haven’t been able to do much lately,
I’ve been…busy.”

I watched her face carefully. I
wasn’t sure how much she knew I knew, and I didn’t want tonight to turn into a
self-help session, or an intervention. To put her at ease, I just smiled and
bent down behind the kitchen counter to pull out her gifts. “Yeah, that’s
pretty crappy of you to not get me anything,” I teased as I walked toward her,
her face hardening with a toughness at my insult. “I guess you’ll just have to
spend two nights with me now,” I winked, letting her know I was kidding.
“Seriously, Noles, you don’t need to get me anything. This was just something I
wanted to do.”

I slid the first box in front of
her. It was one of my dad’s old boot boxes, the largest box with a lid we had
in the house. I didn’t wrap it very well, opting to just tie a ribbon around
it. She pulled the strings and looked at me with a smirk, clearly trying not to
judge my very masculine wrapping job. “Hey, I was in a hurry,” I shrugged.

She smiled, and then looked
down, pushing the lid to the side. I held my breath as she reached in and
pulled out the first gray T-shirt. It was my Coolidge football shirt. She held
it up to her face and breathed it in, and watching her close her eyes and just
take in my scent, so damned adoring and in love, had me lost. “It was always
your favorite,” I said softly. She just nodded and looked up, her eyes tearing.
“There’s more,” I urged her on.

She pulled out a MicNic shirt
next, just like the one she’d had for years. “Where’d you find this?” she held
it up against her body, rubbing the softness of it and clutching it close.

“Ah, that one was hard. I had
Sienna’s help. We went to three different thrift stores, and that one was
actually in the last one, all the way up in Florence,” I said, acknowledging
that I’d driven to the next town, 50 miles away, just to find a shirt.

As she took each shirt out of
the box, she held it up and admired it for minutes, laying each one over the
next against her, hugging them close. There were old movie shirts, concert
T-shirts, Arizona tourist trap shirts—they weren’t all exact replicas,
but they were damn close. Nolan was never about the expensive designer labels.
Hell, the girl owned maybe two dresses, and a skirt, still as an adult. But
these stupid T-shirts? They were wrapped up in her identity. And I knew when
she lost them that she’d feel stripped. And I just couldn’t stand it.

“You like them?” I asked,
reaching for the last one she’d pulled from the box and feeling it with my
fingers, tracing the soft letters from some arcade that had shut down years
ago.

She nodded without words, not
ready to look me in the eyes. She wore her emotions, and I knew she was
touched. But I didn’t want this to be about her appreciation for me. I wanted
it to be about her feeling happy, relieved and less lost. So, I sat there
quietly—and waited while she put each one back in the box, and then slid
it to the corner of the sofa. She scooted over to me and reached around my
neck, giving me a full-bodied hug, her head resting hard against my shoulder. I
heard her small sniffles and just caressed her head. “I’m glad you like them,”
I whispered in her ear, stroking her hair until she was ready to release me.

When she finally did, I slapped
my hands in my lap and then asked if she was ready for the next one.

“You got me something else?” she
said, her face turning guilty.

“Ah. No feeling bad, I told you,
I don’t need anything,” I said, sliding over the second box. Nolan recognized
it instantly, her eyes popping back up to mine.

“Oh my God!” she gasped,
covering her mouth and grinning ear-to-ear. “You kept this? All this time?”

“You bet your ass I kept it.
When a hot girl shows up at my door, and hands me a box of important things
like this, I store it safely—even if she’s pissed as hell when she does
it,” I said, recalling the time we’d broken up in high school. Nolan had showed
up at my dad’s house with her box of mementoes, thrusting them at me angrily.
I’d put the box in my attic when she did and had forgotten about it until the
fire. I knew it wouldn’t replace a lot of the memories Nolan had saved in her
room, but it was a good start. And they were all memories of
us,
and that’s
what I wanted her to hold onto most.

I slid her close to me again,
and we both pulled out the various pictures and love notes I’d given her. She
had dried the rose I gave her the summer before our junior year, its pedals
flat and crisp now. She giggled when I tried to sniff it, and scrunched my nose
at its stink. “It’s for keep-saking, not smelling, idiot,” she joked, giggling
a little quietly.

I sat back after a while and
just watched her as she went through the various items she’d saved in that box.
I could tell when she was reaching back for fond memories, her body language
telling me she was happy and remembering all of the good that was
us
. I
couldn’t take my eyes off her. Nolan had always been beautiful, uniquely
beautiful. She didn’t need makeup, or hairstyles, or skimpy clothing. She was a
what-you-see-is-what-you-get
American-blooded girl. Her long, brown,
wavy hair caressed her shoulders, and framed her big eyes—eyes that
couldn’t bluff against her feelings if her life depended on it. Yes, she’d
always been a beautiful girl. But as a woman? She was fucking stunning. And
while the curves and softness of her naked body and the sexiness of her lips
drove me wild, it was the entire package that had me starving for air. She was
it for me. And I had to have her, for always.

She was walking into the kitchen
to put the boxes back on the counter, when I noticed she’d paused in front of
one of Rosie’s sprigs of mistletoe that hung from one of the wooden archways. I
raced to my feet and was next to her in seconds, my chest flat to her back
while I slowly slid my hands up the sides of her arms, over her shoulders and
into her hair, lifting it to reveal her long, slender neck. I breathed against
it softly at first, smelling the strawberry scent of her hair and slightly
tasting her skin before biting at her earlobe. I felt her body quiver, and she
started to turn to face me, her eyes cautious, but full of want. I pointed up
above her as she faced me. “Mistletoe,” I grinned, tilting one side of my mouth
up, sinisterly. “You can’t mess with mistletoe. I have to kiss you, it’s the
rule.”

Nolan’s face slid into a smile
then too, her teeth grazing her bottom lip while her eyes shifted between mine
and my mouth, her breathing getting more and more ragged with every second. My
palms were resting on her hips, but they were hungry to touch her, feel her. I
slid them to her back, and up the bottom of her shirt until I was gripping her
bare skin, feeling the heat of it along my fingertips as I worked my way up and
down, still holding her gaze.

She stepped into me more, our
chests touching, and her nose tickling the center of my body, right where my
heart lives. She tilted her head to look straight up at me, biting her lip
harder now, her eyelids heavy. I felt her hands grip the bottom of my shirt and
begin to pull it up, so I helped her pull it over my head and discard it on the
floor. Her hands continued to roam, gripping my stomach, and then grazing up my
chest and to my chin and neck and then back down. Our eyes were locked, and the
tension was fucking undeniable. I wanted her. And she was giving me permission.
But I was fighting with myself, afraid it was too soon, that our trust hadn’t
been mended enough.

I was lost in my head when I
felt the coolness of her lips against my chest as she began kissing her way up
to my neck, my breathing failing me now. I had a solid grip on the back of the
sweatpants she was wearing, like a leash keeping my hands in check. I didn’t
have much restraint left in me, though. And when Nolan reached down to pull her
own shirt up and over her head, pressing her bare skin against mine fiercely,
reaching into my hair and pulling my mouth to hers hard, I lost control over
everything.

Our tongues tangled as I reached
behind her and lifted her to me, her legs wrapping around me and holding me to
her tightly. “We can’t stay here,” I said into her ear as I kissed my way up
and down her neck.

“Okay,” she whispered, kissing
me again and holding on tighter as I turned to the stairs, and carried her all
the way to my room. I kicked the door closed behind me and walked us over to my
bed, my lips never once leaving hers. I leaned forward, laying her down, and
held myself above her. I stopped kissing her just long enough to look into her
wanting eyes—just long enough to make sure this was okay, and okay
tonight. When she slid up the bed and pulled me with her, I had the
confirmation I needed.

I felt Nolan reaching for my
jeans, and I stood to pull them off, returning to her in seconds, almost as if
my body would suffocate without her touch. I peeled her bra down her shoulders
before removing that, too. I kissed her breasts, taking my time, not wanting
this night to end. I rolled her on top of me then, and she sat up, straddling
me, her hands digging into my chest for balance, and her hair draping over our
faces. I reached up to tuck it behind her ears, and she licked at her lips
softly to moisten them.
Fuck. I was done.

Gripping her head more, I pulled
her back to me and sucked in her bottom lip. She was reaching to remove her
pants, and I leaned over to my nightstand to pull out a condom. When I looked
back, she was completely naked and ready, so beautiful and so full of fire. I
knew I should stop, slow things down. But I just couldn’t do it. I nodded to
her, making sure this was what she wanted. And then she took the condom from me
and finished putting it on me herself.

Within seconds, we were
connected, our bodies completely in sync, and Nolan’s eyes staring deep into
mine. I reached up to grab her face between my hands and kissed her tenderly,
slowly, and passionately as we made love to one another, the faint sounds of
Christmas music drifting up to my room from downstairs. Time felt irrelevant,
and our messy, recent past seemed so, too. All that mattered was now, and
moving forward. Feeling her, smelling her, being able to touch her, and hear
her, share my secrets with her—that’s all I wanted in life.

“I love you,” I breathed into
her, “so fucking much.”

I felt her body shake a bit, and
noticed the small tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. I reached up to
stop them with my thumbs, wiping each away and stroking her face tenderly.
“Don’t cry, Princess. We’re okay. Everything’s okay. I have you, and I’m not
letting go,” I said, kissing her harder now, like I was laying claim to her and
binding us together forever physically.

“I love you, too. You’re my
everything,” she said, her voice cracking as she spoke. I pulled her close to
me, and we moved together—here in the same room I’d first confessed my
feelings to her. We were kids then, our problems such adolescent bullshit. We’d
grown so much. And we’d taken major fucking steps backward. But here we were,
back to
us.
And there was no way I was ever letting go. Our bodies were
wet with sweat, and our hearts were racing, as we both climbed together until I
felt her body shudder, and I followed her, holding her tightly, and refusing to
let go until I felt her body still with exhaustion. 

I left my bed for a quick shower
and turned out every light in the house, setting my alarm to wake us up at
sunrise, hoping like hell we’d beat the rest of the house. But I wasn’t letting
Nolan leave my bed tonight. Her dad could beat my ass in the morning, and I’d
deserve it. But I didn’t care. She wasn’t leaving these arms. I pulled my
blanket up over us as I lay next to her and held her close, the beat of her
heart the only sound I could hear.

My lullaby.

Nolan was stubborn about waking
up in the morning. I knew my pops wouldn’t care, but I was pretty sure hers
would, so I started trying to wake her around 5 in the morning, well before the
sun came up.

“Mmmmmmm,” she brushed at her
hair, flinching at my breath as I blew lightly at her face. “More sleeeeep.”

She rolled over and pulled the
blanket tightly over her head. So damned adorable. I pulled the corner of the
blanket up and snuck underneath next to her, lifting it slightly and nestling
my nose right against hers. “What do they call those? Eskimo kisses?” I said,
nudging her cheek then with my nose.

She scrunched her face, still
keeping her eyes tightly shut. “Ewwwww, your breath stinks,” she said, raising
her hand up to pinch her nose shut. I pulled it away and breathed at her again,
just to tease her. “Gross!”