It Starts With Us (It Ends with Us #2) (15 page)

I’m trying to act confident about this, but as soon as I walk into my bedroom, I lose every bit of the confidence that got me in here.

It’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve been with anyone. Probably since right after getting pregnant with Emmy. I haven’t had sex postbaby, and I haven’t had sex with Atlas since I was sixteen, and both of these thoughts start swirling together to create this monstrous invasive-thought tornado in my mind.

I’m standing in the middle of my bedroom when Atlas appears in the doorway a few seconds later. I put my hands on my hips and just… stand here. He’s staring at me. I feel like I’m supposed to make the next move since I’m the one who just invited him into my bedroom.

“I don’t know what to do next,” I admit. “It’s been a while.”

Atlas laughs. Then he saunters toward the bed because of course he can’t just walk in an unattractive way. Every move he makes is sexy. Him removing his suit jacket right now is sexy. He tosses it onto my dresser and then kicks off his shoes.
God, even that was sexy.
Then he sits down on my bed.

“Let’s talk.” He leans against my headboard and then crosses his ankles. He looks very relaxed.
And sexy.

I can’t imagine lying down on that bed in this dress. It would be uncomfortable, and probably not very much fun to try to remove if we get to that point. “Let me change clothes first.” I walk into my closet and close the door.

I turn on the light, but nothing happens. The bulb is out.
Shit.
I can’t get dressed in the dark. I don’t have my phone on me, so I can’t use the flashlight app to help.

I do my best, but it takes a minute to get the zipper down. When I finally do, instead of stepping out of the dress, for some reason I pull the dress over my head, and of course it snags in my hair. I try to set my hair free, but the dress is heavy, and it’s taking forever in the dark, and I can’t walk out to find a mirror because Atlas is out there. I keep trying to untangle it. After a few defeating minutes, Atlas finally taps on the door.

“You okay in there?”

“No. I’m stuck.”

“Can I open the door?”

I’m standing in my bra and panties with a dress halfway over my head, but this is what I deserve. This is closet karma. “Okay, but I’m not really dressed.”

I hear Atlas laugh, but when he opens the door and sees my situation, he immediately springs into action by flicking the light switch. It does nothing, of course.

“The bulb is out.”

He moves toward me to inspect my situation. “What happened?”

“My hair is stuck.”

Atlas pulls out his phone and uses the light to help him see what I’m tangled on. He tugs my hair and my dress in opposite directions, and then, magically, my dress is on the floor.

I smooth out my hair. “Thank you.” I fold my arms over myself. “This is embarrassing.”

The light from Atlas’s phone is still on, so he can see that I’m standing in my bra and panties. He turns off his phone light, but the closet door is open, and there’s a lamp on in the bedroom, so I’m still very visible to him.

There’s a moment of hesitation on both our parts. He can’t tell if he should walk away and let me finish getting dressed, and I can’t tell if I want him to.

And then suddenly we’re kissing.

It just happened, as if we moved toward each other at the same time. One of his hands slips around to the back of my head, and the other goes directly to my lower back, so low that his fingers are skimming over my panties.

I wrap both my arms around his neck and pull him to me so hard, we stumble into a line of clothes. Atlas rights us again, but I can feel his smile in his kiss. He pulls far enough away from my mouth so that he can speak. “What is it with you and closets?” Then he kisses me again.

We make out in the closet for a few minutes, and it’s everything I remember about all the times we used to sneak make-out sessions when we were younger. The desire, the thrill, the newness of doing things you’ve never done, or in this case, haven’t done in a long time.

It reminds me of how much I loved being in a bed with him. Whether we were kissing or talking or doing other
things, the memories I made with him in my bedroom are some of my absolute favorite memories. He’s kissing my neck when I whisper, “Take me to my bed.”

He doesn’t hesitate. He slides his hands down my ass and grips my thighs, hoisting me up. He carries me out of the closet, across the bedroom, and then plants me onto my mattress where he proceeds to climb on top of me.

The feel of him against me only makes me more desperate for him, but he treats this like he used to treat our make-out sessions. With patience and appreciation—like making out is enough, and that it’s a privilege just to be kissing me.

I don’t know where he finds that patience, because I kind of want him to take off his clothes and treat me like this is his only chance to have me.

Maybe he would if he thought that—but we both know this is just the beginning. He’s taking it slow because I asked him to. I’m sure if I asked him to go faster, he would do that, too.

Considerate Atlas.

We eventually come to a point where we have to make a decision. I have a condom in my drawer, and he probably has a little time before he needs to leave, but when we stop kissing long enough to look at each other, he shakes his head. We’re both breathing heavily, and a little worn out from being so worked up for so long, so he rolls off me and falls onto his back.

He’s still dressed. I’m still in my bra and underwear. We never got further than that.

“As much as I want to,” he breathes, “I don’t want to have to leave right after.” He rolls onto his side and places a hand
on my stomach. He’s looking down at me with eyes that are unsatisfied, like he wants to say,
Never mind
, and ravish me.

I sigh and close my eyes. “Sometimes I hate responsibility.”

Atlas laughs, and then I feel him move closer. He kisses the corner of my mouth and says, “I don’t have to leave
yet
.” When he says that, his index finger slips beneath the hem of my panties, right below my belly button. He drags it back and forth, waiting for a reaction.

I lift my hips, hoping that’s enough of a conversation.

Every part of my body feels like it’s on fire when he slips two more fingers into my underwear. Then, when his entire hand makes the move, I’m a goner. I release a trembling breath and grip the sheet at my sides, arching my back and my hips up and against his hand.

He brings his mouth to mine, but he doesn’t kiss me. He remains close to my lips, using the movement of my hips and the sounds of my moans to guide him toward the finish.

He’s extremely intuitive. It doesn’t take me long at all before I’m tensing around his hand, pulling his neck down so that I can kiss him through the end of it.

When it’s over, he slides his hand out of my panties but then cups me there, leaving his hand over me while I recover. My chest is heaving as I try to catch my breath.

Atlas is breathing heavily, too, but I need a minute to recover before I can do anything about it.

“Lily.” Atlas kisses me gently on the cheek. “I think you…” He pauses, so I open my eyes and look at him. He shifts his eyes to my breasts, and then back at my face.

Then he pulls at his white shirt and looks down at it and I see there’s some kind of stain on it.

Oh, shit.

I look down at my bra and it’s soaking wet.
Oh my God.
Breast milk. Everywhere. I am such an idiot.

Atlas doesn’t seem at all fazed by it. He rolls off the bed and says, “I’ll give you some privacy.”

I’m a little mortified that my bra is covered in breast milk, so I grab the sheet and cover my chest with it before meeting Atlas at the foot of my bed. It kind of killed the mood. “Are you leaving?”

“Of course not.” He kisses me and then leaves the room as if it’s completely normal for a man to make out with a woman who is breastfeeding a baby that isn’t even his. It has to be at least a little awkward for him, but he covers it well.

I spend the next several minutes in the bathroom pumping, and then I take a quick ten-second shower. I throw on an oversized T-shirt and some pajama shorts before heading back into my living room.

Atlas is sitting on my couch, waiting patiently with his phone in his hand. When he hears me enter the living room, he glances up at me and looks me up and down. I’m still a little embarrassed, so when I sit next to him, I don’t sit
right
next to him. I sit, like, two feet from him, and then I mutter, “Sorry about that.”

“Lily.” He can sense my embarrassment, so he reaches for me. “Come here.” He settles against the couch and pulls my leg over his so that I’m straddling him. He slides his hands up my thighs, to my waist, and lets his head fall lazily against the couch. “Everything about tonight was perfect. Don’t you dare apologize.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re being nice. I got breast milk on you.”

Atlas slides a hand around the back of my neck and pulls me to him. “Yeah, while we were making out. Trust me, I don’t mind one bit.” He kisses me after that, which might be a mistake because
here we go again
.

It’s going to be impossible for him to leave at this rate. I probably should have put on another bra, but I honestly thought I was going to the living room to tell him goodbye. I didn’t know we were going to pick up where we left off on the couch, but I don’t mind it at all.

We’re situated so perfectly, we don’t even have to adjust to get the most out of this position. He groans during our kiss, and that just urges me on even more.

One of Atlas’s hands slides up the back of my shirt, and I can feel him hesitate when his hand never meets a bra. He pauses our kiss and looks me in the eye. I’m still moving against him, and the way he’s looking at me is piercing my core. He starts to move his hand from my back around to my breast. When he cups it in his hand, that seems to flip a switch in him. In both of us.

Our kiss turns feverish as I start to unbutton his shirt. Nothing else is said. We just frantically remove every piece of clothing left between us, and we don’t even bother moving to the bedroom. We barely pause the kissing when he reaches for his wallet and pulls out a condom and puts it on.

And then, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, Atlas kisses me while he pushes into me, and I feel every bit as loved as I did the first time this happened between us. There are so many feelings that come out in this moment, I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced anything so chaotically beautiful when we’re finally connected.

He sighs against my neck, like the same feelings are running through him. He starts to move in and out, slowly, kissing me gently the whole time. But several minutes later, the kisses are frantic and we’re both sweaty, and I am so completely and wholly in the moment, nothing else matters to me other than the fact that we’re together again, and it’s right. Everything about this is so right.

I’m exactly where I belong, being loved by Atlas Corrigan.

I should definitely go home, but it is so hard to crawl out of this bed after the last couple of hours with her. Once the couch happened, then the shower happened. Now we’re both too tired to do anything other than talk.

She’s lying on her back, her arms folded beneath her head. She’s staring at me, listening intently as I tell her about my meeting with a lawyer yesterday. “He says I did the right thing by taking him to the hospital. They were legally obligated to notify Child Protective Services. I’m not sure how I feel about that, though. It puts the power in the hands of the state, and what if they don’t think I’m the best place for him?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“I work a lot. I’m not married, so Josh will be alone some of the time. And I have no experience raising kids. They might think Tim is a better fit since he’s the biological father. They could even give him back to my mother; I’m not even sure what she did is enough to have him removed from her custody.”

Lily leans toward me and presses a kiss against my forearm. “I’m going to tell you what you told me the first time you FaceTimed me. You said, ‘You’re stressing over things that haven’t even happened yet.’ ”

I fold my lips together momentarily. “I did say that.”

“You did,” she says. She tucks herself against me, wrapping a leg over my thigh. “It’ll work out, Atlas. You’re the best thing for him, and anyone who has vested interest will see that. I promise.”

I fold myself around her, fitting her head under my chin. It’s incredible how much we’ve both changed physically since we were teens, but we somehow still fit together just as perfectly as we did back then.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” she says, pulling back far enough to look at me. “Remember our first time? What happened after that night? After my father hurt you.”

I’m not surprised she’s thinking about that, because I’ve thought about it as well tonight. This is the first time we’ve been intimate since that night that ended so terribly, so it’s hard not to compare them.

That was what her very last journal entry was about. It was painful to read, seeing how much she was hurting. I wish more than anything it could have ended better than it did.

“I don’t remember a lot from that night,” I admit. “I woke up in the hospital the next day, confused. I knew your father was the one who had hurt me, I remembered that much, but I had no idea if he did to you what he had done to me. I hit the call button several times, and when no one came to my room, I somehow hobbled into the hallway with a broken ankle. I was frantic, asking if you were okay, but the poor nurse had no idea what I was talking about.”

Lily tightens her grip around me as I talk.

“She finally calmed me down enough to get your information from me, and then she came back to let me know
that I was the only one brought in with injuries. She asked me if your father was Andrew Bloom. I told her yes, and I told her I wanted to press charges. When I asked her if she could have an officer come to the room, she looked at me sympathetically. I remember her exact words. She said, ‘The law is on his side, honey. No one turns him in. Not even his wife.’ ”

Lily exhales against my chest, so I pause and press a kiss against the top of her head. “Then what?” she whispers.

“I did it anyway,” I say. “I knew if I didn’t report him, your mother would never get out of that situation. I made the nurse contact an officer, and when one finally arrived that afternoon, he wasn’t there to listen to my statement. He was there to make it clear that if anyone was going to be arrested, it wouldn’t be your father. He said your father could have me arrested for breaking into houses and forcing myself on his daughter. Those were the officer’s exact words, like the relationship you and I had was something criminal. I felt guilty about that for years.”

Lily looks up at me and places a hand on my cheek. “What? Atlas, we’re only two and a half years apart. You did absolutely nothing wrong.”

I appreciate that she says that, but it doesn’t change the fact that I felt guilty for bringing stress into her life. But I also felt guilty for leaving her once I did bring stress into her life. “I don’t know that any choice I made back then would have felt right. I didn’t want to stay and put you in more danger by showing up at your house again. And I didn’t want to be arrested because then I wouldn’t have been able to go to the military. I thought the best thing would be to
put space between us, and then someday I would contact you down the line and see if you ever still thought of me like I thought of you.”

“Every day,” she whispers. “I thought of you every single day.”

I run my hand over her back for a while, and then I stroke my fingers through her hair, wondering how in the world she can make me feel so whole when I had no idea I was only half of myself without her.

Of course I’ve missed her all these years, and if I could have snapped my fingers and brought her back into my life, I would have in a heartbeat. But we had built lives without each other, her with Ryle and me with my career, and I assumed that was our fate. I had grown used to not living life with her. But now that she’s back, I don’t know that I could ever feel whole again without her. Especially after tonight.

“Lily,” I whisper.

She doesn’t respond. I pull back a little and can see that her eyes are closed, and her arm has gone limp around me. I’m scared if I move, I’ll wake her up. But I told Josh I’d only be a couple of hours later than the time I initially gave him, and I’m at three hours now. I’m not even sure I’m allowed to leave twelve-year-olds by themselves.

Brad was okay with it when I asked if they were fine by themselves, and if he doesn’t even allow Theo to have a phone, I doubt he’d let me leave them alone while I went on a date unless Brad has left Theo alone before.

Maybe I should google what the age limit is in Boston for a kid to stay by themselves.

I’m overthinking this. Of course, they’re fine. Neither of
them has called or texted with any kind of emergency, and twelve-year-olds even babysit other kids sometimes.

I think I’m fine, but I still need to get home. I don’t know Josh well enough yet to be convinced he isn’t throwing a rager in my house right now. I slowly remove my arm from beneath Lily’s head and ease out of her bed. I dress as quietly as I can, and then I go in search of a pen and paper. I don’t want to wake her up, but I don’t want to leave without saying anything. Especially after the night we had.

I find a notebook and a pen in her kitchen drawer, so I sit at the table to write her a letter. When I finish, I take it back to her bedroom and I set the note on the pillow next to her. Then I kiss her goodnight.