The Co-op

Chapter Thirty-One

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

L A RYNN

I am quaking with anticipation and nerves by the time we traverse the remaining stairs. I take a step toward him, but before I can kiss him he says, “My room. My bed.”

The quiet, gentle command catches me off guard. The way heat floods me in response does, too. His eyes flit to my mouth and look desperate before he tucks it away.

When it came to us and sex before, he very much encouraged me to take the lead in all ways, even when he gave me the occasional nudge. It forces me to remember how long it’s been, how even though some days it feels like it all just happened and all these feelings are fresh, we are still different versions of who we used to be.

I make my way to his room, feel his warmth at my back the whole way. He disappears into his closet momentarily before he joins me at the foot of his bed.

“Take your shorts off,” he says. His eyes look me up and down before settling on my shorts, jaw working like he’s struggling to hold himself together. I take care to slide my fingertips in my waistband, to pull them down painstakingly slow before I kick them away.

“Lie down.” The way he’s making these demands is soft, like he’s resigned himself to them, too. Like this has been inevitable, somehow both a demand and a plea.

I comply. Watch his chest rise on a great inhale and his hands open and close at his sides.

He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out something small and black.

“I saw yours in the garbage,” he says. “I felt bad again. I went and got you a new one.”

He hits a button and it starts to whir. I can’t stop a whimper, feel myself go liquid. I clench around nothing and force myself not to writhe.

“I’m not gonna touch you,” he tells me. “This is. While you make yourself feel good. Okay?” His voice is so deep, so rough, just like I’m dying for him to be.

“Yes,” I breathe. I watch him step closer to the bed, my mouth goes dry at the sight of him swelling and pressing into the zipper of his jeans.

“What about you?” I ask.

“This’ll be enough,” he says, voice ragged now, hot embers in a campfire. “Watching you will be enough.”

I feel like I’m sliding into a Technicolor haze, everything too bright and sensitive. Shades of color and sensations. He runs the vibrator up my leg from ankle to knee and a moan tears itself out of me.

“Let me see it, Rynn,” he says. “Touch yourself.”

I don’t even care that I’m submitting so easily, everything throbs and aches. He slides the toy up the side of my thigh and drags it around until he reaches my inner calf. I slip my thong to the side and watch him watch my fingers circle my clit, watch his mouth drop open when I plunge two inside. It makes an indecent, wet sound.

He swallows heavily, head tilting with a groan. “Still for me?” he asks.

“Still for you,” I say. Always for you, I don’t say.

I’m not sure if it’s my fingers or the reverent look on his face that does it for me most but I am impossibly close already, a steady drumbeat under my skin. I let my other hand travel up my shirt and under my bra, pinching and twisting while I go back to circling with the one below. His breathing labors, tracking every movement.

“Show me,” he says, chin pointing toward my chest. He palms himself through his jeans.

“You first,” I say.

A flash of an arrogant smile. Something does a flip in my core and I stop my fingers so I can hold out longer. He turns the vibrator off and places it on the bed.

“Use that, if you want,” he says when he shrugs out of his shirt. “I don’t want to come before you do.”

He finishes undressing and I drink in the sight of him. He is so much to behold like this, all the moonlight casting shadows across broad muscle. I am captivated by the way his big hand wraps around himself, the way I know how he’d feel if that was my hand instead. How my fingertips wouldn’t quite meet. The way the chords of him strain when he gives himself the first rough tug.

“You’re perfect,” I admit, my mouth watering.

I sit up, my knees folding over the edge of the bed, and peel off my shirt with his eyes trained on me. I unhook my bra and slide it from an arm, then lie back down while he traces me with his gaze. I turn the vibrator back on and slide it across the outside of my underwear, up my torso and across the sensitive peaks of my chest. He flexes his jaw and spits into his palm, squeezes and pulls up the length of his cock, runs his thumb over the tip and uses that moisture, too.

I trap a whine between my lips when I leap for the edge too quick, pulling the toy away and breathing deep.

“Tell me what you’re thinking. Tell me how you feel,” he says, the vibrations replaced by his voice rumbling through me, like my very bones are shaking with wanting him.

It was always easy for me to answer him like this, this visceral exchange of honesty. “That I feel empty and I want you to fill me up. That you look so good I want you everywhere.”

His head collapses back and he curses at the ceiling, his hand stilling on his cock momentarily before his eyes find me again. “God, you’re so fucking generous like this, LaRynn. I don’t know what to do with you this way.”

A moan breaks away from me in pieces. I breathe in fast and hard. “Tell me what you want to do to me,” I beg, using my heels to rock my body up and down.

A muscle jumps up his forearm, through his bicep and chest. He starts fucking his hand harder. “I want to leave my mark on you, I want to suck and bite the skin on your hips, on those perfect tits. I want to wrap your hair around my fist and feel your sweet mouth on my cock. I’m fucking desperate to taste you.” Another rough sound. It’s carnal and base, the way he’s not even trying to look anywhere else but there now. “God, look at you. I want to fuck you so hard and deep you’ll still feel me tomorrow.”

I gasp and writhe, both hands between my legs. One hand holding the toy while I thrash and clutch around two fingers on the other. I add a third and my eyes roll back into my head at the sound of his grunted, “Yes.” I’m clinging to the end of my rapidly unwinding rope, but I have to see him, have to see what I do to him, too. I watch how he squeezes and pulls at himself, feel myself start to crest that edge.

“I want to come inside you, want to see both of us on your skin,” he says when I look up from his busy hand and find his eyes.

An obscenity leaves my lips and I start grinding in sloppy circles now, the vibrator slipping against wet heat. That is not something we’ve ever done, and his words make everything in my core spark impossibly hot, and fuck, I’m nearly there. I’m nearly there and I need him with me.

The way he solemnly says, “You’re gorgeous when you come,” throws me into free fall, an explosive rush through my spine and limbs, light and color and taste all melding into one singular, overwhelming sensation, just as he spends himself on my stomach with a groan.

I just came harder than I have in my life and he didn’t lay a finger on me. I feel utterly throttled and spent and sated and electrified all at the same time. I’m still trying to catch my breath when he comes back with a warm towel, his face a heart-wrenching combination of smug and bashful. I’m so desperate to reach for him I think I could cry.

“Sorry for the mess,” he says, voice still subdued. “Bet you wish you held on to my towels now.”

I let myself grab his wrist and he stills, his weight balanced on the arm planted just outside my ribs. “I don’t mind your mess,” I say.

He looks at me, his coffee eyes warm. “I don’t mind yours, either, Rynn.”

For a moment I think he’s going to kiss me. His elbow bends like he’s going to let himself fall. But then he straightens with a soft smile. “Can I make you that drink?” he asks.

I will my pounding heart to slow. To quiet. “Yeah. I’d love a drink.”

He sits beside me on his bed a few minutes later, he in some low-slung sweats and me wrapped in our favorite throw blanket. We each take a pull from our drinks.

I can sense his unrest, despite everything we just did with each other. I think we succeeded in blowing off some steam, like it took the lid off the situation, at least, and maybe there’s air now, room for us to talk. But I don’t know how to ease into this conversation, and I don’t want to give myself too much time to turn back. I do my best to gather up all my courage instead.

“You broke my heart,” I tell him, plain and simple. I say it to the hand he’s got resting loosely on his thigh. Like I’m talking to the octopus there. I feel instantly laid bare when I do, somehow more exposed than I was with him a few minutes ago.

“I know,” he croaks. “And I’m sorry.” I feel him look at me, so I turn up to meet his eyes. Something splays wide open at the expression on his face. The trepidation he so clearly has toward me. I feel a lick of panic when I register it. “But you broke mine, too,” he says. “You bled mine out in pieces. You were always so quick to hide us, you didn’t even want to tell the grands, despite the fact that we were fairly obvious. You kept insisting it wouldn’t go anywhere. You kept acting like it was just sex. That was never my idea in the first place.”

I feel something unlatch and click, a thousand light bulbs shining and illuminating something dreadful. “What?” I ask, my voice breaking.

“And,” he keeps going, like he’s desperate to get it out. “And I know you shared a lot with me in some ways, but it was hardly anything in so many others, LaRynn. I told you about my parents, I talked to you about my brother, about all my insecurities, and I’d only get these fractions of you in return.”

And he’d just lost his dad, someone he was still angry with, whom he’d felt deceived by for everything he’d kept from him. My nose starts to sting.

“I already felt like I wasn’t enough of anything, you know? Ramsey was off playing baseball after graduating with honors and I barely made it through a semester at a junior college.” He heaves a breath. “I was just here, fucking— tinkering . So every time you wouldn’t share with me, or whenever you acted like we were just casual, it felt like that was because I wasn’t good enough. It felt like it was about me, and I believed it.” His eyes get misty and my first tear falls. “It scared me, LaRynn, because I loved you, too. And I hated the idea that love and shame could coexist like that. I hated what that kind of love did to my family. If that was love, it’s not the kind I wanted. It’s still not the kind I’d choose. I wanted someone to be proud and happy to be with me.”

I slap at another tear as it falls. Fight to swallow around the rock that scrapes down my throat at the words it’s still not the kind I’d choose . I don’t blame him. I shouldn’t want this, either. This consuming, sharp thing between us. “Deacon it wasn’t you,” I swear, my chin wobbling. “I thought I had to make it easy. I thought if I had demands or expectations it would be… too much. I thought all my shit, my mess would be a burden and you’d lose any interest in me.” I have to swallow three more times around the lump in my throat. “I was young. I was never ashamed of you. You were… you are amazing. You’re amazing Deacon. How you can spread yourself so thin and still give so much of yourself to everyone? Between this place and Sal and Santa Sea and your friends? I’ll never know. You’re the most unselfish person I know. And you—you were wonderful to me. You showed me so much care that summer. And…” I give up and let myself cough out a cry. “ And you were here for the grands so much more than I was the last few years, and I’m sorry I never thanked you for that. I’m sorry I made you feel like you weren’t enough. You deserve so much more.” My voice is a wisp of itself by the end. “I just got so used to never sharing. It was part of not getting attached.” But I still got so attached to you. Everything you showed me and wanted from me made me feel loved, too. All of your trying. And I thought of you every fucking day and was ashamed of myself for it, for being so affection-starved and lonely that I still missed you, even when I thought you didn’t love me back.

He shakes his head. “Not once did they ever think you didn’t adore them, LaRynn, and not once did they feel anything less for you, regardless of how often you were here or not. They were so fucking proud of you, and it had nothing to do with college or law school or any of that, ever.”

I crush my lips together to try and stop their trembling. “I don’t know why,” I say.

“I do,” he says. “Because you’re a fucking force. You’re the girl who wanted to know what the secret fuss was so you drove your grandma’s car to a sex shop. You’re brilliant and you’re secretly kind, and you try to make everyone’s life better for whatever capacity you’re in it. Even with all our bullshit you’ve done that in mine.”

I hate that I’m afraid to ask him how I’ve done anything good for him. By getting him an occasional sandwich? By making sure all his favorite snacks are in the house? It doesn’t feel like nearly enough. I hate that I realize all the pieces of myself I’ve continued to hold close. How cheap I’ve been with my vulnerabilities. I’m learning how good it feels to be honest instead of easy, and I’ve still maintained a closed fist around my heart.

“Can I be your friend?” I ask abruptly. It sounds stupid when I say it like that. “I like you, I mean. And I want to be your friend.” I’ll be the best friend to him I can. I’ll show him how much he means to me.

His brow creases. “I like you, too. I would love to be your friend.”

“I’m sorry if I… complicated things, tonight.” I am nauseated by the idea that I could have unwittingly made him feel pressured.

“I was an extremely willing participant, Rynn. Enthusiastic, even. Fucking streamers and an air horn,” he says. “And I was back then, too. I was young, too.” The last part is a murmur.

I search his face for any kernel of untruth. It feels like there might be a “but” hanging in the air.

“But,” he whispers, and I think I hear my heart shatter. “I do think more of that… it could complicate things. When we’ve still got so much left to do.”

I’m nodding too fast, still wiping at a steady stream of tears. “Absolutely. No, you’re right.” My voice is unrecognizable. “Friends. Friends who… who needed some reprieve.”

He nods, inhaling sharply. “Yeah,” he says, smiling stiffly. “Yes. Friends.”