When We Are Enough (Valiant Hearts #1)

32. Emmy

Chapter 32

Emmy

P atrick was on my mind all day. When I was helping Granny Sloane with her exercises and meds, and when I curled up with Stormy on the sofa, stroking his belly till he fell asleep.

All the while, he was there, occupying my thoughts, as Ruby and I, wearing shorts and bare footed, dragged the old dinghy from her flooded garage with plans to use it to head into town to check on the gallery.

Ruby loaned me a pair of rain boots and a jacket when we headed into town, and we navigated through the light rain on the boat. It was surreal seeing Harbor’s Edge submerged, the streets turned into rivers, familiar landmarks half-hidden beneath murky water.

The normally bustling town felt like a ghost of itself, with debris and pieces of people’s lives floating by. It was unrecognizable as the same picturesque place I arrived at just a short while ago, seeking a fresh start.

For Ruby, it’s been especially tough. The gallery, her pride and joy, was damaged beyond recognition, her beautiful sculpture shattered, water lapping at the walls. This was supposed to be my new beginning, but instead, it’s become a shared struggle, a test of resilience for all of us.

Seeing Patrick at the gallery and not reaching for him was hard, and he had to briefly close his eyes as though he was worried he’d give himself away in front of Ruby. He wants me just as much as I want him, and the thought is electrifying despite everything else going on.

He stayed in my thoughts as the rest of us heated up canned beans on an old camping stove, sharing a subdued meal by the light of a lantern. When I took a quick, cold shower, it was his face, his touch that teased my bare, goose-bumped skin, the peaks of my breast as frigid water ran against them.

Lying in bed, now, staring at the ceiling, the sounds of the others winding down in the living room reaches me. My room is cloaked in darkness, thoughts still on Patrick, orbiting around him. He’s like a drug I can’t get enough of, and I’m deep in withdrawal.

This was supposed to be a fresh start, a chance to escape all the dramas I left behind in Philadelphia, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m hurtling right into the thick of something new, something potentially explosive that could change everything.

But another part of me, a louder, more needy part, is desperate to see him again, to feel the warmth of his touch, the intensity of his gaze when he looks at me like he could crawl right inside me.

I want to peel back his layers, understand the man behind the responsible exterior. There’s so much he’s hiding. It’s in his eyes, in the tense roll of his shoulders when he thinks no one’s watching.

The nightmares that haunt him, the ones he’s not ready to speak about… his friend, Danny Heart, and whatever happened when he died. He shoulders the weight of responsibility alone, a pillar of strength for everyone else.

But there’s another side to him, too. There’s the man who kisses me when no one is looking, touches me, thrusts himself inside me in the face of a hurricane like we’re invincible, as though we’re the last two people on earth.

I’m already in too deep if I’m honest with myself: falling for him might well be a mistake, but I’m caught in a powerful current, unable to resist the pull, even though the rapids ahead could break me.

It’s reckless, letting myself have feelings for someone so complicated, someone who’s made it clear he doesn’t have room for a relationship, even though he wants me as badly as I want him.

And that’s especially true given the stakes: I can’t lose what I have here in Harbor’s Edge. But if we keep it a secret, if things continue just as they are, not serious, maybe we can make this work.

I’m still thinking about him when everyone else is asleep and there’s only the wind roiling the trees outside my window. He comes home too late, the water in the shower running, and I can’t banish the image of the bands of his muscle flexing, cold water running over the smooth expanse of him.

The water shuts off. His bare feet padding down the hallway. He pauses outside my room, and for a heartbeat I’m scared he’s going to keep walking, but then the door is opening, the lantern in his hand spilling orange-tinged light over the expanse of black floor between us.

“Emmy,” he whispers.

Whispering back: “I’m awake.”

The lantern goes off. He closes the door gently, then his silhouette is walking toward me, his movements fluid, his steps quiet. I push myself up so I’m kneeling on the edge of the bed. He stops in front of me, the air between us supercharged. Lightning caught in a bottle, the particles swirling and crackling, creating a palpable tension that pulls at every nerve.

My eyes are adjusting to the dark again. He’s wearing only a towel, the expanse of his chiseled chest inches away from my face. Suddenly my heart is beating against the cage of my ribs, warmth radiating off the smooth of his bare skin.

The only light comes from the moonlight invading around the narrow edges of the curtains, and his eyes are hooded, full of desire, as he cups my face in his hands and leans in to brush a soft kiss on my lips, before pulling back.

“I needed you so badly today,” he says in a low voice. “It was hard to see you at the gallery and not totally lose control.”

My fingers on his chest, dragging down to the towel around his waist. It loosens and falls with the merest of tugs, and the length of his arousal is freed. I’m stroking him, my hand wrapped around his girth, his fingers spearing through my hair. His head falls back, the groan in the back of his throat hitting me right in my desperate, aching core.

Dropping down to sit on the edge of the bed, taking the glistening head of him deep into my mouth. Looking up at him in the faint moonlight as I move back and forth, the groan again, fingers tugging my hair.

He tastes salty and fresh from the shower, and my hand around his shaft matches the movements of my mouth until he twists restlessly, begging for more. I take him deeper, moaning quietly around him, loving the way his hips jerk in response. This is what he needs, what we both need.

“Emmy,” he whisper-groans. “You gotta stop babe, I’m so close.”

He grabs me under the arms, pulling me up, the dart of his tongue thrusting between my lips before he’s pulling my pajama tank off, throwing it somewhere across the room, the wet of his mouth finding my breast, my nipples, which pebble in the dark.

He pushes me back onto the bed, pulling my pajama shorts down, my panties, careless in his greed, his fingers diving between my legs, buried inside me, slick with my desire. A sharp intake of breath as he works his way over my clit, and I’m arching into him, gasping, his other hand covering my mouth to keep me quiet.

I cease to exist, a montage of moments: two fingers sliding inside me, finding that spot. The greedy nips of his teeth as he sucks the sensitive peaks of my breast. The hard edge of his cock pressing against me, the slink and roll of his stifled groan across his chest.

Every nerve ending sparks like a constellation set alight, each touch a shooting star, and my body can’t contain itself, his hand tightening over my mouth as I burst, crying his name, a supernova exploding in the night sky.

There’s no time to recover. He’s on top of me, between my thighs, grabbing my ankles, manhandling them up and over the broad width of his shoulders. He’s about to push inside me when he stops, hips twitching. He swears.

“I need to get a condom.”

“I’m on birth control,” I whisper, grasping hands reaching for him, nails digging, the need to have him inside me overriding everything else.

“Are you sure it’s okay?” The blue of his eyes reflects the white moonlight, rendering them pools of unsettled water, pale and ghostlike.

I’m sure. I trust him. I’d trust him with my life when he looks at me like that. “Yes.”

Something shudders over the muscled length of his torso and his grip on the sheets either side of me tightens. Then he thrusts into me, and for a moment it’s too-much, too quickly, the angle of my hips letting him in too deep.

His kiss swallows my gasp and our bodies start to slide together slowly, fluidly, and the too-much becomes too-good —with nothing between us, I can feel every inch, every ridge of him.

It’s as if we’ve done this a thousand times before, like I’ve known his body for decades, like we could grow old together, like maybe we already have, our bodies dancing possessively against each other, a million lifetimes stretched out behind and in front of us, each one suddenly coiling and compressing until it’s just the two if us in this moment right now.

There’s rain on his tongue and saltwater on his skin and nothing else but the insistent ram of his hips, the rub of him against me sending me spiraling all over again. I clamp down around him, biting my lip to stop from calling out, when he finally loses control, thrusting deeper and harder until the too-much and too-good are one and the same and he comes, pulsing inside me.

For a long, stretched out moment everything is so still and it’s just his panting body quivering over mine, the lingering sweetness of our pleasure slowly receding, a wave rolling back from the shore. He pulls out slowly and slides onto his back on the bed beside me, his hand finding mine in the darkness.

“I’ll be back.” I grab his discarded towel, wrap it around myself, heading to the bathroom, cleaning up as quickly as humanly possible so I can get back to him.

“God, you’re just what I needed after today,” he says in a whisper-quiet voice as I crawl onto the bed beside him again, his other hand sliding across my chest, cupping my breast, treasuring.

“Me too. I’ve been thinking about you all day.” The words honest. Raw.

A long moment of silence. Just us, holding each other, our panting breaths going back to normal. “Just so you know, I’m clean. I’ve been tested and I always use protection.” His hand squeezing mine. A soft caress with his roughened fingertips of the skin between my breasts.

“I know. And the same goes for me, too,” I reply, rolling into him, his arm shifting until he’s holding me close, me sliding perfectly to fit in the cocoon of his body.

His heart rate slows, and then his breathing, and at some stage the beat of his heart is replaced by the claim of sleep, and in the morning he’s already gone.