I Was Never One of Them novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Second Night

I read the email twice and put the phone face down on the blanket.

Rhys was still kneeling on the floor with my wet shoes in his hands.

"They took my job," I said. "In one email. At one in the morning."

"I know."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to feel."

"Then don't feel it tonight." He set the shoes by the stove. "Nothing else is going to happen before sunrise."

I looked at him in the lamplight, with the scar through his eyebrow and my old letter still folded in his hand.

I did not want to think.

I wanted to be somewhere that nobody had filmed.

"Come here," I said.

He stood and came to the edge of the bed.

"I'm not asking for anything," he said. "You don't owe me this. Not after what you heard tonight."

"I know I don't."

"Then why?"

"Because you read my letter every night for eight years and never once used it against me."

He didn't answer.

I took his hand and pulled him down beside me.

This time I was not angry, and I could feel the difference in my whole body.

I kissed him slowly, with my palm along his jaw.

He kissed me back.

"You can take your time," he said against my mouth.

"I'm going to."

I pushed his shirt up, and he lifted his arms.

I kissed the scar on his shoulder again, and then the one over his eyebrow, which I had wanted to touch since the truck.

His breath shook.

I unbuttoned my own shirt slowly, one button at a time, while he watched.

He didn't reach for me.

His hands lay flat on the blanket, fingers spread.

"You can touch me," I said.

"I'm trying to let you decide how."

"Good. Then lie back."

He lay back.

I took off my shirt and my bra and dropped them on the floor.

His eyes went over me and stayed.

"God, Hazel."

"Say it again."

"Hazel."

I stripped his jeans down his legs and mine after them, and I climbed over him and knelt astride his hips.

He was hard against my thigh, hot and heavy, and I wrapped my hand around him and stroked him slowly from base to tip.

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