The knock on my hotel door at two a.m. is patient and hushed. I’m not patient right now, though, so I dash to answer it. Every second Eli’s not in my room is a second I resent.

I wish he’d fall through the door and grab me with needy hands, but that’s not how it goes. Instead, he steps slowly inside when I wrench the door open and fall back to make space for him. He looks at me for what feels like hours but is only seconds. It’s a lovely twist of time, extending the moment so I can take everything in: the warmth of his eyes, the way his hair crests back from his forehead, how his palm rubs a pattern over his chest, the hard press of his throat when he swallows.

His voice is low in the hush of the room. “Quite a party you threw there, Peach.”

We’ve pulled so many things out of the memory box of our relationship

—the pieces of ourselves we’ve shared, the sex, Blue Yonder itself. But it’s the old nickname and the way he says it—tender, with a hook to it—that finally pulls me all the way back into the home-shaped space I left five years ago.

I love him, and I want to scream because I can’t do anything about it. “Oh, that old thing?” I breathe out, dancing back.

He steps closer, eyes fixed on me. “Don’t be modest. I know those streamers were a pain in the ass.”

“Half of them fell down by the end of the night,” I huff as his hand wraps around my wrist.

“Ungrateful little assholes,” he murmurs sympathetically, towing me closer.

My eyes flutter closed when our chests meet. “Completely defiant to my vision.”

“I’ve heard that about streamers,” he says, cradling my cheek with one hand, letting the other curl around my hip. “They’re very willful, it’s not

your fault.”

My breath winds around a soft, pleading sound as he finally puts his mouth on me—just at my jaw, open-mouthed, hungry.

“I knew I should’ve taken them down.”

His mouth is at the corner of my lips now. “That would’ve been a shame, seeing as how you and your fifty-seven streamers completely took me apart tonight.”

“Fifty-seven?” I turn my head microscopically, and he lets our mouths graze before pulling back. After hours of having to keep each other just out of reach, Eli isn’t ready to let me have him.

“I counted. You were across the room with Adam and you laughed and I l—” His exhale is hard and shaky. “I wasn’t going to be able to fake it. I had to face the wall and count streamers.”

“God, it felt like four thousand,” I gasp out as he presses a kiss at the hollow beneath my ear.

I can feel his smile against my skin, how it washes away with his next rough words. “You did that for me.”

My body pulses with need, my heart with everything. “Yes.” “Why?”

Oh god. Even the diluted version is completely exposing, but it’s like my mouth is disconnected from my brain. Words start pouring out.

“Because I care about you.” It’s such a weak version of my actual feelings, only enough to release the barest pressure in my chest. “Because I wanted you to have a second chance so you can stop trying so hard to prove yourself. Because you’re good enough, even after you fall short.”

Because some part of me wants to forgive him for that.

“I don’t know if I deserve it. I’ve missed so much.” His arms tighten around me; not even a sheet of paper could come between us. “I haven’t been here, and it’s all I’ve thought about for—for so long.”

“But you’re here now. That’s enough.” It’s more than enough; it’s all I ever wanted. “You didn’t need to prove yourself, Eli. You just needed to show up.”

It’s an accidental slip into the past, and he recognizes it immediately. He pulls back, frames my face in his hands, his eyes wide and searching.

“Georgia.” My name is a single-worded question, shaped like the reckoning he wants and I can’t give.

I shake my head, whispering, “We have so little time.” My heart is everywhere: in my throat, crawling away from him, in his hands. “Please.”

His eyes flutter closed, frustration working across his beautiful face.

“Why?”

“Because it’s what we agreed to this week,” I say. Because this will end if we talk now.

He sighs, then pulls me deeper into his arms. Suddenly I’m surrounded by a tight, lovely pressure that allows me to sink. To let go. We stay like that for one minute, for two, swaying, his frustration and my fear fading away into a feeling like peace.

But I know that if I keep holding on I’ll want it too much, for longer.

I pull back just enough that our cheeks brush. Then our noses. Our lips. “Kiss me,” I whisper. “I want you.”

Eli lets out a soft sound. We hold there for a delicious moment, and then the mood shifts to what I expected from the start—impatient and needy.

He covers my mouth in a hot press, like he’s confirming I’m here, it’s real, we’re in this room together. Once he does, his teeth slide against my bottom lip, asking me to let him in. I do, inhaling his groan when our tongues meet, letting out a hungry sound when his hand tangles in my hair, tightening at my nape to hold me there. I’m captive for a kiss he takes deep and slow, and it feels like only seconds before he’s hard.

“Tell me what you need,” he whispers once I’ve divested him of his shirt and my dress is pooled at my waist. The demand, how much he wants that, opens me up. I can’t say it all, but I can let some of it out. I want to take him apart like those stupid streamers did, but all the way. If we have to say goodbye to this soon, I want him overwhelmed by me.

“You had something on your list we haven’t checked off, and we’re not in the cottage, but we’re close enough,” I say. “I’d hate to waste an opportunity.”

“What—” He inhales sharply as I lower to my knees. The memory unravels between us, his whisper from years before: wanted to put you on your knees in your cottage living room. “Fuck, Georgia.”

There’s a sharp edge of wonder in his voice, like he can’t quite believe this is what I need, and he doesn’t blink or breathe when I unbutton his dress pants and push the waistband down his hips, along with his boxer briefs.

When I brace my hands on his thighs, he comes back to himself, his expression turning severe. He takes himself in hand before I can, curls his other hand around the back of my neck. For a moment, he holds me there, stares so adoringly down at me as his fingers move restlessly in my hair, as his hand moves restlessly up and down the length of himself.

“Make it messy,” he murmurs finally, and I hear what he’s really saying: make it real. The two things can’t exist without the other right now, and I lean in with a relieved sigh, replacing his hand with mine.

At the touch of my mouth, he breathes out my name, tells me how fucking good it is as I tease and lick until he’s wet enough to take all the way in. His thighs go tense, his fingers framing my jaw as he feeds himself into my mouth. It’s soft groans and unwinding praise—just like that, god, look at you—while he wipes away the tears that gather under my eyes from my effort, his thumbs such a tender brush along my skin. He lets his body take over, but just for a minute, fist tight in my hair. I can feel how close he is on my tongue, can taste it there, too.

“No more,” he gasps out, pulling me off my knees.

Before I can take a breath, he slants his mouth over mine, nudges me backward until I’m falling onto the bed. But he’s right there to catch me, crawling over me as he gets us naked. His mouth is starving and wet on my breasts, his fingers perfect and circling between my legs. I feel like I’m drowning underneath him and I want it—that complete, blissful obliteration.

“That made you wet,” he murmurs before catching my nipple between his teeth.

“Mmm,” I sigh.

“You like seeing me like that,” he continues, soothing the sting of his bite with a stroking lap of his tongue. “How much I need you.”

“Yes,” I groan as he slides one finger into me, then another.

“I don’t think I could ever show you how much.” He sounds so dismayed that I laugh, and he grins. “Can I try anyway?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, instead sucking at the slope of my breast, once, twice, again, creating a series of marks that’ll be hidden beneath my dress tomorrow. The thought unravels me.

“Excuse me, you have a job to do, and it’s me.”

He laughs, grabbing for his pants, then freezes. “Fuck. I was in such a rush that I forgot to bring a condom over. Do you have one?”

“No,” I groan. If he moves anywhere but into me, I may legitimately die.

His sigh mirrors my thoughts. “I can go—”

“Hold on, wait.” I pull him over me again. His hips fall into the cradle of mine, putting him exactly where I need him. “I have an IUD.”

“Georgia,” he breathes out. “Hold on.”

I don’t know if we’re saying it the same way, but after a second, he pulses forward, slipping barely inside. I groan, sliding my palms up his back. “I got tested last fall and everything was negative. I haven’t been with anyone since then.”

“Same for me, but longer.”

Something about the timeline tugs at me, but then he says, “Is it okay?” in a sweet, hoarse voice. When I nod, he surges forward, just halfway. The feel of him is unreal. It’s been so long since I’ve had him like this, and it’s so intensely what I need: sex, the way only he can give it to me. Stripped down and needy and messy and perfect. I can ask for more and he’ll give it to me.

Like now, when he slides all the way inside and I whisper, “Deeper.” He gives me what I want, lips parted, an astonished sound escaping as his thighs push mine further apart, as he gets as deep as he can. He catches my mouth with his, and our eyes lock before his fall closed, overwhelmed.

And then he starts to move and I feel it, the way I let him into my body and my heart.

For now.

“Make it messy,” I whisper in his ear, and he laughs, lifting up on his knees so he can watch the way my body takes him.

He’s not gentle, but he’s tender, and his eyes stay on mine while he reaches between us, stroking his thumb over me as he pushes into me over and over again.

His eyes spark as my groans become staccato pants. “You’re so good for me,” he murmurs. “God, I love you just like this, look at you. You’re going to make me come.”

My mind is fuzzy from my impending orgasm, but not so fuzzy that I don’t grip on to his I love you, the following just like this fading away like vapor. He means in this moment—my needy sounds, my body giving his pleasure—but it still winds me tight.

I dig my nails into his back and he falls over me, bringing us so close that his necklace pools onto my throat, hot from his skin. I can tell by the way his breath hitches, the panting exhales he presses into my neck, that he needs it like this, too.

When he pulls back, I watch him fall apart—his expression is stark, drawn with need. He kisses me, but it’s more sound than feel. An aching groan curled into my mouth, a panting sigh alongside his slick tongue against mine, and then finally, just his grazing lips.

“Go slow,” I beg. “I don’t want it to be over.”

“It’s okay,” he whispers. He doesn’t slow down. Somehow he knows exactly what I need: to fall fully with him like this, because I can’t in any other way. “When it’s done, we’ll just start all over again.”

And I whisper back yes, even though I know it’s not true. I inhale it when my body tightens, and then on an exhale, let it go.

 

 

There are dark, ominous clouds on the horizon.

“They’re not going to go away just because you’re staring at them every five seconds.”

“You’re going to feel real foolish when I make it happen,” I joke, looking over to where Eli’s perched on the bed, leaning back on his hands.

“I believe in you, but even you can’t control the weather.”

His smile is small and affectionate, and he looks so indecently good that it pulls me away from my nervous thoughts—his knees are spread, his dark gray suit pants pulled tight to showcase the hard curve of his thighs, and his white dress shirt is unbuttoned just enough to reveal the hollow of his throat, a sliver of the gold chain lying against it. I rested my thumb there this morning while I shaved his face at his request, panted against it when he set me on the bathroom counter afterward and fucked me.

I’ve felt a restlessness I can’t shake since I woke up to Eli gazing at the ceiling, his expression troubled. I wondered if he was replaying the molecule-rearranging sex we had, if he was as overwhelmed by it as I was, and in what way. Or maybe he was thinking about how tomorrow he’ll be on a plane to LA, and how the next few weeks might determine the trajectory of his career.

When he saw I was awake, his expression cleared. He pulled me into his arms, pressing a kiss against my messy hair. “Why are you staring at me?”

“Because you’re very pretty,” I croaked out.

His grin was tender, but since then he’s been vacillating between inhaling like he wants to say something and watching me with a look I can’t decipher.

With Adam and Grace spending the morning getting ready together, Eli and I decided to do the same. Even though I’ve been savoring every second of it, it’s with a panicky flair; the real world beyond our hotel room door is knocking incessantly. Tomorrow we’re going home, and that home is in different places, as it always was. He’s in his head, I’m in mine.

And now, those goddamn clouds, the wet ground. Sometime overnight it must’ve rained.

“Do you think Adam’s flipping out?” I ask as I make my way to the closet to change. My dress is a satin number with a slit that goes up to my

thigh, in a rich green that matches the Blue Yonder vines. “Odds are always high.”

“He’s probably making a voodoo doll of Grace’s meteorologist cousin.” Eli’s laughter washes over me as I drop my robe and step into the dress, pulling the spaghetti straps over my shoulders. The zipper is going to be impossible to pull up on my own. “Do you mind—”

But he’s already there, one hand holding the zipper at the base of my spine, the other pinching the fabric together mid-back. I shiver at how avid his touch is even in the middle of something so mundane.

“It’s unreal,” he says quietly, “that I love watching you get dressed as much as I love watching you get naked. I used to sit at the office when I was working late and think about how you were probably putting on your pajamas and I was missing it, and fucking hating myself. I never thought I’d get to watch you do it again.” His exhale brushes over my neck, right below where I’ve fashioned my hair into a loose bun. “Don’t think I’m taking this moment for granted, Georgia, or any moment you’ve given me this week.”

My throat goes fist-tight at the mention of our past. He curls his hands around my shoulders and I catch the resolute press of his mouth in the mirror just before he turns me around.

It feels like I’m crashing into him for the first time again when our eyes meet; my breath is gone, and deep inside me, a lock clicks.

Oh, hell.

“Eli—”

“I know we have our agreement,” he says, and panic blooms on me like a blush. “But I’ve spent all week—actually, fuck it—many years not saying things and regretting it. I’m done not saying them. I—”

There’s an urgent knock at the door.

Eli’s gaze slips over my shoulder, then lands back on me, fire flashing in his eyes.

Another knock, this one louder. “I—I have to get that,” I manage. “Of course you do,” he sighs.

I whirl, walking on numb legs to open the door, which sets off a series of unfortunate events. The first is that the handle catches on my dress seam and rips a healthy gash in it. The second is that I’m so busy gasping about my dress that I fling the door open wide enough that Adam—who’s standing there with a stormcloud expression—sees Eli in my room before I can formulate a reason he’s here.

“Oh good, there you are,” he says to Eli, releasing a sharp breath. “I knocked on your door but no one answered.”

The level of unbothered in his voice coupled with what he just interrupted spirals me higher. “We— he was just—”

“She ripped her dress and I heard her yelling down the hall,” Eli steps in. “She’s freaking out.”

I throw him a look over my shoulder, and he raises an eyebrow like, aren’t you? That man and his damn double meanings and his damn inconvenient reckonings.

Adam waves that off, like he doesn’t care. I’m baffled by it, until his distraction from the knife-cut tension in here becomes clear.

“Unless you’ve got something vital hanging out, you need to forget about your dress for now,” he says grimly. “We need to get over to Blue Yonder. Everything’s fucked.”