Time lingered and swam. She didn’t count the minutes, focusing instead on Reece’s hands at her hips and the delicious grind of him against her ass. She twined her arms up to weave her fingers through his hair. When her nails grazed his scalp, he shivered despite the heat. Before long they were caked in sweat, surrounded and alone in the sauna of the dance floor.
Charlotte turned in his arms. She sought out his mouth, his breath spilling across her face. Reece’s tongue traced her lips and she opened for him, licking at his teeth. He yanked her closer with a muffled curse.
What a surreal fantasy: the pink and purple lights catching Reece’s profile, his breath ragged, his body against hers. Another unlikely moment stolen from the life she didn’t choose. The boy who was never her boyfriend gave her that look under the same white tent, only this time she didn’t run. She finally spoke this language.
She felt things. Her need for him was braided with lilac longing and neon red lust. Her heart rioted at the dangerous truth. She was out of shape for this kind of emotion, breathless and exhausted. She hadn’t trained. She was falling apart in the first stretch of a marathon love.
I feel—
Reece was made to be loved. It wasn’t just the cut of his face against the party lights. Reece was strong and funny and humble. He regulated the temperature of her anxiety like it was second nature to him. He walked four Pomeranians through the Missouri heat. He lost his dad as a teenager and still had the courage to let people into his heart, to let people matter.
He was so worthy of love and yet he never acted entitled to it, pleasantly surprised every time Charlotte touched him. He wanted nothing more than she could offer and deserved everything she had to give.
Someone bumped into her and she stumbled, tripping on her loafers. Reece caught her and kept her upright, his arms coming around her waist. One of his hands found the back of her neck, his fingers already massaging a knot at the top of her spine. She relaxed into him automatically, unable to stop herself, unable to protect herself.
“I gotcha,” he said, “Are you hurt?”
“Just clumsy. And buzzed.”
The crowd was a wild crush. Charlotte stayed close to Reece’s solid form to avoid the bros shoving their way to the bar. She followed Reece’s rhythm. His eyes were electric with happiness, infectious and fascinating. She couldn’t look away, entranced by the life she saw there. The life she wanted. The life she could have had.
I feel—
The speakers blasted another one-hit wonder from the late aughts. Sweat snarled her hair. This time tomorrow she’d arrive at Grand Central utterly alone. Her future was a wide, unforgiving question mark.
But right now, at least she knew this.
She was falling for Reece Krueger.
“Reece,” she said. His name twisted and caught in the blaring music.
He pulled her closer and she pressed her palm against his chest. “What?” he half yelled, leaning down to hold his ear at the level of her mouth.
“I—” She hesitated, her words inadequate.
Did people really do this? Did they just say how they felt, no prelude, no build up?
Charlotte curled her fingers around the edges of his jacket, holding on tight. “I just—”
He pulled back to study her face. Concern weighed down his brow. They weren’t dancing anymore, just standing close in the midst of so many strangers. She wondered what she looked like right now; could he read her? All that love and want and fear?
This was what love was: real love, the kind baked with respect and admiration and humor. She loved who she was with him, and she loved who he was every day of his life.
I think I’m—
Reece cradled her chin in his palm. Charlotte shivered as he brushed his thumb over the soft curve of her cheekbone, an inaudible noise escaping his throat. His dark eyes swirled with emotion.
Then, almost imperceptibly, his jaw tightened. Her breath left her as understanding and something that looked like wonder spread across his face. Maybe no one else would have noticed the difference, but she did. Her heart leapt in her chest, relieved and petrified all at once.
Reece found her right hand on his chest and wrapped it in his left. “I know,” he said roughly.
The raucous soundtrack of the night almost took his words from her, but she could read his lips. Charlotte clung to those two words. They were a promise and a lifeline, a miracle of second chances.
It dawned on her that everything he’d said to her in the last forty-eight hours meant the same thing.
Let me walk you home.
Please dance with me, Charlie.
I’m not letting you go. Not until I’m satisfied.
You’re the only girl I can see.
Everything Reece said to her told her that he loved her. She just needed to listen to him.
“I don’t want to go home,” Charlotte blurted out. It was the closest she could get to making sense of this, the sudden need she felt to crawl under his skin and never, ever leave. She didn’t know how to get on the train tomorrow and pretend she’d never discovered where she belonged. She’d been a fool to think this could only be a weekend—not for Reece’s sake, but for her own.
Reece frowned. He rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand. “Brooklyn’s not right for you,” he said as he stroked her heated skin.
“It’s not that.” She shook her head, desperate to dislodge the fog of her emotions. “I don’t want to not be here.”
But that wasn’t it either. It wasn’t this campus, or this party, or even her phone on silent in her pocket. Her sense of rightness had nothing to do with the light buzz of cupcake vodka. It was Reece’s touch, his eyes poring over her face, his smell swirling through her mind and making her heart scratch.
“I wish we could stay here,” she added, a desperate shot in the dark. “I wish I could do it all over again.”
The same color gradient of feelings she had sorted through all weekend spilled across Reece’s face: the yearning in his eyes for the same, the clench of his jaw as he understood it wasn’t possible, the desperation in his quickened breath to find a way regardless. Lilac and rust and crimson.
Even if he could put aside what happened five years ago, even if she could let him past her ivy-coated walls, even if they could trust each other to choose this properly and permanently…wanting was only half the battle. They were postgrad warriors fighting different battles. Her life was in New York. His was in Missouri.
