“I just need you to know that you’re not alone, that’s all,” I told her, shrugging like it was nothing. It was something. It was everything.
I watched Sadie’s face soften and she moved around on the couch until she was back in my lap, with her arms wrapped tight around my neck and her warm thighs pressed to my sides. The soft smell of her was entirely intoxicating and I let my hands trail softly down her back, squeezing her gently once I reached the creamy pale skin of her thighs. Sadie’s body seemed to fall into me a little at the touch of my hands, pressing against me and pulling back a little to press her lips to my ear. Her cheek pressed to mine while her fingers reached down to tug once at the waistband of my sweatpants.
“Let me know if you want me to stop. Just say the word, and I will.”
I let out a little laugh, winded by the touch of her soft hands over the length of my body. “I don’t think that I’ll ever want you to stop. Carry on.”
“I’m not mad at you, you know,” Sadie breathed after a little laugh, bringing her mouth to mine and kissing me soundly. “I was never really mad anyway.”
“I got that, yeah,” I whispered back, overcome with warmth, and tugging her shirt over her head to expose the silky bra underneath. “You had a right to be upset with me.”
Sadie tucked her warm fingers under my waistband once again, tugging gently at my sweatpants and then reaching her hand inside to squeeze until I gasped out a breath, digging my fingers into her thighs. Sadie grinned at me then, a mischievous glint in her eye. Her auburn hair was mussed and stuck out in all directions and her cheeks were pink. I wanted her so badly that I felt as if I could already taste her on my tongue. I almost couldn’t believe this warm, tangled mess of limbs was what we had become, wrapped up in feelings and tenderness.
At that moment, with her sitting snug in my lap, Sadie Harlow was everything. I wasn’t thinking about the craziness of Games of Love, or of my father, or even of myself. I could only think of her and how important she had become in my life. She was the first thing I thought of in the morning and the last person I thought of at night. I wanted to tell Sadie anything and everything. I hoped that she felt the same. I had never really had anyone to talk to or to come to with my problems, even with Nora and Jack sitting on the sidelines, I still felt alone in my life, and I didn’t mind it that way. Until Sadie and I were pushed together in the odd way that we were, that is. I didn’t want to go back to the way it was before, and I didn’t plan to.
“You’re missing your show,” I murmured teasingly, reaching back to unclasp Sadie’s bra and let it fall away. “Are you sure you don’t want to watch it instead?”
Sadie shook her head, brushing her fingers over my neck as she kissed the pulsing vein there. “I think you might be the better view.”
“Might be, huh?” I scoffed good-naturedly and wrapped my arms around her to tuck her underneath me on the couch, laid out and pressed against me with her breasts bare and creamy pale.
“Oh yeah,” Sadie gasped as I sucked a pebbled nipple into my mouth. She arched her back and her breath whooshed from her lungs, catching in her throat. “Definitely better, I’m sure of it. Don’t stop, Connor.”
I reached down to tug Sadie’s silky panties down her legs, nearly throbbing with want, and—
Sadie’s phone rang shrilly as it vibrated over the table.
I wanted to yell at the injustice of it all.
Sadie jumped at the sound and her breasts bounced, forcing me to stare at them until she shoved me, laughing, and reached for her phone. “Hello? What’s up, Oli? Oh, Rose, hey.”
I sighed and resigned myself to my sad fate, wrapping myself around Sadie so that we were cuddling half-naked on the couch while she talked on the phone with her sister-in-law. After a moment, she turned it on speaker phone and Rose’s tinny, half-annoyed voice came through, every word following after the other in quick succession.
“—that Oliver doesn’t like the color of Sammy’s poop, he thinks it’s too green and mushy, and so we were just wondering if you and Connor wanted to open the store tomorrow while we go to the doctor?”
Sadie looked horrified at the mention of green baby poop and mushiness, and she pulled a face. She shrugged eventually though, and I nodded at her when she looked at me in question. It would be easy to drop by the coffee shop in the morning before we went into the studio, watching it for a bit. We could get breakfast while we were there, and I was eager to be in the warm happiness of Oliver’s shop once again.