I feel her smile against my skin.
“Isn’t it obvious?” she asks. “I want you.”
I close my eyes briefly and shudder. My hands are on her hips, keeping her in place, and I don’t remember putting them there. My body is betraying me.
“You shouldn’t,” I say. “I can’t give you anything other than trouble.”
Georgia lets out a short laugh.
“You say that like you’ve given me anything but trouble since we met,” she murmurs. “Even at twelve you were always getting yourself into all sorts of scrapes, forcing me to either follow you or bail you out. For the last ten years I’ve been by your side, helping you get your life back together. Now you want me to walk away? If I didn’t walk away ten years ago, when you were at your worst, what makes you think I’ll walk away when you’re at the strongest I’ve seen you in ten years?”
I wake up a little at her words. This isn’t what I want. I pull back, laughing harshly.
“And that’s why you need to walk away,” I say. “You’ve given me too much. It isn’t fair.”
Surprisingly, Georgia smiles.
“Ethan…I would give you everything,” she says seriously. “What would you give me?”
I claim, constantly, that I would give Lily the world if I could. But for Georgia…
“My life,” I whisper.
Her fingers are playing with the hairs at the nape of my neck again, curling and tugging at them. Her body is so perfectly aligned to mine, her hips pressing against mine as my cock becomes painfully hard. She moves against me purposefully, and I know she’s trying, successfully, to drag arousal from me.
“I know,” she says. “So stop lying to me, Ethan. I told you what I want. What do you want now?”
Fuck, I don’t want to say, because it would break everything apart. But I can’t think with the way Georgia is slowly rubbing herself against me, her words penetrating the last of the thick walls I once built around my heart. She’s been tearing them down bit by bit for years without me realizing, and now she’s finally infiltrated the last of the barriers. There’s no more argument, I can’t deny her or these terrifying feelings any more.
“I want you in my life,” I say. I close my eyes, defeated. “I want to support you and see you every day, and share laughter with you and Lily. You’re my family. My best friend.” I breathe in shakily. “The only woman I’ll ever love again.”
I lower my head, resting my forehead against her shoulder. There it is, the end of it all. I can’t keep up the charade any longer, not with Georgia’s might against me and the clear evidence of how much it’s hurting both of us. I never wanted to hurt Georgia, even if I did so to keep her away from me, where she can only know misery.
“I can’t make you happy,” I whisper.
Georgia laughs.
“And this is why you’re a moron,” she says. “You already make me the happiest person in the world.”
I feel the softest pressure on my hair, a light touch that leaves me feeling loved and wanted. I breathe deeply into her shoulder as her fingers massage little circles onto the back of my neck. It’s both comforting and arousing.
“Stop worrying about what you can’t give me,” Georgia says. “All I ever wanted from you was your love. If you can give me that, I’ll never need anything else.”
How am I supposed to argue against that? Georgia is telling me that everything will be okay, that we can make this work somehow. I remember, before I can stop the hopeful thoughts from creeping over me, working out a possibility for a long-distance relationship. We can do that, then, can’t we? It will be hard, but I’m definitely not going to be meeting anyone else. We can visit each other and, during the school holidays, Lily and I can organize a trip to New Jersey. It will be fun. We can do it.
And maybe it won’t work out. But that’ll be okay, too. Isn’t trying the most important thing? I just need to give us a chance, the one thing Georgia has been begging me for since forever, it appears.
“An hour isn’t too far away,” I murmur.
“What?” Georgia asks.
I raise my head.
“New Jersey,” I say. “It’s not a huge distance. If…if we want to try a long-distance relationship, it’s not so far that we can’t visit.”
Georgia hesitates. Then she smiles.
“No, it isn’t, but that isn’t going to matter,” she says. I frown, wondering what she means by that. “We still need to talk about that…but, right now, it’s enough to know that you’re willing to think about the possibility. Please, Ethan… We can do this together. Let us try. No matter what happens, we can make this work if we’re with one another.”