CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The heat and the sun woke me the next morning. Its brightness came with the dawn of a new way to begin my day, with someone else here. At first, I was confused when I woke up with Kael, his body running his usual insanely warm temperature. My little room was hot and steam filled the windows. My cheeks flushed with prickly heat, and I looked at him next to me. His eyes were closed, and his lips were ever-so-slightly parted. He was still in his pants and boxers; only his T-shirt and jacket were missing. He proved to be a gentleman who didn’t even try to sleep with me. I couldn’t decide if that was a chivalrous thing or an insult to my ego. Although we hadn’t slept together, it had been the best night of my life.
I was grateful for his eyes being closed, as I couldn’t stop smiling like a lovestruck idiot. I really was a goner. This was going to end horribly. He was so beautiful, thoughtful, gracious, kind, and brilliant, and all of that overpowered the horror of not having a future with him. People my age hooked up all the time; why was my brain acting like we had exchanged vows just because we’d shared the same bed?
Being greedy with our limited time, I used the tip of my finger to trace around his chin; the squareness of his jaw was an art form in itself. As I studied his face I noticed it was marked with little scars. Every one of them made me curious to know where it came from. The one above his eyebrow was deep, along with the one below his lip. I touched it gently; the skin was soft and puffy. Kael rumbled a little and turned his cheek, mumbling something about rocket ships.
Kael draped his arm around me, pinning me to the bed. There was something incredibly safe-feeling about being with him physically. I couldn’t understand it, but the world seemed so far from us, my walls felt ten feet thick, my house made from iron and stone, not brick and drywall. I wondered if I should wake him up. I didn’t know what time it was, but since I didn’t have to work today, I craved a few more minutes with him in the silence.
There were so many things I wanted to do, and they all involved Kael. I hoped Kael didn’t have another full day of appointments. I really, really didn’t want my dreamlike time with him to prematurely come to a screeching, lonely halt. I continued to stare at every feature of his face, his bare chest, the tattoo on his forearm, and the nearby deep scar in the perfect shape of a bullet hole. I shivered and hoped I was wrong about that one. Thinking of him hurt was overwhelming and scary. I tried to analyze how it could be possible to feel this connected to another person after such a short stretch of time. How did I live before this? How would I after it? It was going to be so much worse when he left now that he’d stayed the night with me.
There wasn’t a dull moment the entire night, and as our voices had quietly filled my room with our secrets, I finally realized how insanely rare it was to meet someone who understood me. When Kael opened his eyes, my endorphins rose and I smiled back at his sleepy, so, so swoony grin. He buried his face in my messy hair and groaned, pushing his body against mine. Did he want to kiss me again or was he hiding in embarrassment? My heart pounded as he lifted himself up and faced me.
“Hi.” He spoke softly. His voice was tired and deep.
“Hi,” I whispered back, wondering what the sun would bring.
Kael didn’t say anything.
My paranoia began to grow. “I’m sorry if—”
He rolled on top of me, his arms on both sides of my head. He dipped his head down to look at me. With his mouth, Kael erased my doubts and thoughts as his lips moved down my jaw, across my collarbone. I closed my eyes.
After having an uninterrupted night with Kael, I wanted a thousand more. I wished we could stay in my bed for a week straight. I tried to savor every second we had, to make sure I would have something lasting to hang on to when he wasn’t around. When my thoughts started to spiral again, I began to count the number of times Kael breathed in a minute. I pressed my hand against his chest the way I did once before, so I could feel his heart beating. His tongue made a line from the base of my throat and back up to my lips.
I groaned as he gently opened my mouth with his and kissed me again. I lost count of them; each one was somehow better than the last. It could have been minutes or hours before he gently pulled away from my mouth and kissed my forehead.
I ran through the endearing things I’d learned about him last night. He can’t stand the sound of trains and loves hard candy but has never had a cavity in his life. That the only toothpaste he uses is cinnamon—not only does he hate the smell of peppermint, which I knew, but also the taste. He doesn’t like sports, and has never watched an entire football game start to end. His favorite season is winter. Kael opened up like a thousand novels written just for me, and I longed for the chance to read them all.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Kael kissed against my neck.
“That you’re a library.”
“A library? Is that a good thing?”
I nodded and he turned onto his side to face me, wrapping both of his arms around me and pulling me close to his chest. He gently stroked my hair, and my heart exploded from the sweetness of it. I couldn’t keep my eyes open long when his fingers started to rub my scalp in back-and-forth motions, right above my hairline, the exact same way my mother used to do. Her fingers would circle my head until it prickled and went numb, helping me fall asleep.
“What are your plans for today?” Kael asked after a few seconds of silence.
“Nothing, actually.” I couldn’t see Kael’s face because my head was on his chest. His fingers were rubbing my head, creating that calm numbing sensation that was my favorite part. It was such an intimate feeling that I hadn’t felt since my mom left. I started to tell him that, but he spoke first.
“If you’re up for it, I wanted to show you my place. I don’t have PT or any appointments today. The duplex is a complete mess and in the middle of being renovated, but I wanted to take you there.” He sounded shy by the time he finished.
I couldn’t hide the excitement in my voice. “You do?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“I would love to see it.”
“Cool.” He smiled.
“Cool.” I kissed his grinning mouth.
“You need more days off. Imagine if we had an entire week to ourselves, no family dinners, no work in our way,” he said against my lips.
His fingers moved from my scalp to the ends of my hair. I loved the way his thick fingers wrapped around my dark strands, gently twisting between and around them. I felt so dazed by his attention, so content and warm. I realized that I could actually sleep if I wanted to. That was a first for me, to be so relaxed that I could fall asleep before the sun went down. It had everything to do with him.
Kael started humming a song and told me about this little-known band he found in a bar in Kentucky after he graduated basic training and how he recently heard their song on the radio. I smiled as he hummed a few more bars and started to kiss down his chin, around his collarbone and shoulders. His skin was so soft under my lips and his body shuddered when I kissed the scar tissue that framed his shoulder blade.