It takes him a moment to process what I’ve said before he leans in again, teeth grazing my jaw. I exhale through my nose before my head falls back against the wall and I give in. His hands return to my waist, rougher now, yanking my shirt up and over my head before he works my skirt down my h*ps and into a puddle on the floor.

But even as he cups me in his hand, sucking in a jagged breath through his teeth and whispering, “Tu es parfaite,” I can’t touch him back with any sort of tenderness. I feel punitive and selfish and still so angry. The combination pulls a tight choking sound from my mouth and his hand stills where he’d been pushing my underwear aside.

“Be angry,” he rasps. “Show me what angry looks like.”

It’s a beat before the words bubble up, but when they come growling out, it doesn’t sound like me: “Your mouth.”

I unleash the girl who lets herself feel anger, who can punish. I shove his chest hard, both palms flat to pectorals, and he stumbles back, lips parted and eyes wide with thrill. I push him again, and his knees meet the edge of the bed and he crumples backward, scooting up to the headboard and watching me stalk him, climb on him until my h*ps are level with his face and I can reach down and grab a fistful of his hair.

“I’m not okay,” I tell him, holding him back as he tries to push forward, to kiss me, lick me, maybe even bite me.

“I know,” he says, eyes dark and urgent. “I know.”

I lower my h*ps and hear a primitive cry tear from my throat as his open mouth makes contact with my cl*t and he sucks, lifting his arms and wrapping them in tight bands around my hips. He’s wild and hungry, letting out perfect pleading growls and satisfied moans when I begin to rock and ride him, my fist in his hair.

His mouth is both soft and strong, but he’s letting me control everything—the speed and pressure and it’s so good but God, I want you in me so deep I feel you in my throat.

Ansel laughs against my skin and I realize I’ve said this out loud. Irritation washes over me like a heated blush and I pull away, humiliated. Vulnerable.

“No,” he whispers. “No, no. Viens par ici.” Come here.

I make him work for it, fingers coaxing and his soft pleading noises until finally he pulls my h*ps back down and urges me with fingers pressed into my flesh to chase my pleasure again, to give him this in this twisted game of me giving him what he needs by riding his face.

I’m prickling everywhere—along my neck and down my arms, feeling hypersensitive and overheated. But the sensitivity is nearly unbearable where he’s licking me, because it’s too good, it’s nearly impossible that I can be this close, so soon

so soon

so f**king soon

but I am.

The top half of my body falls forward, fingers white-knuckling the headboard, and I’m coming, screaming, pressing so hard into his mouth I don’t know how he can breathe but he’s savage beneath me—still—hands gripping my h*ps and not letting me budge for a second until my muscles go lax and he can feel my orgasm subside against his lips.

I feel ravaged and worshipped as I slip, boneless, to the bed. I feel his fear and his love and his panic and finally, I let loose the sob that’s been held back in my throat for what feels like hours. In a quiet rush, I know we’re both sure of one thing: I’m leaving.

He moves to my ear, and his voice is so jagged it’s barely recognizable when he asks, “Do you ever feel like your heart is twisted inside your chest, and somebody has their fist wrapped around it, squeezing?”

“Yes,” I whisper, closing my eyes. I can’t see him like this, the sadness I’m sure I’ll see on his face.

“Mia? Mia, I’m so sorry.”

“I know.”

“Tell me you still . . . like me.”

But I can’t. My anger doesn’t work that way. So instead of waiting for me to answer, he bends to kiss my ear, my shoulder, whispering into my neck words I don’t understand.

Slowly, we catch our breath and his mouth finds its way to mine. He kisses me forever like this—and I let him—it’s the only way I can tell him I love him even as I’m also saying goodbye.

IT SEEMS TO go against every instinct I have to be the one getting out of bed first, and dressing in the dark while he sleeps. As quietly as I can, I pull my clothes from the dresser and dump them into my suitcase. My passport is just where he said it would be—in the top drawer of the dresser—and something about this tears at the thin lining still holding me together. I leave most of my toiletries behind; packing them would be loud and I don’t want to wake him. I’m going to seriously miss my fancy new face cream but I don’t think I would be able to walk away from him if he was awake, watching me silently, and especially if he was trying to talk me out of this.

It’s a trickle of hesitation I should listen to—maybe a message that I’m not sure this is the best idea I’ve ever had—but I don’t. I barely even look over at him—still mostly clothed and sprawled out on top of the covers—while I’m packing and dressing and searching the desk in the living room for a piece of paper and a pen.

Because once I step back into the bedroom and I do see him, I can’t imagine looking away. Only now do I realize I hadn’t taken the time to appreciate how ridiculously hot he looked last night. The deep blue button-down shirt—slim-cut to fit the wide stretch of his chest, the narrow dip of his waist—is unbuttoned just beneath the hollow of his throat, and my tongue feels thick with the need to bend down, suck on those favorite transitions of mine: neck to chest, chest to shoulder. His jeans are worn and perfect, faded over time in all the best, familiar places. At the thigh, over the button fly. He didn’t even take off his favorite brown belt before falling asleep—it’s just hanging open, his pants unbuttoned and slung low on his hips—and suddenly my fingers itch to pull the leather free of the loops, to see and touch and taste his skin just one more time.

I probably can’t, but it feels like I can see the trip of his pulse in his throat, imagine the warm taste of his neck on my tongue. I know how his sleepy hands would weave into my hair as I worked his boxers down his hips. I even know the desperate relief I would see in his eyes if I woke him up right now—not to tell him goodbye, but to make love one last time. To forgive him with words. No doubt true makeup sex with Ansel would be so good I’d forget, while he was touching me, that there was ever any distance between us at all.

And now that I’m here, struggling to be quiet and leave without waking him, it fully registers that I can’t touch him again before I go. I swallow back a tight, heavy lump in my throat, a sob I think would escape in a sharp gasp, like steam under pressure, pushed from a teapot. The pain is like a fist to my stomach, punching me over and over until I want to punch it back.

I’m an idiot.

But damn. So is he.

It takes so many long, painful seconds for me to pull my eyes away from where he lies and down to the pen and paper in my hands.

What the hell am I supposed to write here? It’s not goodbye, most likely. If I know him at all—and I do, no matter how small a drop that knowledge felt last night—he won’t leave the rest of this to phone calls and emails. I’ll see him again. But I’m leaving while he sleeps, and given the reality of his job, I may not see him for months. This isn’t exactly the right moment for a see-you-soon note, anyway.

So I opt for the easiest, and the most honest, even if my heart seems to twist into a knot in my chest as I write it.

This isn’t never. It’s just not now.

All my like,

Mia

I really need to figure out my own messes before I blame him for shoving his in the proverbial box, and keeping them under his proverbial bed.

But f**k, did I want this to be now, yes, forever.

Chapter TWENTY

IT’S STILL DARK when I step out onto the sidewalk, and the lobby door swings closed behind me. A taxi waits, headlamps extinguished while it idles at the curb, its shape swathed in a circle of artificial yellow light from the streetlamp above. The driver glances at me from over the top of his magazine, expression sour, face lined in what appears to be a permanent look of distaste.

I’m suddenly aware of how I must look—hair a mess and last night’s makeup still smudged around my eyes, dark jeans, dark sweater—like some sort of criminal slinking off into the shadows. The phrase “fleeing the scene of the crime” rings through my head and I sort of hate how accurate it feels.

He steps from the cab and meets me at the back of the car, trunk already open and smoldering cigarette suspended from his frowning mouth.

“American?” he asks, his accent as thick as the puffs of smoke that escape with every syllable.

Irritation grates at my nerves but I only nod, not bothering to ask how he knew or why because I already know: I stick out like a sore thumb.

Either he doesn’t notice my lack of response or he doesn’t care because he takes my suitcase, lifts it without effort, and deposits it in the trunk of the car.

It’s the same bag I arrived with, the same one I hid after only a few days because it looked too new and out of place in the middle of Ansel’s warm and comfortable flat. At least that’s what I’d told myself at the time, tucking it away inside the closet near his bedroom door where it wouldn’t serve as a daily reminder of my impermanence here, or that my place in his life would end as soon as the summer did.

I open my own door and climb inside; closing it with the least amount of sound I can manage. I know how well noises travel through the open windows and I absolutely don’t let myself look up or imagine him lying there in bed, waking to an empty flat or hearing the closing of a taxi door on the street below.

The driver drops into the seat in front of me and meets my eyes in the rearview mirror expectantly. “Airport,” I tell him, before looking quickly away.

I’m not even sure what I’m feeling as he puts the car into gear and slips into the street. Is it sadness? Yes. Worry, anger, panic, betrayal, guilt? All of those. Have I made a mistake? Has this entire thing been one colossal bad choice after another? I had to leave anyway, I tell myself; this was just a little ahead of schedule. And even if I didn’t, it was right to get some space, some perspective, some clarity . . . right?

I almost laugh. I feel anything but clarity.

I vacillate so wildly between last night was no big deal and last night was a deal breaker, between leaving is the right thing to do and turn around you’re making a huge mistake! that I begin to doubt every thought I have. Being alone and stuck in my own head on a thirteen-hour flight is going to be torture.

The taxi moves too fast through the empty streets, and my stomach lurches much in the same way it did that first morning here, but for an entirely different reason this time. There’s a part of me that would almost welcome throwing up right now, would find it preferable to the constant, pressing ache I’ve had since last night. At least I know vomiting would pass and I could close my eyes, pretend the world isn’t spinning, that there isn’t really a hole in my chest, the edges raw and jagged.

The city whips by in a blur of stone and concrete, industrial silhouettes dotting the same horizon as buildings that have stood for hundreds of years. I press my forehead to the glass and try to block out every moment of that first morning with Ansel. How sweet and attentive he was, and how I worried I was ruining it all and it would be over before it ever really began.

The sun isn’t up yet but I can make out trees and grassy fields, muddied blurs of green that border the freeway and bridge the distance between stretches of urban sprawl. I have the eeriest sensation of moving backward through time, and erasing everything.

I pull out my phone and bring up the airline app, log in, and search through the available flights. My decision to leave looks even more glaring in the too-bright light of the screen as it cuts through the darkness, reflecting back to me in the windows at my side.

I hover over the arrival city and nearly laugh at my imagined dilemma over choices, because I know I’ve already decided what I’m going to do.

The first flight of the day leaves in just over an hour, and it seems too easy to make the necessary selections and book my return trip with barely a hiccup.

Finished, I shut off my phone and tuck it away, watching out at the bleary city as it begins to wake on the other side of the glass.

There were no messages so I can assume Ansel is still asleep, and if I close my eyes I can still see him, body stretched over the mattress, jeans barely clinging to his hips. I can remember the way his skin looked in the low light while I gathered my things, the way the shadows drew him like canvas covered in charcoal. I can’t bring myself to imagine him waking up and realizing I’m gone.

The taxi stops at the curb and I see the price on the meter. My fingers tremble as I find my wallet and count out the fare. The broad, colorful bills still look so foreign in my hand that on impulse I fold the entire stack, pressing them into the driver’s waiting palm.