“You deserve another try. You deserve a lot.”
“In the immortal words of Pretty Woman, the bad stuff is easier to believe. Especially when it’s been ingrained in me since birth. My parents have been telling me I’m a mistake since the day they learned who I was. You want to take that on?” I shook my head. “I won’t do that to you, River. I won’t force my mess on you.”
He looked as if he wanted to say something else but kept it to himself. We finished our meal over lighter talk. I had to practically wrestle him for the check, but we left the bistro with me victorious and River with a cute glower on his face.
We walked to his grubby little hotel, up four flights with no elevator. He unlocked a door that opened on a tiny room, hardly bigger than my closet at the Bristol.
“This is cozy,” I said, glancing around. “Where’s the bathroom?”
“Down the hall.” River smirked at my aghast expression. “It’s not Versailles but it works.”
A cutting joke came to my lips, but I was with River. The room could’ve been a literal hole in the ground and I’d never want to leave.
We stripped down to our underwear, me in a sleeveless T-shirt and boxers, and him in a plain white shirt and boxer briefs.
“How exactly is this going to work?” I asked. “The bed is small, and you cannot sleep on this dirty floor. I will not allow it.”
“We’ll both sleep on the bed. But that’s all we are doing. Sleeping.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve made it abundantly clear there will be no fucking.”
He smiled grimly. “I’m reminding myself.”
We lay side-by-side on the bed that was too small, River on his stomach, me on my back. He draped his arm over my chest. My arm curled under it, my fingers playing in his hair. Exhaustion weighed over me like a heavy coat.
“I don’t know what to do,” River said after a few moments, his voice heavy with sleep. “I want to help you, but I don’t know how.”
“Neither do I.”
“But I can tell you that if I didn’t have a car to restore, I’d be wrecked too. It helps to have something to work toward. Something real that’s not damn thinking.”
I inhaled. “An agent approached me a couple weeks ago. The night I sent you my journals, actually. He wants me to write a book.”
River lifted his head. “Holden… Shit, that’s amazing. Do that.”
“I can’t write a book.”
“You’ve already written a hundred books,” he said with a grin. “What’s one more?”
“Stop it,” I said. “If you smile like that at me one more time, I’m going to have to sleep on the floor. I won’t be able to keep from kissing you.”
“I changed my mind,” River said, his voice gruff. “I’ll kiss you goodnight.”
He pushed himself up on his elbows. My heart stopped as he lowered his mouth to mine and started again at the first touch of his lips. A soft groan rumbled from his chest as I opened for him and his tongue slid inside. He kissed me deeply, thoroughly, and then I took my turn, tasting every corner of his mouth, sucked at his tongue, bit at his lips. No one tasted like River—clean and pure and good. Kissing him was more potently intimate than anything I’d done with anyone else over the last year, erasing them all. Leaving me a clean slate. No one had mattered since River and no one ever would.
Too soon, the kiss was over, and River lowered his head heavily to his pillow, while I now had to contend with a hard-on tenting my underwear.
I gestured at it with a frown. “Well, I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
He chuckled. “You’re not alone. I’m as hard as a rock down here.”
“There’s a remedy for that. More than one, actually.”
“Go to sleep, Holden,” he said, his eyes already falling shut. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” I said, but as tired as I was, sleep wouldn’t come.
Tell him. Tell him you love him with your own voice.
But River’s breathing was already deep and even. His face relaxed. Content.
I’ll tell him in the morning, I thought. In broad daylight. And maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe Alaska will stay away and we can be happy…
I fell asleep with a different life dancing in my thoughts, but when I woke up, that broad daylight showed me an empty bed. River’s things were gone, and a note sat propped on the small desk.
Holden,
I got a text from my sister. Dad’s had an accident. Not bad, just a fender-bender, but Amelia’s freaking out. I’m going back. I think maybe it’s better I go anyway. If I stay, my willpower will break down and I won’t get out of that bed with you.
And that’s not why I came here. I came to tell you that even thousands of miles away, I’m still here for you. I can’t make you believe me when I say that I love you, but I do. I think you love me too, and when you come back to me, I’ll be waiting.
Love,
River
The note fell from my hand. Paris outside the window blurred. A feeling expanded in my chest—pain that he was gone already but something good, too. Bigger. Like a dawn breaking after the darkest night. Moving stiffly but quickly, I dressed and went out. River had already paid the hotel bill. I called a cab and took it back to the Bristol.
The remnants of a small gathering—empty glasses, a room service cart, and overflowing ashtrays—littered the suite. All signs that Alexandre brought the party here in order to charge everything to my room. Jean-Baptiste was
