Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(89)

MARCH

Caroline




We got five weeks.

I’d teased West for counting the days of our separation, even though I spent them dragging around, doubting myself, wrecked with missing him. But when we were together—the last two weeks of February, the first three weeks of March—it was so good that every day felt like an anniversary. Every day felt special, worth pressing into a scrapbook, sealing in amber, tucking away.

Nights at the bakery. Showers at the apartment, a snack in the quiet kitchen, trying not to wake Krishna, laughing behind my hand. Mornings in West’s bed, hands and mouths and the slow, beautiful rhythm of his body rocking into mine.

The way he moves has always made me crazy, but there is nothing like the way he moves inside me. Nothing.

I didn’t know it could be like that. So dirty and so good. So gorgeous and perfect.

For five weeks, we were always together. I went back to my vampire schedule, napping in the afternoons, waking up in the middle of the night and meeting him at the bakery for his shifts. I studied at the library when he was working there, set myself up in a carrel on the fourth floor and waited in the quiet for him to find a cart of journals that needed shelving. I pushed my fingers into his hair when he dropped to his knees beneath my chair, bit my thumb to keep from crying out, came against his fingers and his tongue, scandalous and forbidden and happy.

He kissed me in the dining hall. I took his hand when we walked across the quad. We raced each other down the train tracks, one on each rail, balancing with our arms out, pushing at each other’s hands to see who could stay on the longest, who would fall off, who would win.

Those were the best weeks. In the dead of February, the frozen cold, I had West, and we were beautiful and bright, friends and lovers, laughing all the time. Laughing until my cheeks ached and my stomach hurt and I had to ask him to stop, because it was so good, it hurt.

I loved him.

I didn’t tell him, but it was obvious. Obvious to me, obvious to West.

Obvious to anyone who was paying attention.



West is sitting on the edge of the mattress, bent over his phone. He’s got an eight o’clock. I don’t have to be up for another hour, but I’m up anyway. West had ideas.

Or, okay, West’s penis had ideas. I woke up to his mouth on my neck, his hand heavy and hot against my stomach, his erection pressing against my ass.

“Good morning?” I said. Because I wasn’t all that sure. That it was good, or that it was even morning.

“Mmm.”

That was pretty much all it took to convince me. He has this way of humming under his breath, this low, delicious sound that vibrates right up against my clit. It’s so sexy. It’s so West. One mmm, and I’m in.

I mean, what’s there to complain about when you’re with a guy who’s gorgeous and nice and who wakes you up with the slow, inexorable press of his fingers into your panties, parting your folds, sliding over your clit and inside you?

Nothing.

He got me breathing heavy, flipped me over, eased a pillow under my stomach, and moved into me from behind, his hand at my clit, kissing my neck, my shoulders, until I came so hard I saw stars.

After he was done collapsing on top of me like a giant slug-man, he took a shower, so now he smells like soap, wet hair, West. I’m still all snuggly and sex-relaxed, and he’s whistling, rubbing my bare leg, scrolling through a bunch of texts.

“Who wrote to you?”

“Franks.”

“What’s she up to?”

“She got on Mom’s phone and sent me a whole bunch of selfies.”

“Let me see.”

I crawl half onto his lap, and he shows me. “She’s so cute.”

She looks a lot like him—West with round cheeks and a sharp chin, eye makeup, and a sparkly shirt. She’s in love with taking selfies, too. I’ve seen probably thirty of them in the past three weeks, because West has been as open as he promised to be. He told me all about Frankie, about his mom and Bo, about his dad.

There are some things he’s holding back, I think. Something about sex, about that money I dropped in his lap. But I know enough. I don’t need to know absolutely everything to understand what makes West tick.

Sometimes I think about what life gave me compared to what it’s given him, how hard he works, and I get so angry. He doesn’t like to talk about fairness and unfairness, though, or to dwell on the gap between how we grew up.

“It is what it is,” he said last time I brought it up. “You hungry?”

He says now, “She’s got all that crap on her eyes.”

“It’s called eye makeup.” I peer at the phone. “Actually, that’s a good nighttime eye. I can never get my eyeliner to look that awesome.”

“You don’t wear that stuff.”

“Not for everyday, but sometimes if there’s a party or whatever.”

He frowns at the pictures. “She’s too young.”

“She’s just trying it out. I was the same at her age. In a big hurry for bras and lipstick, all that stuff.”

“Yeah, but I doubt you had anybody sniffing after you in Ankeny. It’s different with Franks. She’s got to be smart, or some useless jag-off will get her knocked up before she’s even old enough to know what she wants yet.”