Pieces of Summer (A stand-alone novel)(58)

“You’re awake, aren’t you?” she mumbles against my chest.

“How’d you know?” I ask her, smiling like an idiot for no reason at all.

“Your breaths aren’t as deep when you’re awake.”

“Very perceptive.”

“You have no idea.”

She yawns while rolling over, and I come down on top of her, smiling down at her as she smiles up at me.

“Come on. I want you to hang out with me at the shop today.”

“Why?” she asks sleepily.

“Because I’m pathetic and don’t want to risk you disappearing,” I tell her with a shrug, watching as she beams up at me like I’ve said something magical.





Chapter 35


MIKA



My fingers have been running through Chase’s hair for so long, and he breathes easily as I continue my pattern.

“You’re the only one who has ever done that,” he murmurs sleepily.

A smile breaks across my face, and I kiss him on the cheek. “Good.”

He grabs my wrist and pulls it down to kiss my hand, before entwining our fingers together.

“I’ll go to sleep if you don’t stop,” he says with that boyish grin he’s been wearing lately. It’s a stark contrast to the scowl he wore when I first came into town. “And we still need to order something to eat,” he adds.

Smiling, I turn my attention back toward the sky.

“So no food is allowed in the house or something?” Chase asks me as we stare up at the stars, lying on the roof—our spot. We’re holding hands like teenagers, and my head is now on his shoulder.

“Or something,” I answer on a happy sigh, loving the way he feels against me.

For the past week, I’ve gone to his shop a few times. I’ve also gone to the bowling alley a lot, checking in on things. Chuck is good about filling me in on how amazing the numbers look, without giving me actual numbers.

He’s a good man who doesn’t ask a lot of questions, but does exactly as I ask. I think he enjoys this job a lot more than he liked his gas station job with random hours that made it hard to have a steady home life.

As for me, I’ve worked twice as hard to make sure not to fall into a routine since Chase doesn’t realize there can’t be a routine.

I set the alarm differently, changing the minute back and forth by a couple or a single digit each day so he can get ready for work. But I’m still worried what will happen now if it doesn’t go off at all. I’ve gotten used to hearing an alarm daily, even if it isn’t at the same time.

I’ll worry about that when the time comes.

I never let him use the snooze button, since that’s a habit for normal people.

I used to love the snooze button.

Painstaking measures have been taken to keep him from unknowingly breaking too many of my rules. It’s hard as hell, but it’s worth it.

And sex is incredible. I’ve missed it. And it’s not being used as a coping mechanism. Since Chase is very unpredictable and has excellent stamina, there’s also nothing habitual about it, other than the fact it’s been daily…

Deciding not to think about it, I look up to see him smirking toward the sky.

“What are you thinking?” I ask him.

“Honestly?” he muses as his smirk turns into a full-blown grin.

“Yes…”

He glances down at me and waggles his eyebrows. “I’m thinking about how I lost my virginity in this exact spot.”

I laugh lightly while rolling my eyes. “Our roof,” I sigh.

“Well, yeah, but I mean this very exact spot on the roof.”

I can’t help but laugh a little harder. “You can’t know this was the very exact spot.”

His eyebrows go up in challenge. “Trust me, Mika. I was a sixteen-year-old boy and f*cking head-over-heels in love with you. There’s no doubt in my mind this was the exact spot, because it’s seared into my memory as the best day of my life.”

My smile only grows as my hand skates across the button of his jeans, slowly undoing it. He watches me with a smirk, as I push his shirt up and kiss the lines of his abs.

“You also had another first up here,” I tell him as I slowly unzip his jeans.

His breath rattles for a second as I push them down his hips, keeping my lips near his abs while continuing to stare up at him.

“First blowjob was over there,” he says promptly, pointing to his right.

I burst out laughing when he smiles at me, and it definitely shatters the sexual tension I was aiming for. He raises his hips, helping me slide his jeans farther down, and he lowers back down after I get his boxers down, exposing his erection.

“I actually feel like a teenager again, considering that bastard stays hard around you.”

When I giggle like an idiot, he watches me, smiling like he’s soaking it all in. It feels so amazing… so real.

This is so different from what I expected when I came back to this place. I expected closure, not hanging all my hard work on a pile of coals and waiting for it to burn.

But it’ll be a beautiful blaze when it all catches fire, and so worth it. He makes it all worth the inevitable crash. I just want to live one last time the way I used to live before it was all taken away from me.