New York Billionaires Series

He stands, my legs locked around his waist, and walks us to the bedroom. I close the door and watch him through hooded eyes. He watches me back, the want and love stark in his gaze. I lift my dress over my head and revel in it. Shake my hair out, undo my bra, tossing it away. He drinks me in, taking off his own clothes with fast movements.

I run my hand through his chest hair and he shudders. How many times have we done this before? And still, today feels different. Every touch laden with meaning.

He runs featherlight fingers up my bare arms. “I’m so grateful,” he says, “that I’ll have the memory of your beauty, for however long I get to keep it.”

That’s when my tears fall.

He kisses them away, and I kiss him back, pouring everything I feel into the touch. We’re gentle with each other, each touch slow, like we’re drawing it out. Like we don’t want it to end.

When he reaches for a condom from my bedside table, I run my hand over his broad back. “I’ve booked an appointment with my ob-gyn next week.”

He pauses, chest rising with his heavy breathing. “You did?”

“For birth control,” I say. We haven’t spoken about a relationship. About making us official. But that had been where we’d been heading, at least for me, and so…

I’d made the call.

Anthony shudders, eyes glazing over. He runs a hand down the inside of my thigh. “Very good thinking,” he murmurs.

I watch him put the condom on with practiced hands, and then he’s pushing into me with delicious slowness, both of us exhaling at the pleasure.

In the weeks since we first did this, Anthony and I have explored plenty. There have been fast times. Hard times. Ones where we both laughed afterwards at how loud it had gotten, or where my skin smarted from the force.

This isn’t one of those times.

He holds himself above me as he moves, and I rise to meet him. Burying my hands in his hair and wondering if this is how it feels to fall in love with someone. To lose your footing, and plummet to that final depth, where you know you’ll never be the same person again for having had them in your life.

Tears leak out of my eyes again, sliding down my temples and dampening my hair. Anthony feels them. Lifts himself up on an elbow to look at me.

The concern and emotion on his face undoes me. I tighten my grip on him. “Anthony,” I murmur. “I love-”

He halt my words with a kiss and shudders in my arms. “Don’t, Summer. Please. I won’t be able… please.”

“Okay,” I murmur. “I won’t.”

He smooths my hair back with his free hand, still buried deep inside me. “Not until I’m back with you. Not until I’m better.”

“Okay,” I whisper. Lock my legs behind his back.

“It’s not that I don’t-”

This time, I’m the one who stops his words with my lips. They aren’t needed. Not as we cling to each other in my small bed, chasing away the future one touch at a time.

My grand dedication to change starts small. Minuscule, in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t involve a cane, or braille, or any of the things I’ve avoided in the dark, curtain-drawn cave of my townhouse.

It starts with taking out old take-away boxes.

They pile up in the weeks between the cleaners, for no other reason than I don’t care about this place. Or about myself, really, when I’m… well.Owned by NôvelDrama.Org.

But I’m going to have to start.

Summer gave me permission to leave my baggage and failing eyesight at the door. To forget about the accommodations and timelines entirely, for five minutes, for an hour, for an evening.

She was brilliant escapism, a reminder of the goodness all around us, and a few of those rays landed on me.

But I want more than evenings in her apartment. More than her having to sneak about, worrying about what her aunt will say. I want her to do all the things on her bucket list, and I want to be there for some of them. Most of them. All of them, damn it.

So I take out the trash.

The futility of it in comparison to what I have left to do almost undoes me. Takes the wind out of my sails and leads me back to my computer or my bed, to the oblivion of work or sleep.

But I resist.

I throw the curtains open in the old townhouse instead, this place that had once been filled with life. I used to have friends over. Friends I’d neglected. Family. I’d neglected them, too.

My walk around the grocery store is pathetic, but I do it. Buy some of the things I’ve seen Summer use. Stock my fridge.

And then I stare at my phone, at that scary, silent glass object resting on my kitchen counter.

Call Dr. Johnson is the one point on this little to-do-list of mine that I don’t want to do. Correction-one of the many. But it’s at the very top.

I can’t see myself walking with a cane. A fumbling idiot on the street, that’ll be me. Having to rely on the world at large for my safety. What do I do if I’m lost? Hold up my hand and wear a placid, come-help-me smile?

Dear God, I’ll be at the complete mercy of voice activation on my phone. Siri already misunderstands me half of the time.

The floor sways beneath my feet, threatens to give out. This can’t be happening.

But it is, I remind myself, fighting with the bottomless pit inside me. It is, and running from it won’t make my eyes stop worsening. Won’t do a damn thing.

So I reach for my phone.

Three hours later, I’m walking with Tristan in Central Park. He’s staring down at his phone, sorting through email.

He’s not Dr. Johnson.

He’s also confused as to why I showed up at the Acture Capital and asked if he wanted to take a walking meeting. Hell, he’s probably confused as to why I haven’t said a word in the past five minutes, despite asking him out here.

I hardly know why myself.

“How’s Freddie?” I ask.

He smiles, sliding his phone into his pocket. “Good. Great, actually. I’ve almost convinced her to move in with Joshua and me.”

“Damn. That’s great.”

“Yeah, it is.” He shakes his head, a fond smile on his face. “You know, I always thought the idea of sharing my life with someone would be difficult. Impossible, even. With her, though, it’s been seamless. Sure, we’ve had to compromise on things, but on the whole… Seamless.”

“I’m happy for you,” I say.