Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
No matter how hard I’ve tried over the years to move on, to become numb to his existence, my body still reacts the same in his presence. My mind still wants to take a million walks down our memory lane. And my heart won’t fucking stop loving him.
Between one breath and the next, his lips are on mine and his hand is gently caressing my cheek. I didn’t see it coming, but I don’t stop it either. My body turns to butter and just melts into his embrace as he slides his hands around my waist and pulls me tight against him.
It’s been years since I’ve kissed him. Years since I’ve felt him. And yet, it all still feels so familiar, so perfect, so all-consuming.
Clay has always been the best kind of kisser, his lips and tongue knowing exactly how to coax my body and mind into a whirlwind of passion and arousal and want and need and desire.
And I hate it. I hate it so much.
But I love it more.
I don’t know how long we’re kissing. I don’t know if anyone in the bar can see us. I don’t know anything but right here, right now. I only know his mouth on mine and his hands touching my body and the way every nerve ending beneath my skin has been set on fire.
I only know that I’ve missed this.
I only know that I miss him.
“I love you, Josie,” he whispers against my lips. “I want to be with you. You’re the only woman I want to be with. It’s been five years, and I can’t move on. Don’t want to move on.”
His words are a bucket of ice water, shocking me into realization. This can’t happen. We can’t happen.
Like it or not, the important things haven’t changed.
56
Clay
Sunday, October 31st
Josie is in my arms, and we’re kissing.
She’s kissing me and I’m kissing her, and for the first time since she handed me divorce papers, I actually feel alive.
I feel like the world isn’t shades of depressing gray without anything to look forward to. No. It’s bright and vivid and beautiful. It’s heaven, plain and simple.
I tell her I love her. I tell her I miss her. I tell her I don’t want to be apart anymore. And I kiss her harder after my words, savoring every soft, plush line of her mouth and the silky smoothness of her tongue. She tastes like the white wine she’s been drinking all night, but she also tastes like Josie.
My Josie. My wife.
And she’s right there with me, kissing me right back, sliding her hands into my hair.
Until, she’s not.
With two hands pressed to my chest, she shoves me away from her. Both of us are breathing heavily, and her eyes are wide with emotions I can’t even discern.
“No,” she says, and her mood has shifted from soft and warm to cold. “This can’t happen,” she adds with a shake of her head. She swipes an angry hand across her mouth, like she’s trying to remove my kiss from her skin.
“Why not?” I question and try to step toward her again, but she lifts one hand in the air to keep her distance.
“Stop, Clay,” she spats. “Just stop, okay? This… Me and you…” She moves her hand erratically back and forth between us. “It’s done. It’s over. And it will not happen again.”
“I don’t fucking get it, Josie,” I retort and run an angry hand through my hair. “I’ve never gotten it, actually. One day, we were happy and married, and then, all of a sudden, you handed me divorce papers. It was out of the fucking blue, you know?” I shake my head as my mind still tries to understand why it all went so wrong. “Why, Josie? Why?”
“Because we do not work,” she says, and I don’t miss the way emotion makes her lips turn down at the corners. “Because it was too much. Because everything in the entire universe was telling us we’re not supposed to be together.”
“That’s not how I see it. That’s not how I see it at all. The universe—”
“Stop, Clay!” she cuts me off on a shout. “Just stop.” Her hands shake as she pushes herself off the wall, and her eyes are watery with tears as she starts to walk away from me.
“Josie.” I reach out to grab her hand, but she yanks it away.
“File the divorce papers, Clay,” she says. “You should’ve done it five years ago when you said you were, but you didn’t. You lied to me.”
“I’m sorry, Josie,” I tell her, but I’m not so sure I actually mean it. I don’t like that I lied to her, but at the same time, I didn’t file the divorce papers because I can’t fathom a life without this woman being my forever.
“Fucking file them, Clay,” she says again, and she looks into my eyes. “It’s been five years, and we’re not together for a reason. We’re over. We’ve been over. It’s time to move on.”