There was nowhere else I could have imagined being.
The DJ came on when the song ended, directing us to the front of the gardens so we could send Ramona and Shep off, and Bodie and I hurried over to the stairs. We each grabbed sparklers and lit them when we were told, holding them up so my best friend and her husband could run through. I’d sworn I wasn’t going to cry, but there was no stopping it — the sight of them golden and beautiful and smiling and crying as they waved goodbye to all of us was too much.
When the door to the limo closed, I turned to Bodie, who smiled down at me as he captured my chin, and then he kissed me, stealing my breath, stealing my heart.
I was beginning to realize that I’d never stood a chance.
Worry sprang like a broken fire hydrant — I didn’t know if I could keep my heart together. If I let myself go, if I opened that door, would I be able to maintain what we were?
The more I felt for him, the less rational I’d be. I’d scare him.
I’d lose him.
I needed more time.
So I turned the giant wrench on that spewing fire hydrant and shut the motherfucker down.
Tonight, I wasn’t crazy. Tonight, I had Bodie.
Tonight, he was mine.
When the limo was gone and the guests dispersed, Veronica and I dashed off to gather our things from the bridal suite. She took all of Ramona’s things, citing a trip by Ramona and Shep’s new place to drop it all off. Something in her eyes said she was a goddamn liar about her plans, and I should have pressed her. But I was too anxious to get back to Bodie to care. She could go be a sneaky liar on her own time.
The cab ride was too long, but I spent the duration tucked into Bodie’s side, the two of us recounting the night like we hadn’t been together for all of it. And then we were walking down my silent hallway together, smiling at our shoes. And then we were inside, and I was closing my door.
I took him by the hand, and he followed without question into my bedroom and leaned against the door as I turned on one of my smaller lamps just so I could see him. Just so he could see me.
My heart thumped at the sight of him, so tall and easy, hands in his pockets, the line of his shoulders and arms and long legs speaking to the artist in me. Because he was art with a heartbeat. But what hit me, what nearly stopped me in my tracks was the expression on his face.
The playfulness and charm were gone, replaced by something deeper, something more. It was the tightness at the corners of his eyes, the depth of his irises, so blue. It was the shape of his lips, the crease of his lips where something waited for me, words he didn’t want to speak. Words I wasn’t ready to hear, and he knew it.
But that was what Bodie did. He anticipated what I required and gave it to me, even when the gift was his silence. He cared about me more than he’d said. But he still cared for me without demand, without expectation.
He was air and sun and soil, just existing around me to give me all I needed to grow. And all the while, I’d grown and blossomed and bloomed, not realizing that I needed him to keep me breathing.
I crossed the room, overwhelmed and overcome by the revelation, trying not to think of what it meant or what it would mean. Instead, I looked into his eyes and told him without a word what I felt for him. I told him with my fingers slipping under his coat that I wanted him. I told him with my lips pressed to his that he’d changed me and there would be no going back.
His body was hard against my palms as they roamed up his chest, and I leaned into him, the two of us angled against the door, me standing between his legs so I could reach his lips.
And that was the thing that struck me the most; he felt what I felt. He knew what my body told him just as much as I knew what his told me.
Never in my life had I felt this before. I’d had power sex. I’d had flirty sex. I’d had fun sex and serious sex. But in that moment, I became aware of a fact that that changed me, there in my room, kissing Bodie.
I had never been intimate.
I wasn’t just hungry for his body. I was hungry for his heart and soul.
I wanted all of him. I just hoped I could hold onto him without it breaking me.