Third Life by Noelle Adams

Author:Noelle Adams [Adams, Noelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: no strings attached
Publisher: Noelle Adams
Published: 2020-04-21T18:30:00+00:00

Six

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Richard and I sleep in as long as we can. We’re on the same flight off the island—leaving at just after one in the afternoon. So we don’t have to rush to get going and packed.

We have breakfast in bed. Then we have sex one more time. It’s not as creative or purposeful as normal. It’s missionary under the covers. He’s kissing me the whole time. When I come, it’s quick and pleasurable but it doesn’t make me scream. It feels like Richard is really with me the whole time. Our gazes hold a lot, and he feels naked. Real. More vulnerable than I usually feel him.

We hug each other afterward until I finally have to get up to pee.

I’m wearing one of his shirts—an Oxford that I’ve half buttoned up. When I return to the bedroom, he’s sitting up on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor.

Something about his posture makes my chest hurt. I go over to sit beside him, wrapping one arm around him.

He buries his face in the side of my neck for a moment before he straightens up, and every cell in my body wants to keep him, hold him, never let him go.

And that’s it. That’s the moment.

I know for sure what’s been creeping up for a while now.

I want too much. I need too much. An occasional hot weekend isn’t going to be enough for me anymore.

My feelings for Richard have become a lot more than simple lust and companionship, and I’d be a fool to deny it.

I’m not a fool. I’ve never been a fool. And I’m not going to start now.

If he doesn’t say something, if he doesn’t make a real gesture, if he doesn’t start to change the nature of our relationship—right now in this very moment—then I’m going to have to make a hard decision.

He’s done nothing wrong. He’s been honest from the beginning. I knew from the start that we could never have more than we have now. He’s not wrong or thoughtless to keep it that way. He’s under no obligation to exchange phone numbers so we can talk between our weekends or tell me for sure that he wants to see me again or even admit that I mean a lot to him. He doesn’t have to do any of that. He’s not an asshole not trying to protect me from feelings he doesn’t know I have.

But I know I have them now. And I need to protect myself.

As a tense silence stretches out in the room—a bleak recognition that our weekend is ending with no promise of another one to come—a hard weight in my stomach tightens and drops.

He’s not going to say anything.

He’s not going to change things.

Despite what happened between us this weekend and the three weekends before, he’s not ready to be something other than the man he’s made himself over all these years.

And that’s fine. He needs to take care of himself, and I can understand that.

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