AN- dont get too confused by the way im starting this chapter, it will make sense in a minute!
there's gonna be double t swift in this chapter so if you aren't a fan you're probably so mf tired of mine and noah's indoctrination program (i might end up changing it though so there's more range sjksjsks)
also for people asking for the playlist or my spotify, im releasing it at the very end of the book <3 (which actually isnt that far away but dont ask me for more details bc i have no clue how many more chapters theres gonna be, all you need to know is this defo isnt the last one lmao)
Noah, 1 week later
"Hi, Mom."
Even though I hadn't visited for a while, my Mother's grave hadn't changed at all. I wasn't sure why I thought it would. What was dead was dead. But somehow, every time I talked to the memory of her, I half expected her hand to push against mine from inside the gravestone. I brushed my fingers over her name, burning the engravings into my skin as if it could make me remember how it felt to touch her, as if it could make me forget that the last thing that remained of her was a slab of cold grey stone.
"I'm sorry that it's been a long time. Everything's kinda crazy at the moment. But I brought you flowers. Iris's. Roses were sold out. I guess everyone likes roses, but honestly, the real treasure lies in the discount section. I was gonna get you one of those tacky teddy bears that smells like artificial grape and says 'Fly high' or something that you'd find funny, but Kat would kill me."
Her grave was a distance away from the others, and it was the prettiest one there. A willow tree swayed behind the headstone, its leaves dipping over a small stream. Monica made sure her best friend had the nicest, most expensive spot in the entire cemetery, and her grave was beautiful. But it was still a grave.
"I have a lot to tell you. Like, uh.... wait. How do you come out to your dead Mom? Hey, I hope they haven't kicked you out of heaven yet. By the way, I like boys." I sighed, thinking that I sounded ridiculous. "You probably know that already, if you're watching me or whatever. Except, I hope you're not. Cause I've been doing a ton of embarrassing shit.
But, uh, remember Jace? Yeah, so... I'm kinda in love with him. Surprising, right? You're probably annoyed I wasted so much time ranting to you about how evil he is and then ended up falling for him. But I'm just a poor victim of the Jace Effect, I swear. It's impossible to resist." I chuckled to myself, fiddling with my hands. "In all seriousness, though. He's everything, Mom. He's happiness, to me."
My fond expression fell slightly when I thought about everything I'd suppressed. "And there's the other thing. I haven't been to see Dad in forever. The last time was like, July, and it kinda made me have a meltdown. I don't know why I can't do it, Mom. Just looking at him in that bed with all those tubes sticking out of him... I feel so angry. I know it wasn't his fault. But he was your husband. He should've known you weren't okay. Or... maybe I'm just putting the blame on him so I don't have to think about the fact that I didn't know either. That I wasn't enough to make you carry on." I angrily wiped the fresh tears pooling in my eyes. I didn't wanna feel so sorry for myself when I was the one who was still alive.
"But it was after you died, too. That's what I hate him for the most. He just left me and Katherine to grieve by ourselves. We were kids, and we were alone. He couldn't even meet my eyes, because they're your eyes. My own father couldn't look at his fourteen year old son without wishing you were there in my place. So, visiting him in hospital... it just hurts. And I should grow up. I should forgive and forget and move on. But sometimes when he looks at me, I think he's looking for you."
Daughter, Mother, wife, friend. I traced the shallow, stone lines of my Mom's name with my fingertips. Willow Quinn, Willow Quinn- but she was still just a few letters engraved into granite, a fading face in a photograph, an anniversary that came around every year just to remind us that she was gone. And I missed when she was more. When she was mine.
"Hey, loser!" A female voice yelling at me from behind broke my trance, and I turned my head to see my sister walking towards me.
I scrambled to my feet and squinted at her tall form. "Kat? Oh my god?!" Grinning, I threw myself at her and she laughed into my shoulder. "How are you here?"
She blew a strand of brown hair from her face that had slipped from her ponytail. "See, there's these things called planes..." I punched her lightly in the arm and she huffed, though her warm eyes were amused. "What, you think I wouldn't get the first flight out here the second I heard about all the drama? Y'know how much I love chaos."
"Right. Not cause you missed me, or anything."
"Never." Her smile fell slightly into an angry pout before she punched me in the arm, a lot less lightly. "So, you weren't gonna tell me anything huh?"
I chuckled nervously. "Yeah, so I probably should've called you."
"You think? I can't believe I had to find out about your dramatic love life from Lee. I mean, what a bombshell-"
"Wait, Lee told you?"
She frowned. "Yeah. Right after Jace's big fat confession, which by the way I'm fucking pissed I didn't get to witness."
Even though he was angry and upset, Lee put that aside to call my sister because he was worried about me. I fought the smile from my face and reminded myself to hug him later.
"Don't worry, Bethany films everything. She says she's preparing for mine and Jace's wedding. Apparently she's inviting Taylor Swift. I'm terrified."
Katherine laughed loudly, and then seemed to realize she was surrounded by dead people. Apparently you weren't meant to laugh in graveyards. But if we didn't, then we'd start crying; and we'd already shed a lifetime of tears for Willow Quinn, tears she never would've wanted anyway. In her will, she'd suggested 'I will survive' as a song choice. My dad didn't think fourteen year old me would recover from her sense of humour, so he chose Joni Mitchell instead. He found the body. It was only fair that he chose the song.
As if reading my mind, Katherine took me by the sleeve towards Mom's grave and pulled me down so we were both sitting either side. I didn't notice before in my excitement, but she had a bunch of iris's too. I smiled softly at our similarity, until a thought hit me. I wasn't the only one like our Mother and yet, Dad could look into Katherine's dark eyes; his eyes. Looking into my blue ones was like looking at his dead wife again, and I think he resented me for it.
"Hi, Mom." She spoke to the gravestone casually as if it was a living, breathing thing, imitating the same thing I'd said ten minutes before. And then, she turned to me with a fiery hunger burning in her features. "Now, tell me everything."
I quirked an eyebrow at her. "You're not even shocked that I'm gay?"
She quirked an eyebrow back. "You used to try on my bras and call yourself Anastasia."
Heat rose to my cheeks in humiliation. "One, I was creative. Two, I was like, six years old. And three, being feminine doesn't make you gay!"
"Of course it doesn't, and I didn't know for sure. But you were just a teensy bit limp in the wrist."
"Oh my god."
"Just a weensy bit too interested in the paper Hollister bags with the shirtless dudes on. Plus, you watched that scene in Mulan where a half naked Li Shang sings about men like, a thousand times. And while we're on the subject, you had a stash of Disney Prince posters. You and Flynn Rider went through hell and back together."
"Katherine, if you don't stop right now-"
"Relax, relax," she cackled. "I'm still busy losing my mind over the fact that A, Jace can feel love, and B, he loves you."
"Oh, cause I'm so repulsive?"
"Well yes, you are, but that wasn't what I meant. I meant that last week I thought you two were sworn enemies and that Jace was a soulless husk, so when Lee managed to tell me the truth through his tears," she said, rolling her eyes, "I burst out laughing. Honestly, the idea that you two could be together without committing aggravated assault was the funniest joke I'd ever heard. I half expected Ellen to jump out with a camera."
I shook my head at her, but I got it. The old me would have laughed at the idea, too. But I struggled to remember a time where I didn't love him. That was how much he consumed me.
"Although, it makes complete sense," she continued, and I frowned. "You freaks were always like Ying and Yang. He pushed, you pulled, you pushed back, he... probably shoved you headfirst into a wall. That's love for ya."
"How did everyone know before we did?" I grumbled, giving her a disapproving look. "You could've told me, but no. You and Eugene let him bully me in peace."
While I huffed and sulked, Kath leaned forward gleefully like we were about to discuss boys and braid each other's hair. "So? You and Jace? Do you love him back? Are you two... together?"
I looked into her brown eyes, and searched for Jace's ones. I thought about his laugh, and how no one else's sounded the same. I remembered his touch and leaned into the absence of it, as if the air around me could make up for the fact that it wasn't his hands, his chest, his arms.
So? Do you love him?
1 week earlier
taylor swift- the last time
I had to get an Uber to Jace's secret spot overlooking the city. An Uber. Listening to Gimme a man after midnight on the radio in the back of some random dude's car wasn't exactly the most romantic movie moment. I honestly thought about screaming at him to fucking step on it like they do on TV when someone needs to confess their undying love at the airport, but I doubted he cared about my desperation to do gay shit.
Rain hammered against the windows, trees flew by, and I was getting closer and closer to the one I loved. Adrenaline raced through my body, but it only partly smothered the fear. What if he thinks I chose Lee's friendship over him or something? What if he hates me for running away?
But then the car was pulling to a stop at the edge of the treeline, and I had no choice but to walk towards my inevitable future. Or, stumble towards, because I was shitting myself with nerves and it was raining like a fucking monsoon. Jace loves you. Jace loves you. You love Jace. I repeated that in my mind over and over as I ran up the sloped path to our secret spot, my clothes getting soaked with every desperate step. And then, the trees parted, and he was there. Standing next to his parked car, facing the swings and the city view and everything that wasn't me. So I said his name. Or shouted. It was still raining like a fucking monsoon.
"Jace!"
He spun around, his wide eyes reflecting my own. We were a couple of yards away and the light was fading in the dark blue-grey shade the world turns after sunset and before nightfall, but I could see the emotion in his face. He didn't think I'd come back. What I wanted to say was that I'd always come back to him. What I wanted to say was I love you, and that's enough. But I owed him a little more than that.
"I-"
"Noah," he called sadly before I could get any words out. Beads of water from the hair that lay flat against his forehead travelled down his face, and I couldn't tell if he'd just been waiting for me in the rain too long or if he'd been crying. "I'm in love with you. That's not gonna change, even if you can't say it back." His voice was thick with pain. He'd definitely been crying. "But if you aren't in love with me too, then why are you here?"
"Don't you get it?" I half shouted over the rain. "I'm here because I am in love with you!"
It was hard to tell through the relentless downpour between us, but I thought I saw his lips part in silent disbelief, brown eyes swimming with the painful, inconceivable notion that there was a soul in this world made just for him.
"But..." was all Jace said, and it was so quiet I almost missed it. I thought this was what he wanted, that there would be no buts, but. There it was. And it hurt. Except, the next words from his mouth weren't what I expected. I expected to be left in the rain with a broken heart. Maybe that would've been better.
"Why?" He said, reminding me that despite his beauty, he was still human. Devastatingly human.
"Why... how could you love me? You're you," Jace continued with a broken voice. "You're this wonderful, beautiful person, who's put me back together more times than I can count, no matter how many reasons I gave you not to. You're smart and funny and you actually care about me. You cared even when I was still the mess that treated you like you weren't good enough when I was the one who didn't deserve you. I still don't. Neither of us are perfect Noah, nobody is. But you're the closest thing to it I've ever seen."
I was half outrage, and half fighting the urge to stamp my foot and sulk at how much he was stealing the show. This is meant to be my confession.
"Honestly, I don't even know why you came here to find me," Jace continued. The water was relentless, and I had the foolish, romantic thought that he was the most breathtaking person I'd ever seen, even in the middle of a rainstorm.
"Because you're you, and I'm just... me."
A laugh of disbelief escaped me. I looked like I'd gone mad, shouting at him with clenched fists and teary eyes, completely soaked to the bone. But there was a different kind of storm raging above my head when I looked at him, one that poured fire instead of water.
"Just you? As if anything could ever be just you. Would you call this thing that you took from me," I said, putting my fist over my chest with emotion, with conviction, "would you call it just a heart? Would you define me standing here in the rain and saying I love you as just, what? Feelings?" He couldn't tell I was crying, but you could hear it in my voice. The tight, horrible way that love sounded when it was spilling from your throat and you didn't know how to stop it.
"You wanna know why? Fine," I continued with passion and vehemence. "I love you for making me pancakes in the morning even though we both hate breakfast and it's the only thing you know how to cook, but I'll love you if you burn the pancakes, or if we never eat again, or if we eat too much and grow morbidly obese and get bed sores 'cause we're too full of pancakes to move." A fond smile spread across his face despite his shining eyes, and I could barely breathe looking at him. "And I love you for taking me to your secret place and building me my own swing next to yours, for being there whenever I have a bad dream and not making me talk about it, for calling your horse Nova and lying about naming her after me, although saying it out loud, it doesn't sound much like a compliment." He grinned wider through his disastrous display of emotion. "I love you for confessing how you feel in front of everyone and not thinking about the absolutely catastrophic consequences." Jace's soft smile broke out into a teary laugh, and my own eyes spilling over, I gazed back at him with all the affection I owned.
"But mostly, I love you because there were hundreds of people in the crowd, and all you saw was me. You've always seen me. Mostly, I love you because I don't know how to unlove you. I love you because it's you, because it's always been you. I have more love in me than I know what to do with, Jace. And every terrible, torn-up inch of it is yours."
When he stepped towards me after an agonizing moment of stillness, I could see his face clearer. We were drenched, and yet he still looked perfect; though I'd never seen so much fragile, vulnerable emotion in his expression all at once. It was something between composure and the way you look before you break down with grief, and terror shot through me as the distance between us shortened.
"I'm starting to think you have a crush on me, Quinn," Jace said. Finally, his lips were tilting back into a smile. In fact, it was almost a smirk, and he looked so much like his old, arrogant self that I could pretend he was back at high school with me, except this time around, he wasn't afraid to be my first kiss.
"I tolerate you, at most."
Jace stepped closer still with that goddamn attractive face, tanned muscles clinging to his soaked white shirt, and I swallowed. My cheeks burned under the falling droplets when I thought about everything I'd confessed, along with the fact that I sounded like Mr fucking Darcy. My confession was a romance movie cliché, but as embarassed as I was, we were too far gone to care. He was the one cliché I'd never tire of.
"Then tolerate me." He stopped walking until he was directly in front of me, until I was close enough to feel the heat of his breath. "And stay."
"For?" I whispered, leaning closer.
"Ever. Stay forever."
He kissed me, and I melted. The rest of the world went with me.
When our tongues collided, it felt like war. All of our kisses did. In fact, every kiss with him felt like the first, or the last, like a dying declaration that couldn't be said out loud, or like that classic movie scene where all the heroes can do is cling to each other, even in the middle of a battlefield with destruction raging around them. The only rage and destruction I could feel was the way Jace stole the air from my lungs, how his body pressed impossibly close against mine through our wet clothes, and how his lips on mine became a weapon that I surrendered to willingly.
With both arms around his neck, I tugged on the wet strands of Jace's hair as he lifted me up, our mouth's refusing to part for even a second. His hands fell from cupping my face to my waist. My hands fell to the length of his jaw, and touching him there more tenderly than it had ever been touched, I kissed him and kissed him and kissed him. I kissed him until I forgot about the rain. I kissed him until I forgot all words other than kiss, kissed, and kissing. If we'd been any closer, I think the lines between us would've started to blur.
I wrapped my legs around his middle, and Jace walked us towards his car. There was a picnic blanket that Jace kept by the lone tree in the small gap overlooking the city, the one that held the swings up. Of course, it was hammering down, and both the blanket and the grass would be wet. But when you're love-drunk, nothing really matters. Even the possibility of getting hypothermia. To be honest, if it wasn't for the rain, our bodies would've burned each other.
"More?" He panted when we finally parted for breath, his careful, loving arms laying me down.
"Always more," I whispered back, before kissing him like my life depended on it. I was afraid that it really did. I seemed to have a death wish when it came to him.
Jace pulled his shirt off, and then mine. When he did it, he looked like a Greek god who'd been for a quick swim. I looked like a drowned rat. But his gaze was telling me that to him, I looked like the whole world. That was enough for me to feel okay again.
"You're shaking. Are you cold? Shit. I'll take you home. We can do this when you're sure-"
I clasped a hand over his mouth, trying not to roll my eyes. "I am sure. Surer than I've ever been. I'm saying yes, okay? To this, to you. And... I won't be cold when you... when you..." I nuzzled into his neck, embarassed by the next words that fled quietly from my lips. "...Make love to me."
Two hands pulled my face back to look up at his own, and Jace trailed affection over my features with his gaze. "You are a very good thing, Noah." He kissed my nose, and I fell in love all over again.
Jace moved his head down to lick and nip at my neck, paying special attention to the sensitive spot below my earlobe and forcing short gasps to escape me. He moved lower still, and his tongue began a story down my chest. It hovered over my nipples, swirled over the buds with a raw yet loving cruelty. There were going to be marks there tomorrow, and I reveled in it.
Jace kissed the ugly scar on my abdomen, every brush of his lips saying this, this is where you survived. This is where you came back to me, unmade, so that I could remake you.
Taking off our jeans was a little harder and a lot less sexy, because it was still raining like a fucking monsoon. "Maybe we should just cut a hole in the back," Jace panted after trying and failing to get me naked. "Then you can wear them everywhere for quick and easy access at all times," he said cheerily, like he was on an infomercial.
"God, you're so romantic."
He slumped against my chest when he finally got me free, and we laughed loud and ugly and unashamed. The kiss I planted on his forehead was clumsy, but sweet.
"We should really go inside," he said.
"Yeah, that's what I've been asking you to do this whole time."
Jace slapped my arm weakly, chuckling against my neck where he formed even more marks. "I was talking about the car, you pervert."
I shook my head and abruptly straddled him. "Nope, we committed to this romantic rain sex thingy. And if freezing to death is what it takes, then so be it."
Jace stared up at me adoringly and smiled. He took a curl of wet hair from my forehead between his thumb and index finger as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if his hand was made to fit the curve of my face, to reach out and find me on the other end of whatever chasm his fingertips should cross. He didn't even notice he had done it. But I did. I did.
"Okay," Jace whispered, a beautiful kind of sound, barely audible over the rain, and yet the only thing I could hear.
Then, with lips made to kill, he kissed me. He killed me. Our tongues ebbed and flowed inside our mouths, saying things that language couldn't. But it was a language in itself; his hands, spreading me open for pleasure, tongue licking at the edges of me like an open flame. I moaned at the feeling of his mouth between my legs, travelling up the velvet road of my arousal and caressing the head of it. Then, his hands became alive. Already slick with the rain, Jace's fingers needed no help easing inside my hot entrance. And hooked inside of me, pulling themselves oarless to my center, I was an ocean at his fingertips.
"More?" He asked again, pulling his lips away from my sensitive shaft, but still working away at my rim.
Yes, yes, yes.
I wanted to throw romance into the wind, give into my desire and beg for it. I wanted him to use me until I saw stars. But instead, I just let out a breathy laugh, clouded slightly by the moan he made me release when his fingers teasingly grazed my prostate. "Fuck, I hate that question."
With a grin, Jace continued his merciless attack on both points of pleasure, until I had to pull him back to stop myself from cumming then and there. "You okay, baby?" He asked softly, peppering my face with kisses. My heart skipped a beat.
"You're not meant to be the cute one. I'm meant to be the cute one," I grumbled. "But I don't want you to stop. God, don't ever stop. Just... as sexy and romantic as this seemed at the blissful time of one minute ago, I'm gonna fucking die of hypothermia if you don't pick me up this instant."
Jace hummed a laugh into my hair before tapping his shoulders in indication for where my arms should go. "C'mon, love. I've got you."
Lifting me up, he carried us to his car, and I smiled with a blush into the side of his neck. As much as I yearned to comment on his use of an English word, I secretly adored it and all the other nicknames he gave me. It was like he loved me so much that he had to use every single term of endearment he could think of.
After putting down the seats and laying me there, he went to get more blankets from the trunk. Jace appeared to always have two things on him at all times. Blankets, and lube. I could almost hear his voice in the back of my head calling them a survival kit.
He reappeared, throwing a warm cover around us before wasting no time in reattaching our lips. I gave in, hungrily, with my hands in his hair and his own at my throat. His tongue found every drop of rain on my body. He was the sun, and I was a body of water burning.
I took the bottle of lube he'd brought with him (I knew he had it to hand. I just fucking knew) and, tracing my fingers down his toned torso until I reached his groin, I coated his erection until it was slick. "What about-shit Noah- w-what about a condom?" He stammered through a hiss of pleasure.
With iron will, I fought the urge to bring up his negative STD test results, but thought better of cackling while I had a raging hard on.
"Don't need it. I trust you," I panted, stroking us together and pressing down on Jace's leaking slit. "And..." Leaning closer, I looked at him with hooded, lustful eyes. "I want to feel you inside me."
He blinked. I thought the thing in my hands couldn't get any stiffer, but I felt it harden. I felt him harden.
"But Noah," he gasped sarcastically. "We aren't even married yet."
I laughed into the kiss I used to shut him up. He laughed back, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he emptied his happiness into the skin where my shoulders met my neck. If I could've captured his laughter in my hands like a firefly, I would have.
"I want you," he said suddenly, a violent and tender whisper against the storm billowing around us.
And I replied, gazing up at him with eyes that couldn't have loved him more. "You already have me."
taylor swift- wildest dreams
Our tongues met somewhere between passion and gentleness, and I remembered the first time we kissed, the word Amen ringing in my head under the red light of the neon cross in Jace's bedroom. He'd put his hands on holy ground, where no hands had ever been. But clotheless in his car, his touch was as familiar to me as my own. My body bent to his will.
With a gentle hand in his still-wet hair, I pulled Jace's head up to mine, cupping his cheek in my palm and telling him with a look that he was all I wanted. "Don't be nervous," he said, but he looked nervous too. As experienced as he was, we were first's for each other. Even Jace had never been so intimate with someone he loved, and with someone who loved him back. "I have you. I have you."
Legs bared, I was wide open for the taking. I needed him to take me. But I knew him, and I knew his deepest, darkest fear. He didn't want to hurt me. Jace, after a lifetime of bloodied knuckles and anger had something he'd rather die for than break.
"I'm not scared of you," I whispered, caressing the gentle lines of his face with my gaze.
Something flashed in his eyes before they teared up, before his eyelids fluttered closed under my lips and I kissed them, the way he liked to with me. I realized with a pang of hurt that his tears bled from a deeper wound; no one had ever loved him without fearing him too.
Jace smiled softly down at me, and I was afraid, but not of him. I was fucking terrified that someone could look at me like that. I was terrified that I didn't deserve it. Being loved by him.
"You happen to me all over again, Blue. Every time."
I was still reeling from his words when Jace pushed inside. It was only the head. He was taking it slow to spare me any pain, but I dug my nails into his back. "Fuck," I gasped, and he kissed my neck in reassurance. His length moved further into me, and I could see from the taut desire on his glorious face that he was holding back, but I couldn't imagine all of him actually fitting down there. "J-just do it. All- fuck- all of it." I was stammering, because with every inch I felt like I was splitting in two. But despite the discomfort, I needed to be full. I needed him to fill me.
And he did. "Tell me when you're.... ready..." Jace panted out, reaching down to stroke me until the pleasure outweighed the pain. I whimpered slightly, clenching around him and making him bite his lip until I relaxed and looked up at him desperately.
"Please."
Jace didn't need to be told twice. He pulled back before entering me with full force, and I cried out, wrapping my legs around his waist. The more he moved, the less it hurt. The more I was pushing back onto him, euphoric and losing my mind a little bit. Okay, a lot-tle bit. Our kisses were messy and tragic and better than all the fucking kisses in the whole fucking world. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The body of water in me burned some more. Because he was pushing into that bundle of nerves that made me feel like heaven was on Earth, right there in my boyfriend's car on a hill above San Francisco. I'd been starved of him my entire life, and of the feelings I had when he was inside me. It was like having this empty thing living in your body for the longest time and then a beautiful, beautiful boy comes along and finally shows you how it feels to be whole.
"God, you're breathtaking," Jace said with a groan of pleasure, counting my pulse through neck kisses. "I don't know how to unlove you either, Blue."
I pulled his face impossibly closer, hungry for his touch, the brush of his mouth turning me into some sort of starved animal. "I love you," I murmured through the fight between our lips. "I love you, I love you, I love you."
Jace was everywhere, tracing lines over the paths of me that he knew so well, kissing confessions of love onto my body until his skin felt like my skin. It was almost too much to bear. Almost.
But I wasn't the only one losing their grip on reality. Jace's remarkable mouth was agape with lust and when he wasn't getting off on watching me, his eyelids were fluttering shut, forehead scrunching up under wet hair. We burrowed our faces in the other person's neck or shoulders when we were too high on bliss to open our eyes, but most of the time, Jace couldn't tear himself from the dirty, erotic look that I knew was on my face; nor could I from his own show of desire. When I did hide my embarrassing moans by nestling into his body, he'd pull my jaw up to meet his dominant gaze, saying something life-changing like "I want to see you." I want to watch you come undone.
But then, he murmured something with his nose brushing against mine, so close that I could feel his breath carving heat into my skin. Our lips brushed when he spoke. It was all the proof I had that he was real and I was lucky enough to see him be that human. "You are," he whispered. "You are the first person... The first boy. The only." It was one of those messy things you say when your head is spinning and you can't seem to find the words for anything. But as messy and nonsensical as it was, I understood perfectly what he meant. It was our language.
The universe rocked beneath us as we rocked, the night sky turning. I swore I could feel the earth move on her axis, and in turn, I moved onto the axis of the boy inside me. I let him fill me so deeply that I thought I was gonna break. "Fuck," I moaned, when I meant to say I love you. I wanted him to ruin me. I never wanted it to end. I wanted him inside me until there was no more of our bodies left to claim. I want, and I want, and I want.
Moans and the sound of skin meeting echoed around us. Suddenly, we weren't in California anymore. We were someplace far away that only the two of us could reach; intertwined, naked, limitless. Jace knew just how to make me lose control. With every thrust and graze of that sensitive bundle of nerves, I could feel the twisty turny feeling in me building up, and up, and up. My body was going to be blown to atoms and ash when Jace was done with it. And he was stroking me, and it was all too much, and I wanted very much to get off the rollercoaster. The saying 'don't give up while you're ahead' was complete and utter bullshit. Giving up sounded wonderful. Having Jace press so hard into my sweet spot that I screamed or cried or joined a fucking cult devoted to, well, fucking, sounded like absolute ecstasy. Making love was a torture I begged for, one that made me feel more alive than I'd ever felt, but it was still torture. It was still so good that it was killing me.
"Please," I cried, everything getting blurry. "Jay-please-I can't... I need..."
"Let go," he whispered back, pressing our foreheads together and looking at me with so much raw lust and affection that I thought his eyes might swallow me whole. "Let go with me."
I waited at the peak of my desire for him. It was white and hot and I was ready to fall, but Jace was coming. He was coming, coming, coming-
The dam broke loose. Jace emptied into me with a deep and beautiful groan, and I came, crying, every muscle straining with the weight of what we'd just invented.
I'd give him everything, I thought as he dropped beside me, pulling me to him despite the sticky mess between us, as if he couldn't bear to not be touching me. Everything I have, he owns.
We were both out of breath, staring at the roof of the car, and then at each other when Jace said a simple, "Holy fuck."
I couldn't avoid the tired, happy laugh that bubbled up in my throat. "Yeah. Holy fuck."
Jace laughed back breathlessly, throwing his forearm over his eyes. I folded myself into his side, pulling the blankets over us. "We did good, Quinn. Maybe too good. I mean, the environmental impact of this is gonna be drastic... tectonic plates are moving. The icebergs are melting even faster. This is how the apocalypse starts."
I grinned with my cheek pressed flat against his chest. "With sex?"
He put a finger under my chin, making me look up at his blissful face. "With you. Looking like that."
I had tears in my eyes, and I didn't know why. Maybe it was from the sex. Maybe it was from looking at him too much, and the devastation that came with it. I wasn't sure how to put it into words, but I spoke anyway. "Being with you feels like..." I thought about the worst moment of my life in my Dad's car, and how being with Jace in his car was something else entirely. "What's the opposite of drowning?"
"Uhh, not drowning? Burning? Breathing? Surviving?" When I playfully glared at him and shook my head, Jace frowned before speaking with a little embarassed blush on his face, this time thinking about drowning as if it was an emotion instead of a real, horrifying thing that I was terrified of. "Love?"
"Yeah," I said with a soft smile. "You feel like love."
It sounded stupid out loud. Honestly, I was scared we were gonna wear that word out by throwing it around so much. But being one of those sickening, hopeless couples never got tiring. In fact, it was underrated. The movies had nothing on us.
Jace moved down until our faces were level, and then he brushed his lips over mine. I let my mouth part, not caring how plainly he could see that I wanted to feel his touch. I needed it. If I didn't have it, I'd cry and beg. I'd probably even kill, just to get a glimpse of that forever he talked about. Excruciatingly slow, he kissed me. Deeply. I fell into the shape of his mouth. I let it pull me in. We were one kiss and bite away from murder, and I wondered if love ate other people as much as it ate us, like there was nothing of us left that didn't contain each other. And then, one hand stroking my hair, he pulled the blanket over my shoulders, making sure it covered my bare skin. It was a simple act, but I felt like crying. Not even the rain had touched me like that. It would never compare his hands. There was nothing in the world that could.
AN- this might be the best chapter ive ever written. im so SOFT. honestly had to clamp my hand over my mouth at several points while i wrote this because they are so, so in LOVE <3333 so i hope it was good for u guys! sometimes im scared i overdo it bc i get carried away lolol or that it's not a smooth flow from comedy to romantic writing? it's hard bc this book is such a balance between the two so im sorry if it isnt realistic or doesnt work :3 ahhhh im nervous but u can tell me! just be gentle... it's my first time...
i know it wasn't extremely sexy like typical smut but i wanted the first sex scene to be more romantic and soft. but next time they have sex i'll focus less on poetry and a whole lot more on, well, sex lmfao
also please comment some questions for a Q&A here! i'll probably include it at the end of the book anyway but im just asking so i dont forget lol (you can ask anything about the book or the characters)
btw when im famous u all have to pretend u dont recognise my name bc if my irls/the world ever found out about this wattpad account i would simply throw myself away
lmao THANK YOU FOR READING!!! IM HAPPY WITH THIS AND I HOPE YOU GUYS ARE TOO!!! -bella xo