She humbled me to this day.

My hands were reverent, my lips worshipful as I made my trembling way up her trembling body, so thankful for every touch she allowed me that I was giddy with it, shaking with it.

Because, whether she would admit it or not, every time we gave in to this hunger, this unforgiving passion, we showed our true feelings to each other.  She couldn’t give herself to me without showing me her vulnerability, and I couldn’t take her without revealing my utter devotion, my forever love.

I never could keep the filthy diatribe in when I got my hands on her perfect little body, but more and more, the words were as desperately emotional as they were dirty.

“How did we do without this, sweetheart?” I asked against her satiny smooth belly.  “How could we think that was an option?” I nuzzled along her ribs into the underside of one plump breast.  “How could I ever stop this?  You know we can’t go back now, don’t you?  We can’t go back to that.”

She didn’t answer me.  I hadn’t expected her too.  I knew she was far past the point of a coherent sentence.  I’d always loved her smart mouth, but at times like these, I liked it even better when it was incapable of forming whole words.

I took off her blindfold and covered her.  I took her again, hungrily, desperately, like a man starved.  Even as I was twitching inside her, still shaking from my release, I felt that hunger.

Just on the edge of sleep, I caught it.  “Fucking Game of Thrones,” I muttered.

She laughed beside me.

We fell asleep entwined, and I woke up still wrapped around her from behind.  In fact, my hard c**k was right in the middle of trying to find an entrance before I’d even blinked awake.

I sat up, rolling her to her back.  It was like eyeing up a feast.  I didn’t know where to start.

Her jaw was slack in sleep, her lips parted.  My hard-on told me very clearly to start there.

I climbed up her body, and managed to dig one knee into the bed next to her head, the other stretched clear of her body.  I pushed my tip between those inviting lips, trying to go slow, but once I got to her throat, a knee-jerk reaction had me shoving in a little too forcefully.

I gagged her twice before she pushed me away, laughing.  “You’re too big for that angle,” she told me.

She made a good point.

“I wasn’t quite awake yet when I thought of that.”

She pushed at me, and I sprawled out on my back for her.  “Next time, just wake me up.”

Her head started bobbing, and I gripped her hair.  “Anything you say.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

TRISTAN

I always felt the date approaching like a magnet, my mind constantly pulled to it.

This year was a little better.  I got out the black wristband and put it on with a lighter heart than I’d had, well, since his death.

Having Danika back in my life helped me with this, there was no question.

Even so, I’d tried to talk to her about it, tried to tell her what was coming up, and hadn’t found the voice to do it.

It was the morning of and I’d slept over at her place.  I was in her kitchen, sipping coffee and staring off into space, when she finally realized something was off.

She studied me for a while, checked her phone for the date, I think, and then approached me looking contrite.

“Oh, Tristan,” she said softly, wrapping her little body around my big one.  “I am so sorry.”

I kissed the top of her head.

“I’ll call in sick to work.  Tell me how you handle this day.”

“Frankie usually comes over, and Cory and Kenny, if they’re around.  We tell stories about him.  Good stories.  We watch all the videos I have of him.  We never focus on the bad.”

We got dressed and went to my house.  Frankie and Kenny showed up at noon.  Cory was out of town.

I baked a ridiculous amount of cookies, keeping Danika hostage in my kitchen the entire time.

We all sat down in my living room and talked about Jared.  I started.

I held up a chocolate chip cookie.  “Jared’s favorite.  He’s actually the reason I learned to bake.  As a kid, he had us all wrapped around his little finger, me, my mom, his dad.”  I looked down at my hands.  “This one time he got hurt.  I’m not even sure how it all went down, but he was horsing around with Dean in his room, and wound up falling out of the second story window.  I was twelve, and I was supposed to be watching him.  It was terrifying, but he hadn’t broken anything.  I think he was just scared, but he wouldn’t stop crying.  He was inconsolable, and the only thing that got him out of it was the promise of cookies.  We didn’t have any cookies, but we always had baking supplies, so I learned to bake cookies that day.  He loved them so much that he started to fake getting hurt, just so I’d bake.  I never minded.  It was never a secret; I’d have done anything for that kid.”

How do you recover from a loss like that?  One day at a time was the only way I knew how.  We’d been so close that he was still a part of me, always would be.

Danika, who’d been sitting directly to my right, hugged me hard.  I threw my arm around her.  Having her here, right now, meant everything, and I savored it, even amidst the bittersweet reminiscing.

Kenny went next.  “It was Jared and I that originally started the band.  We both picked up the guitar, but he was always so much better than I was.  I was so impressed with that kid.  He was five years younger than the rest of us, and he put me to shame, talent wise.  He never had an ego about it, though, he just enjoyed it.  He had the purest love for his craft.”