Keeping Her Read Free

should know that every time I do this”—­his hips shifted—­“I am incredibly happy.”
    Somehow through all the sensation I managed to roll my eyes.
    “We’re talking about two different kinds of happiness.”
    He shook his head, and lowered his lips to my ear. “There’s only one kind. Whether I’m inside you or lying beside you or touching your hair or listening to you laugh, it all means the same thing. If I’m with you , I’m happy.”
    God, he was good. At everything .
    He hit a sensitive spot inside me, and the word good tumbled from my mouth by accident.
    He chuckled darkly. “Are you grading me? I thought I was the teacher here.”
    I pulled his mouth to mine to shut him up, and then wrapped my legs around his waist.
    “I’m not grading you. Your ego is big enough already.”
    He laughed and continued distracting me through the morning and a good portion of the afternoon.
    It worked for a little while, okay maybe a long while. But when we boarded the flight late that night, no amount of flirting or touching or whispers in my ear could get my mind off the plethora of potential disasters that awaited me in London.
    I knew almost nothing about his family. Except that his mother terrified me. She scared me by proxy, just based on the look on Garrick’s face while he talked to her on the phone and the sound of her voice leaking from the speaker. When I saw her name on the caller ID, it was like seeing the Dark Mark hovering above my apartment.
    What if she took one look at me and confirmed what I already knew to be true? Garrick was too good for me.
    Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t awash in self-­pity about it because . . . hello, I got the guy. No complaints here. But that didn’t mean I was too stupid to know that he could have someone prettier or taller or with less frizzy hair.
    But he was with me . As long as I didn’t screw it up, of course.
    And God knows I was good at screwing things up.
    So I sat in my seat on the plane as everyone else around me slept, including Garrick, and I drove myself crazy with worry.
    If the weight of my stress were real, there was no way this plane could have stayed in the air. We’d start plummeting and spinning and then some brave soul would throw me out the side door for the good of everyone and scream, “Lighten up!” as I fell to my death.
    That was another thing that could go wrong. I could fall to my death on the stairs at Garrick’s house. Wait . . . did they have stairs? I should have made him detail it all for me. Maybe I should wake him up and ask him now about the stairs. And for a description of the entire house. And backgrounds on his parents and everyone he had ever met. Maybe he could just keep talking, so that I could stop listening to my own thoughts.
    I started to reach for him, but then brought that same hand back to thump against my forehead.
    Seriously, Bliss. Chill out.
    That was my mantra for the rest of the trip. I repeated it in my head (and possibly out loud) as I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the airplane window, and tried to get some sleep.
    The mantra worked about as much as my attempts to sleep. Fitfully I moved between the window, the seatback tray, and Garrick’s shoulder, trying to find a place to lean my head that didn’t feel horrendously uncomfortable. I didn’t get how I could sleep on Garrick’s shoulder anytime at home, and now when it was my best option for slumber, it was like trying to rest my head on a pillow of glass shards covered in ants dusted with anthrax.
    I’d switched back to the seatback tray, folding myself over onto it, when Garrick sat up and unbuckled his seat belt.
    I woke him up.
    Girlfriend Fail.
    “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
    He reached between me and my current resting place, found the metal fastener of my seat belt, and clicked it open.
    “What are you doing?” I asked.
    He didn’t even talk, just gestured with his hand for me to stand.
    I fumbled to put up the tray and