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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Emily Rath
Read between
November 23 - November 23, 2023
“I don’t know what game you’re playing with Caleb right now, but this is not a game to me, Jake. You are not a game, and I don’t take what we have lightly.”
“I’m going to choke you with this dick and paint your pretty mouth with my cum. Would you like that, Hurricane?”
“But there’s something about that woman’s tears. She just…fuck, she haunts me. It’s like she starts crying, and I feel like I could literally twist myself inside out to make it stop. I never want to see her unhappy. It’s like…a biological imperative or something.” “That biological imperative is called love, Nov,” Sully teases. “Fewer syllables to remember.”
“Swear it to me, Ryan,” she says, stepping away. “You went and made me fall in love with you, and now I’m this mess of a girl that cries when her husband goes off on a fishing boat. You did this to me. You wormed your way inside. Now you’re in me, and you’re part of me, and I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe for loving you, Ryan. And now you have to let me die first, and I need you to swear it. Swear, Ryan.” “I swear,” I say gently, dropping my hand to my side. “Baby, I swear. You can go first, okay? Alice Cooper and his wife have a death pact. We can make one too. We’ll be in our 80s—well, that
...more
“YouTube thinks you have food poisoning too,”
Suuuure, “food poisoning»
“But the balcony is less scary than Poppy,”
Leaning over the bed, I kiss first her, then her mother. I place a hand on both of them, willing myself to remember every facet of this moment—the pink of Tess’s cheeks as she cries, the clicking of the machines above her head, the metallic smell of lemony hospital cleaner faint in my nose, the shape of my daughter’s tiny body under the blankets. I’ll remember this later as the moment I first felt like a father. I’m not just Ryan Langley anymore, and I haven’t been for a long time. For over two years now, I’ve prided myself on being Tess’s partner, someone worthy enough to claim her and love
...more
SOBBING
“You are Rachel Fucking Price. You walk through life boldly doing whatever the fuck you want, damn the consequences. You swirled into our lives like a destructive storm of chaos, all legs and sharp attitude. You swept us up and spun us out. You hooked us body and fucking soul.”
“We’re quiet now,” he goes on. “Watching and waiting, fearful to move, fearful to breathe, because we know we’re in the eye of the storm.” He gestures to her stomach with a nod. “Do you know what it feels like for us, watching you get to know and love our child these last nine months? Do you know how jealous we are? Do you have any idea how frustrated we’ve been, wanting to share in this with you?”
“Despite the wholly inappropriate manner in which you’ve chosen to raise your concerns with your son, I know you must care about him and his future,” Mars concedes. “You doubt this arrangement can work. You don’t understand it, and you would never choose it for yourselves, so you doubt. Your doubt is so great you cannot help but voice it aloud to him, even at this moment.”
“I am honored to share this life with him. It was wrong of you to come in this moment and rob him of his joy.
That’s what Mars does for me—he holds me together. The others can’t do it. Only Mars.
“I told her that until they get their shit together, and let go of their antiquated prejudices, you and I will just live like orphans,” she goes on. I sigh, opening my eyes. “Amy, you don’t have to cut them off on my account.” “Hey, you mess with the bull, you get the horns,” she teases.
I can just barely hear the sounds of the ocean a block away. I never tire of that sound—the rhythmic push and pull of the water against the sand. It’s nature’s heartbeat, constant as the hands of a ticking clock.
In rare moments, Caleb will look at me and it feels like he’s wrapping his fingers between the bones of my sternum, gripping tight, and pulling with all his strength. I’m made breathless by the look. I ache. But then I blink, and it’s gone. The shadows in his eyes lift, and he turns away from me. The sensation of being wanted fizzles into nothing. Perhaps I’ve imagined it.
“And I’m married to my shexy hockey man,” Caleb calls. “I would be married to Marsh too, but he only loves Rachel. Noooo love left for Caleb. He won’t even touch me, Tiffany. Can you believe that?”
Awww, Caaayyy babyyyy
“Fuck, I wanna live inshide your shkin.”
“You smell so fucking good,” he says, his tone tinged with aching need. “Sometimes I jerk off using your body wash. I pretend the gel is you.” His hands slide back down my sides, gentle caress. “I rub your cum into my skin and let that scent haunt me. Wanna smell like you—”
OK, REMEMBER TO BREATHE FOLKS
“This is our song, Mars. You can’t just turn it down. Are you fucking kidding me?” The girly pop music blasts in the cab as he turns it back up far too loud. I glance down with a grimace and read the screen. “Since when is ‘Say Don’t Go’ our song?”
BRB, need to put on the song
“If you diss Taylor to my fucking face right now, I will file for divorce so fucking fast, I swear to fucking god, Mars.”
“Do you get it now?” he says as the song fades out. “Do you see it, Mars? Do you feel it?” He presses his hand over his heart. “She should have just named the song ‘Say Don’t Go, Ilmari Price.’”
“Jake tells me to be patient, and I am being patient, Mars. I’ll keep waiting. I’ll keep pretending it’s enough because I know you’re not ready and maybe you never will be. But I’m gonna keep waiting, Mars. And maybe someday you’ll look at me the way you look at Rachel, and then I’ll know I don’t have to wait anymore. Because we could be so good together, Mars.”
An cue the tears
I feel like I’ve just been checked into the boards. My chest is empty of air as I try to breathe out.
Rachel is the slow beating of my heart, essential to living. Jake is the breath of fresh air in my lungs. But Caleb? He’s become my second set of ribs. He’s our protector, our center. He keeps us safe. He keeps us whole.
I want to stay in here with him. I want to hold him in my arms and block out the world until he’s strong again. But he has to let me in. He has to really want that from me. He has to say it again in the harsh light of day. Soberly, decidedly. No drugs. No doubts. Because if we take this step forward, there’ll be no going back. “Say it,” I whisper. It’s wrong of me to ask now, but I can’t help myself. “Caleb…tell me not to go.”
The ache in my heart is infinite. Ouch
It’s so rare for him to use my name. He says it now, and it hits me like a bolt of electricity straight to my dick. Really unfortunate timing with the way he’s glaring at me. But his voice is all growly and rough, and he’s looking at me like he wants to eat me.
I came downstairs and found him in the living room casually wearing a t-shirt. Mars never wears a fucking shirt. I don’t know why, but I took it personally. It’s like he’s hiding from me, like he suddenly feels the need to wear armor around me.
“Well…I think you maybe said something about how he only loves your wife…and that he doesn’t actually love you.” My heart fucking stops. “You said something like, ‘I can’t make him want me.’” Oh, this is so fucking bad. “And then you pulled him in close and said you want to live inside his skin.” “Oh…shit.”
After five years of this strained mutual silence, Mars finally knows the truth. He knows I meant every word I said.
After five years of holding this truth hostage deep in my heart, all it took was a stupid dental surgery for my walls to finally crumble.
“To know you is to want you, Caleb.”
This😭😭
“Because we are the safe harbor. You are held apart, removed from me like a lighthouse on the far distant shore. I can see home, but I cannot reach it. I know it’s there, but your fire cannot give me warmth.”
“Only they may seek shelter in your light,” he murmurs, his thumb brushing my cheek. “I must remain at the breakers, holding back the violence of the waves, destined to watch you love them from afar.”
Absolutely bawling my eyes out
“We’re the harbor for them,” I reply, letting my hands drift back down to his shoulders. “But they’re an ocean away. It’s just the two of us here now. You and me, Mars. I need to know what I am to you. I need to know if there’s any piece of you left I can claim…or have they taken everything?”
“I will not be nothing to you, Ilmari Price. And I am no longer content to stand on some distant shore, helping you hold this family together, wanting you with an ache that tears me apart.” I suck in a breath, squeezing his hips as I step in. “I can’t breathe for wanting you. I have no pride left. No clever words. Nothing. Please…just end my fucking agony and tell me there’s something left. Tell me there’s a part of you I can have that they don’t already claim, something that can be only mine.”
I can’t fucking breathe
“The others have staked their claims on me, it’s true. But you may have the rest. Take anything…everything. Every part of me. It’s yours.”
“Mars…do you love me?” My goalie lets the puck hit the back of the net. He doesn’t lift a finger to block it. “More than my own life. But you already know that. We’re so far past expressing our mutual feelings of fidelity. Ask the question you really want answered.”
“Are you in love with me, Mars?” He closes his eyes and lets out a breath. “So much it hurts.”
“Let me in,” I beg, my hands clinging to his shoulders as we share air, kissing like we’ll die if we stop. “No more living life as halves. Be whole with me. Let me climb inside your skin, inside your mind. Please, baby, just let me in, and never let me go.”
“Rachel gets my heart, Jake gets my calm, and you get everything else? You want to step inside my bones and wear me as a second skin? You want to possess me, body and soul?”
“I want to complete you. Two halves of one whole. No beginning and no fucking end. One unit, unbreakable. That’s what you promised us, Mars.”
“This door will never be shut to me again,” he declares. My eyes go wide as I take in his full meaning. For as much as he’s kept himself separate from me all these years, I’ve kept myself separate from him, from all of them. I built myself a fortress of solitude in here. And since I wasn’t sexual with him before, I’ve never invited him inside. He stood at the breakers, watching as I lived a life apart, bringing his loves inside my inner sanctum, shutting the door in his face.
“Do you love me, Caleb?” he says at last. I huff. “You know I do, asshole. Ask the real question.” A smile ghosts over his lips. “Are you in love with me?” My hands stroke down his arms. “So much it hurts.”
God, he’s so thick. He’s about to tear me the fuck apart, and I’m over here trembling like a virgin with eager anticipation.
“I’ve never been with a man,” he admits. I smile. “I know, Mars.” “My experience begins and ends with you.”
“If it’s any consolation, you’re perfectly tight. Any tighter, and I’d already be filling you with cum. As it is, I’m happy to wait all night for you, my love. When you’re ready, we continue.” My love. I turn away from him and close my eyes, breathing through the stretch. I am his love. This is love. This is the holy communion of two souls entwined by love, now joined in the flesh. I want to be worthy of him. I want to be the last piece of his puzzle, as he is surely mine. We’re complete now. Our hearts, our family. One unit, unbreakable.
“I wanted your cum inside me,” I say, my tone a desperate whimper. He folds himself over me again, his hands smearing the cum all over my back, massaging it into my skin. “No,” he growls in my ear, nipping my lobe and making me hiss. “You wanted to wear my cum. You dreamt of this, Caleb. You practiced in the shower, alone and aching for it. Now look at you, covered in my seed like a needy, perfect whore. You’re mine.” He slaps my ass, and I gasp despite myself. “You’re my jaded little cum whore. And you’ll wear my seed with pride because you know you’ve earned this, every fucking drop.”
“I wanna ride this dick until it cuts me in half. And this time you will come inside me. We don’t stop until my ass leaks with your cum.” His eyes blaze as he nods.
Mars really likes that idea 🤭
“No exit, Mars. Promise me.” He nods, leaning in to brush a kiss to my lips. “No exit, Aarre.”
It’s a sacred moment, purer than baptism. I’m washed clean in the love of this man, his total ownership of my body matched only by his complete surrender of his shields and ego. We own each other now; we surrender to each other. At long fucking last, we are one.
Dr. Emily Rath, you’re a word genius. A lyricist. I’m SOBBING
