152. (make it feel like home) if i tell you you're mine
Title | (make it feel like home) if i tell you you're mine
Rating | r
Characters| Carter + Serena
Prompt | Don't fool yourself, she was a heartache from the moment you met her (artemis_sparks). This is mostly canon compliant, I guess?
Notes | LJ decided to hate me in December, so the prompts I received for advent drabbles have become 2012 drabbles instead, and are no longer holiday-themed 'cause...it's not the holidays.
sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough i don't know why -
keep making me laugh, let's go get high, the road is long, we carry on
try to have fun in the meantime. (x)
He flicks a finger lightly across her nose, means it like an admonishment but it comes off like a caress.
“We’re too old for this shit,” he says, and means it.
She laughs, her bare feet propped on his desk, toenails painted bubblegum pink. “Maybe you are.”
She blows smoke in his face and he does not cough; he swallows it instead, takes it into his own lungs and lets it settle there.
There is fleur-de-lis wallpaper in her room at her grandmother’s, the same kind of stuff you’d find in a five-star hotel. It’s the only reason he starts to get used to being there.
He doesn’t pay much attention to that wallpaper, busy with his mouth on her chest as he twists a nipple gently between two fingers. She squirms, pushing at one of his shoulders and giggling his name, “Carter…”
He grins, a little wolfishly, sliding a hand over the smooth skin of her flat belly. Her dress is pooled around her waist and she’s laid out on crisp white sheets, French lilies printed on the wall that serves as her backdrop. “Hey,” he says gruffly, pushing up to kiss her, his tongue delving into her mouth.
She tastes like marijuana and the kinds of things that could make a heart somersault. “Hey,” she whispers back, smiling a little into the kiss.
“I wanna eat you out,” he tells her.
It’s inelegant but her fingers tighten around his shoulder, her pupils blown wide in her eyes; it’s inelegant but she’s fourteen, untouched, and elegance isn’t what she’s asking him for.
“Let me,” he says, kissing her again. “You’re so beautiful.”
She shudders underneath him, her breath hitching like she’s never been wanted before, and she whispers yes against his teeth.
She sneers at him in the woods, “You’re not my boyfriend.”
He isn’t, and he’s never really wanted to be, but she won’t quite look at him and there’s a glimmer in her eyes like no one will ever want her the right way and, well -
He tugs at her arm, fights to meet her eyes. “Who the hell is he not to want you?”
It’s a demand, but she answers it with a kiss.
The room is smoky and she’s taken her feet off his desk, tucked them under her in her chair, when he asks:
“Do you live here now?”
Serena shrugs and stays quiet for a long time.
“I don’t know,” she finally says.
They work better in transition, fleur-de-lis wallpapered hotel rooms, balmy nights in Santorini, in Fiji, her soft kisses on the corner of his mouth as they drift off to sleep together. New York is too cold for them to survive.
She pulls too much when they try to date, says things like meet my family, leaves a bottle of shampoo in his bathroom, wears his shirts tucked into her skirts and holds his hand on the sidewalk. He pushes back, asks do you trust me? and makes her prove it, tracks her father even when she doesn’t want to know where he is, buys her jewellery like a boyfriend would.
She never asks him to love her, but he breaks her heart all the same.
In Barcelona, she holds her hair up with a pen, sprawled on the bed with her laptop in front of her, travel blogging.
“I miss it,” she says wistfully, twenty-three and acting like all her dreams are behind her.
“So get it back,” he drawls.
She looks at him, blue eyes somber. “It’s only that easy for you.”
He rolls her over so that her back is pressed to the mattress. “Because I never leave.”
“You always leave,” she whispers, her nails digging into his back, hips canting up as he moves inside of her.
“I came when you called, didn’t I?”
She throws her head back, her hair a mess on the sheets, and murmurs his name.
He kisses the column of her neck, not moving just yet. “And this is why you called me, isn’t it?”
The image of the map on her laptop screen taunts him as they fuck. He buries his face against her neck, listening to her whisper his name.
I miss you, too. He mouths the words against her skin.
“Beautiful,” he comments lazily, finishing off his glass of scotch.
She whirls around to face him, her hair flying around her shoulders, the skirt of her dress brushing against the floor. Her fingertips touch her collarbone, a hand lifted to her chest in surprise. “How the hell - ” she starts to hiss at him.
He interrupts. “We all have our secrets, don’t we?”
“I thought you were in London,” she says softly.
“I couldn’t miss your special day.” He means for it to be wry but it comes out bitterly - he blames the alcohol.
“I didn’t invite you for a reason.”
“And here I thought you were just embarrassed,” he says sarcastically. “Shotgun wedding, you know.” He reaches a hand out to her round belly.
She flinches away from him. “No one is forcing Adam to marry me,” she says lowly.
“Of course not,” he agrees evenly.
“I want you to leave. I’m getting married in less than fifteen minutes and I want you to leave. I don’t even know why you’re here.”
He scoffs. “Cut the bullshit, Serena.”
“You cut the bullshit,” she shoots back. “You’ve had months to tell me not to marry him. That’s what you’re here to do, right? To tell me not to marry him?”
He’s quiet.
“Carter?” she asks very softly.
Jaw set, he says, “I don’t think you love him.”
Serena chokes on a laugh, her chin quivering. “Because you would know?”
“Fuck,” he mumbles, “I didn’t think you’d - go through with it.”
She swallows hard. “You’re not even going to ask, are you? You’re not even going to ask me not to. You can’t.”
“C’mon, beautiful,” he shrugs, reaching out toward her again (and she really is, so beautiful, in that stupid dress). “Let’s just get out of here.”
She stares at his hand instead of taking it. “Why didn’t you marry her?” she whispers, lifting her gaze to his face. “That girl - Bree Buckley’s sister. Why didn’t you marry her?”
He stiffens, but his hand stays extended between them. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to.”
Her face crumples, a mascara-blackened tear slipping down her cheek. “You can’t even say it.”
He leaves alone, and Serena gets married.
Lilly stands right up against the glass exterior of their cart on the Eye, peering out, greedily taking in the view of the city.
“What’s that?” she asks, pointing.
Carter clears his throat, perched on the edge of the bench, hands on his knees. “That’s Buckingham Palace.”
She nods, secure in her five-year-old knowledge, “Where the princess lives.”
His hands keep lifting from his knees, reaching out to hover on either side of her little body, resisting the temptation to grab onto the white sash tied into a big bow at the back of her dress, and it’s ridiculous, because she’s not going to fall, she’s perfectly safe. It’s ridiculous because he’s never wanted children, has never understood kids or even liked them.
It’s ridiculous, because Serena’s daughter looks at him with bright blue eyes and that toothy grin of hers, and all he wants is for her to keep smiling.
Cece dies and he finds her in that old summertime room, curtains drawn shut so that the flowers on the wall aren’t visible at all. She’s on the floor, her back against her bed, her face in her hands.
He sits down next to her, silent and still. He stares at the wall until he can discern the flowery pattern. He lets her lean into him, he strokes her hair, he pretends not to notice when she starts to cry.
He touches her wedding ring gingerly before he takes her hold hand in his, squeezing it gently. He says, “I’m sorry.”
In Santorini, he falls in love with her laughter.
She’s so young on the beach, so young with her feet buried in the sand and the moonlight in her hair. So young, when she asks him, “Do you think he misses me?”
“Yes,” he says, his arms around her waist and his forehead pressed to hers. “Yes,” he breathes against her mouth, and her arms link around his neck, her chest presses against his, before she pulls away, running for the water. “Yes!” he calls after her, splashing through the waves.
She laughs at him, holding the skirt of her dress up in her hands. “Liar!” she yells back at him, the wind tossing the word toward him.
He laughs, too, and he catches her, whirls her around in his arms and shuts her up with a kiss. He’s young, too - young and stupid like he’ll never be again.
Her divorce is finalized in the spring.
As she straddles his lap, he kisses the fingers of her left hand, unadorned again. She tugs her hand away, presses it lightly to his chest, using it to get a little leverage before she sinks onto him. Her eyes fall shut right away, her teeth digging into her bottom lip.
He lifts his hand, strokes his thumb over her cheek. “S’you,” he murmurs to her.
She blinks her eyes open again, shifting her hips carefully. “What?” she breathes.
He slides his hand down her neck, pausing briefly to cup her breast, trails his fingers down her stomach, tracing the faint stretch marks before he slips his hand between them, finding her clit with a practiced kind of ease.
“Carter,” she murmurs.
“I couldn’t marry anyone,” he says quietly. “Not when there’s you.”
She holds his gaze, hips pressing down, her breath catching in her throat. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Nothing, beautiful.” He leans up to kiss her and she meets him halfway.
She curls into the corner of the sofa in his London flat, arms crossed tight across his chest. She does not touch the glass of wine he holds out to her.
“I’m pregnant,” she tells him, and there’s something vulnerable in the lines of her mouth, the flutter of her lashes over her eyes.
He drops down on the coffee table, across from her. “Is - with my baby?”
She shrugs. “Does it matter?”
It’s a test and he fails it, drinks the wine himself, all in one gulpy, and shakes his head slightly. “No.”
Past midnight, she sneaks out of her grandmother’s house, her hair spilling around her shoulders. Her denim shorts barely cover her ass.
“I thought you left,” she whispers, snagging the flask he’s holding and taking a sip, grimacing afterward.
He watches her, amused. “I extended my stay.”
“Don’t you have, like…college?”
“Don’t you have school?” he volleys back.
She shakes her head and smiles at him, slow and blossoming. “Constance starts late this year.”
He nods, satisfied. “Will you come somewhere with me?”
She shrugs her shoulders, one strap of her shirt slipping down her arm as she tilts her head slightly. “Will you sleep with me?”
Carter stares at her for a beat and then smirks, slowly, watching as a little grin works its way onto her lips. They don’t answer each other; they don’t need to.
She talks about her boyfriend all the time. Adam goes to Berkeley, Adam’s the sweetest guy, Adam wants her to go home with him for Christmas, Adam’s an amazing squash player.
He doesn’t know why she does it, if it’s because she really likes the guy or because she’s trying to get a rise out of him, but the end result is always her body tangled in his sheets, her skin marked by his mouth - let’s see what Adam thinks of the hickey on the inside of her thigh.
Serena is on her laptop at the table, her attention focused on the screen, typing quickly and flipping through the notepad next to her. Carter claims to be reading the newspaper, but is really sneaking occasional glances at her daughter.
Lilly sits on her knees in her chair, her dark hair braided neatly. Her animal crackers have long conversations before she finally eats them. She reaches across the table to hand him an elephant, offers, “You can play, too.”
He starts slightly, the way he always does when Serena’s daughter addresses him directly. “Uh, thank you,” he says, “But I don’t want to interrupt your game.”
She shakes her head, blue eyes wide under sooty lashes. “Mommy says we should be friends.” She sets the elephant on his placemat.
“She does?” It’s the first he’s heard of it, and he looks to Serena instinctively, but she’s absorbed in her work.
Lilly nods. “You’re Mommy’s friend so you can be my friend, too.”
He hesitates, and Serena rolls her eyes, flips through her notepad irritably. “Just take the cracker, Carter.”
Lilly giggles at the look on his face, reaching a hand across the table, her tiny fingers touching his. “Don’t worry,” she says sweetly. “Mommy’s not mad.” Her expression turns serious. “I think she likes you more than she likes Daddy.”
Serena drops her notepad. “Lilly!” she admonishes. “That isn’t true.”
The little girl rolls her eyes. “I won’t tell,” she whispers to Carter, a little smile on her lips, one that reminds him of stealing boats on summer nights.
He smiles back at her, can’t help it. “I know you won’t.”
“Please,” she gasps against his mouth. “Carter, please, I need - ”
He kisses her shoulder. “Don’t have to beg, beautiful.”
“Oh,” she whimpers, the smallest of sounds, and he keeps his eyes on her face, watches the pink flush in her cheeks and the flutter of her eyelashes as she falls apart completely. “Please,” she breathes even as she shudders through the aftershocks.
“So beautiful, baby, fuck,” he murmurs to her.
“I need you,” she says softly, her hand catching his when he reaches toward the nightstand, their fingers threading together. “Just you, Carter, please.”
“Shh.” He nudges a kiss to her lips. “Condom…?”
Her eyes are hazy and blue, focused on his, “Just you,” she says again, returning his kiss, deep and desperate.
He comes buried inside of her, listening to her cry out his name.
It’s an assumption he makes, that she’s on the pill, and she offers him no information to the contrary. He thinks she’s never lied to her, but maybe she’s never really told him the truth. He doesn’t question her; he doesn’t have the right to.
Not even when the facts exist as they do, when her daughter comes into the world eight months and fourteen days later, when Serena gives baby Lilly another man’s last name.
“Have you ever been in love?”
She asks him when she’s fifteen, her hair in a knot atop her head, acid melting on her tongue and her mouth all red and swollen.
He scoffs, “Hell no.”
She laughs, crawls into his lap, sits on his thighs, lets him put his hands underneath her short plaid skirt. “But don’t you want to be? Doesn’t everybody?”
“That shit ties you down, Serena,” he says impatiently, oddly uncomfortable talking about this with her. “Are we going to talk or are we going to fuck?”
Her hand slides down his stomach, the tips of her fingers dipping into his pants. “Can’t you do both?” she asks cheekily.
“No,” he mutters, “I don’t multitask.”
She’s quiet after that, quiet even as she comes, hips rocking over his fingers. She tucks her face against his shoulder, breathes raggedly against him. He kisses the shell of her ear, lays her back over the floor.
“If you don’t want to - ”
“I do,” she murmurs, shifts her legs apart for him, her hands tugging impatiently at his shirt. “I want to…” She sighs, tips her head back as he kisses her neck, whispers, “I want more.”
Serena has a suite at the Mandarin Oriental in Hyde Park. The bedroom is wallpapered with fleur-de-lis.
He sits at the foot of the bed while she lounges back against the pillow, Lilly stretched out over her, slumbering peacefully. He watches Serena rub her little girl’s back in steady, soothing patterns, says quietly, “You should stay.”
Her smile is wry. “And live in a hotel for the rest of my life?”
“I have a house, you know.”
She scoffs and Lilly shifts; Serena presses a kiss to her daughter’s forehead, just above one of the eyebrows that tends to tilt upward in ways that remind Carter, impossibly, of his sister.
“Adam would fight it,” she murmurs. “If I took his daughter across the Atlantic to move in with another man. He’d take me to court.”
“You could beat him. I’ll represent you.”
She gives him an incredulous look. “You work with economic law in Britain, you aren’t qualified to represent me in a family law case in the States and - god, that’s the world’s biggest conflict of interest.”
“Than I’ll find someone good to represent you,” he says dismissively. “That’s hardly the point.”
“He’d never let me, Carter,” she says very softly, leaning her cheek against Lilly’s hair.
“Then do a DNA test,” he says, quickly, before he can really think about it. “Have him realize that his parental rights are nonexistent.”
Serena’s gaze collides with his abruptly, her eyes flashing. She’s quiet for a beat before she says, lowly, “I want you to leave.”
“She’s mine, isn’t she?”
“Carter!” she gasps, staring at him. “You can’t - you can’t ask me that five years later.”
“I’m not asking,” he says lowly. He knows. They both do.
“Shhh!” she giggles when he groans, pressing a hand over his mouth. “My grandma has, like, super sonic hearing. She’ll wake up.”
He kisses her palm, waits until she pulls her hand away to say, “Cece loves me.”
“I don’t think she’d love you in bed with her granddaughter,” Serena giggles, letting him flip them over so that she lands on her back on the mattress, hair strewn out over her sheets. “And she loves me more than she loves you.”
“Understandably,” he murmurs.
She looks at him with those eyes, all soft and admiring. “And you?” she asks quietly, arching her back underneath him.
He presses his mouth to hers in a kiss that turns tender. “And me,” he agrees.
She blows out a perfect smoke circle, tangled in the sheets, his shirt buttoned between her breasts.
“Isn’t there a fine for smoking in hotel rooms?” he asks lazily, winding her hair around his fingers.
“You’re right,” she says in a quiet, decisive tone. Silence lingers between them for a moment. “We’re too old for this.”
He sighs, tracing his fingers down her spine. “Now you choose to listen to me?”
“She’s my daughter, Carter,” she says. “It’s not just us anymore. It’s her life, too. I have to put her first.”
“She’s our daughter,” he corrects her.
Her bottom lip quivers for half a second; he catches it before she presses her lips tight together. “So what?” she whispers. “I gave you a choice. I gave you a chance. You didn’t take it.”
“I wasn’t ready then.”
“Neither was I.” She puts out her cigarette in the ashtray. “We never are.”
“Serena, I - ”
“Don’t, okay? Please, don’t. Whatever you’re going to say - it’ll convince me, you know it will, and you know that it won’t last. Whatever you’re willing to promise me right now, it’s not going to stick.” She shrugs, her shoulders small and trembling under his shirt. “You want me to move here, but how long do we have until you get bored of it here? Until you want to move somewhere else? Until you want to slack off instead of working? Lil needs a home, she deserves that.” She bows her head slightly, her hair falling in a curtain between them. “And I think maybe I do, too.”
He clenches his jaw for a moment before he clears his throat and asks, “When do you two leave?”
“Saturday morning,” she whispers.
“Serena…” He sighs, cups her cheek in his hand and tilts her face up, wipes at tears with the pad of his thumb. “None of that, c’mon.”
The tears keep falling, though, slipping slowly from her eyes and sliding over his fingers, dampening them. “Do you love me?” she murmurs, a quiet question, a fragile one.
He leans in to kiss her, soft and slow, deepening in stages, his tongue sliding along the seam of her lips, asking for entrance to her mouth. She grants it to him after a long moment, her mouth smoky and sweet against his.
She tugs away from him after a few minutes, exhaling harshly, her forehead resting against his. “You can’t even say it,” she breathes.
“Hey, beautiful,” he calls after her.
She turns back toward him, wearing nothing but that flimsy little dress, her shoes in her hands. Her shoulders are sunburnt and her feet are grass-stained.
“I’ll see ya ’round,” he tells her, with a careless shrug.
“I know,” she says warmly, a laugh in her voice - summer in the Hamptons and she’s barely fourteen, but that smile could light the rest of his life.
fin.
Rating | r
Characters| Carter + Serena
Prompt | Don't fool yourself, she was a heartache from the moment you met her (artemis_sparks). This is mostly canon compliant, I guess?
Notes | LJ decided to hate me in December, so the prompts I received for advent drabbles have become 2012 drabbles instead, and are no longer holiday-themed 'cause...it's not the holidays.
sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough i don't know why -
keep making me laugh, let's go get high, the road is long, we carry on
try to have fun in the meantime. (x)
He flicks a finger lightly across her nose, means it like an admonishment but it comes off like a caress.
“We’re too old for this shit,” he says, and means it.
She laughs, her bare feet propped on his desk, toenails painted bubblegum pink. “Maybe you are.”
She blows smoke in his face and he does not cough; he swallows it instead, takes it into his own lungs and lets it settle there.
There is fleur-de-lis wallpaper in her room at her grandmother’s, the same kind of stuff you’d find in a five-star hotel. It’s the only reason he starts to get used to being there.
He doesn’t pay much attention to that wallpaper, busy with his mouth on her chest as he twists a nipple gently between two fingers. She squirms, pushing at one of his shoulders and giggling his name, “Carter…”
He grins, a little wolfishly, sliding a hand over the smooth skin of her flat belly. Her dress is pooled around her waist and she’s laid out on crisp white sheets, French lilies printed on the wall that serves as her backdrop. “Hey,” he says gruffly, pushing up to kiss her, his tongue delving into her mouth.
She tastes like marijuana and the kinds of things that could make a heart somersault. “Hey,” she whispers back, smiling a little into the kiss.
“I wanna eat you out,” he tells her.
It’s inelegant but her fingers tighten around his shoulder, her pupils blown wide in her eyes; it’s inelegant but she’s fourteen, untouched, and elegance isn’t what she’s asking him for.
“Let me,” he says, kissing her again. “You’re so beautiful.”
She shudders underneath him, her breath hitching like she’s never been wanted before, and she whispers yes against his teeth.
She sneers at him in the woods, “You’re not my boyfriend.”
He isn’t, and he’s never really wanted to be, but she won’t quite look at him and there’s a glimmer in her eyes like no one will ever want her the right way and, well -
He tugs at her arm, fights to meet her eyes. “Who the hell is he not to want you?”
It’s a demand, but she answers it with a kiss.
The room is smoky and she’s taken her feet off his desk, tucked them under her in her chair, when he asks:
“Do you live here now?”
Serena shrugs and stays quiet for a long time.
“I don’t know,” she finally says.
They work better in transition, fleur-de-lis wallpapered hotel rooms, balmy nights in Santorini, in Fiji, her soft kisses on the corner of his mouth as they drift off to sleep together. New York is too cold for them to survive.
She pulls too much when they try to date, says things like meet my family, leaves a bottle of shampoo in his bathroom, wears his shirts tucked into her skirts and holds his hand on the sidewalk. He pushes back, asks do you trust me? and makes her prove it, tracks her father even when she doesn’t want to know where he is, buys her jewellery like a boyfriend would.
She never asks him to love her, but he breaks her heart all the same.
In Barcelona, she holds her hair up with a pen, sprawled on the bed with her laptop in front of her, travel blogging.
“I miss it,” she says wistfully, twenty-three and acting like all her dreams are behind her.
“So get it back,” he drawls.
She looks at him, blue eyes somber. “It’s only that easy for you.”
He rolls her over so that her back is pressed to the mattress. “Because I never leave.”
“You always leave,” she whispers, her nails digging into his back, hips canting up as he moves inside of her.
“I came when you called, didn’t I?”
She throws her head back, her hair a mess on the sheets, and murmurs his name.
He kisses the column of her neck, not moving just yet. “And this is why you called me, isn’t it?”
The image of the map on her laptop screen taunts him as they fuck. He buries his face against her neck, listening to her whisper his name.
I miss you, too. He mouths the words against her skin.
“Beautiful,” he comments lazily, finishing off his glass of scotch.
She whirls around to face him, her hair flying around her shoulders, the skirt of her dress brushing against the floor. Her fingertips touch her collarbone, a hand lifted to her chest in surprise. “How the hell - ” she starts to hiss at him.
He interrupts. “We all have our secrets, don’t we?”
“I thought you were in London,” she says softly.
“I couldn’t miss your special day.” He means for it to be wry but it comes out bitterly - he blames the alcohol.
“I didn’t invite you for a reason.”
“And here I thought you were just embarrassed,” he says sarcastically. “Shotgun wedding, you know.” He reaches a hand out to her round belly.
She flinches away from him. “No one is forcing Adam to marry me,” she says lowly.
“Of course not,” he agrees evenly.
“I want you to leave. I’m getting married in less than fifteen minutes and I want you to leave. I don’t even know why you’re here.”
He scoffs. “Cut the bullshit, Serena.”
“You cut the bullshit,” she shoots back. “You’ve had months to tell me not to marry him. That’s what you’re here to do, right? To tell me not to marry him?”
He’s quiet.
“Carter?” she asks very softly.
Jaw set, he says, “I don’t think you love him.”
Serena chokes on a laugh, her chin quivering. “Because you would know?”
“Fuck,” he mumbles, “I didn’t think you’d - go through with it.”
She swallows hard. “You’re not even going to ask, are you? You’re not even going to ask me not to. You can’t.”
“C’mon, beautiful,” he shrugs, reaching out toward her again (and she really is, so beautiful, in that stupid dress). “Let’s just get out of here.”
She stares at his hand instead of taking it. “Why didn’t you marry her?” she whispers, lifting her gaze to his face. “That girl - Bree Buckley’s sister. Why didn’t you marry her?”
He stiffens, but his hand stays extended between them. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to.”
Her face crumples, a mascara-blackened tear slipping down her cheek. “You can’t even say it.”
He leaves alone, and Serena gets married.
Lilly stands right up against the glass exterior of their cart on the Eye, peering out, greedily taking in the view of the city.
“What’s that?” she asks, pointing.
Carter clears his throat, perched on the edge of the bench, hands on his knees. “That’s Buckingham Palace.”
She nods, secure in her five-year-old knowledge, “Where the princess lives.”
His hands keep lifting from his knees, reaching out to hover on either side of her little body, resisting the temptation to grab onto the white sash tied into a big bow at the back of her dress, and it’s ridiculous, because she’s not going to fall, she’s perfectly safe. It’s ridiculous because he’s never wanted children, has never understood kids or even liked them.
It’s ridiculous, because Serena’s daughter looks at him with bright blue eyes and that toothy grin of hers, and all he wants is for her to keep smiling.
Cece dies and he finds her in that old summertime room, curtains drawn shut so that the flowers on the wall aren’t visible at all. She’s on the floor, her back against her bed, her face in her hands.
He sits down next to her, silent and still. He stares at the wall until he can discern the flowery pattern. He lets her lean into him, he strokes her hair, he pretends not to notice when she starts to cry.
He touches her wedding ring gingerly before he takes her hold hand in his, squeezing it gently. He says, “I’m sorry.”
In Santorini, he falls in love with her laughter.
She’s so young on the beach, so young with her feet buried in the sand and the moonlight in her hair. So young, when she asks him, “Do you think he misses me?”
“Yes,” he says, his arms around her waist and his forehead pressed to hers. “Yes,” he breathes against her mouth, and her arms link around his neck, her chest presses against his, before she pulls away, running for the water. “Yes!” he calls after her, splashing through the waves.
She laughs at him, holding the skirt of her dress up in her hands. “Liar!” she yells back at him, the wind tossing the word toward him.
He laughs, too, and he catches her, whirls her around in his arms and shuts her up with a kiss. He’s young, too - young and stupid like he’ll never be again.
Her divorce is finalized in the spring.
As she straddles his lap, he kisses the fingers of her left hand, unadorned again. She tugs her hand away, presses it lightly to his chest, using it to get a little leverage before she sinks onto him. Her eyes fall shut right away, her teeth digging into her bottom lip.
He lifts his hand, strokes his thumb over her cheek. “S’you,” he murmurs to her.
She blinks her eyes open again, shifting her hips carefully. “What?” she breathes.
He slides his hand down her neck, pausing briefly to cup her breast, trails his fingers down her stomach, tracing the faint stretch marks before he slips his hand between them, finding her clit with a practiced kind of ease.
“Carter,” she murmurs.
“I couldn’t marry anyone,” he says quietly. “Not when there’s you.”
She holds his gaze, hips pressing down, her breath catching in her throat. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Nothing, beautiful.” He leans up to kiss her and she meets him halfway.
She curls into the corner of the sofa in his London flat, arms crossed tight across his chest. She does not touch the glass of wine he holds out to her.
“I’m pregnant,” she tells him, and there’s something vulnerable in the lines of her mouth, the flutter of her lashes over her eyes.
He drops down on the coffee table, across from her. “Is - with my baby?”
She shrugs. “Does it matter?”
It’s a test and he fails it, drinks the wine himself, all in one gulpy, and shakes his head slightly. “No.”
Past midnight, she sneaks out of her grandmother’s house, her hair spilling around her shoulders. Her denim shorts barely cover her ass.
“I thought you left,” she whispers, snagging the flask he’s holding and taking a sip, grimacing afterward.
He watches her, amused. “I extended my stay.”
“Don’t you have, like…college?”
“Don’t you have school?” he volleys back.
She shakes her head and smiles at him, slow and blossoming. “Constance starts late this year.”
He nods, satisfied. “Will you come somewhere with me?”
She shrugs her shoulders, one strap of her shirt slipping down her arm as she tilts her head slightly. “Will you sleep with me?”
Carter stares at her for a beat and then smirks, slowly, watching as a little grin works its way onto her lips. They don’t answer each other; they don’t need to.
She talks about her boyfriend all the time. Adam goes to Berkeley, Adam’s the sweetest guy, Adam wants her to go home with him for Christmas, Adam’s an amazing squash player.
He doesn’t know why she does it, if it’s because she really likes the guy or because she’s trying to get a rise out of him, but the end result is always her body tangled in his sheets, her skin marked by his mouth - let’s see what Adam thinks of the hickey on the inside of her thigh.
Serena is on her laptop at the table, her attention focused on the screen, typing quickly and flipping through the notepad next to her. Carter claims to be reading the newspaper, but is really sneaking occasional glances at her daughter.
Lilly sits on her knees in her chair, her dark hair braided neatly. Her animal crackers have long conversations before she finally eats them. She reaches across the table to hand him an elephant, offers, “You can play, too.”
He starts slightly, the way he always does when Serena’s daughter addresses him directly. “Uh, thank you,” he says, “But I don’t want to interrupt your game.”
She shakes her head, blue eyes wide under sooty lashes. “Mommy says we should be friends.” She sets the elephant on his placemat.
“She does?” It’s the first he’s heard of it, and he looks to Serena instinctively, but she’s absorbed in her work.
Lilly nods. “You’re Mommy’s friend so you can be my friend, too.”
He hesitates, and Serena rolls her eyes, flips through her notepad irritably. “Just take the cracker, Carter.”
Lilly giggles at the look on his face, reaching a hand across the table, her tiny fingers touching his. “Don’t worry,” she says sweetly. “Mommy’s not mad.” Her expression turns serious. “I think she likes you more than she likes Daddy.”
Serena drops her notepad. “Lilly!” she admonishes. “That isn’t true.”
The little girl rolls her eyes. “I won’t tell,” she whispers to Carter, a little smile on her lips, one that reminds him of stealing boats on summer nights.
He smiles back at her, can’t help it. “I know you won’t.”
“Please,” she gasps against his mouth. “Carter, please, I need - ”
He kisses her shoulder. “Don’t have to beg, beautiful.”
“Oh,” she whimpers, the smallest of sounds, and he keeps his eyes on her face, watches the pink flush in her cheeks and the flutter of her eyelashes as she falls apart completely. “Please,” she breathes even as she shudders through the aftershocks.
“So beautiful, baby, fuck,” he murmurs to her.
“I need you,” she says softly, her hand catching his when he reaches toward the nightstand, their fingers threading together. “Just you, Carter, please.”
“Shh.” He nudges a kiss to her lips. “Condom…?”
Her eyes are hazy and blue, focused on his, “Just you,” she says again, returning his kiss, deep and desperate.
He comes buried inside of her, listening to her cry out his name.
It’s an assumption he makes, that she’s on the pill, and she offers him no information to the contrary. He thinks she’s never lied to her, but maybe she’s never really told him the truth. He doesn’t question her; he doesn’t have the right to.
Not even when the facts exist as they do, when her daughter comes into the world eight months and fourteen days later, when Serena gives baby Lilly another man’s last name.
“Have you ever been in love?”
She asks him when she’s fifteen, her hair in a knot atop her head, acid melting on her tongue and her mouth all red and swollen.
He scoffs, “Hell no.”
She laughs, crawls into his lap, sits on his thighs, lets him put his hands underneath her short plaid skirt. “But don’t you want to be? Doesn’t everybody?”
“That shit ties you down, Serena,” he says impatiently, oddly uncomfortable talking about this with her. “Are we going to talk or are we going to fuck?”
Her hand slides down his stomach, the tips of her fingers dipping into his pants. “Can’t you do both?” she asks cheekily.
“No,” he mutters, “I don’t multitask.”
She’s quiet after that, quiet even as she comes, hips rocking over his fingers. She tucks her face against his shoulder, breathes raggedly against him. He kisses the shell of her ear, lays her back over the floor.
“If you don’t want to - ”
“I do,” she murmurs, shifts her legs apart for him, her hands tugging impatiently at his shirt. “I want to…” She sighs, tips her head back as he kisses her neck, whispers, “I want more.”
Serena has a suite at the Mandarin Oriental in Hyde Park. The bedroom is wallpapered with fleur-de-lis.
He sits at the foot of the bed while she lounges back against the pillow, Lilly stretched out over her, slumbering peacefully. He watches Serena rub her little girl’s back in steady, soothing patterns, says quietly, “You should stay.”
Her smile is wry. “And live in a hotel for the rest of my life?”
“I have a house, you know.”
She scoffs and Lilly shifts; Serena presses a kiss to her daughter’s forehead, just above one of the eyebrows that tends to tilt upward in ways that remind Carter, impossibly, of his sister.
“Adam would fight it,” she murmurs. “If I took his daughter across the Atlantic to move in with another man. He’d take me to court.”
“You could beat him. I’ll represent you.”
She gives him an incredulous look. “You work with economic law in Britain, you aren’t qualified to represent me in a family law case in the States and - god, that’s the world’s biggest conflict of interest.”
“Than I’ll find someone good to represent you,” he says dismissively. “That’s hardly the point.”
“He’d never let me, Carter,” she says very softly, leaning her cheek against Lilly’s hair.
“Then do a DNA test,” he says, quickly, before he can really think about it. “Have him realize that his parental rights are nonexistent.”
Serena’s gaze collides with his abruptly, her eyes flashing. She’s quiet for a beat before she says, lowly, “I want you to leave.”
“She’s mine, isn’t she?”
“Carter!” she gasps, staring at him. “You can’t - you can’t ask me that five years later.”
“I’m not asking,” he says lowly. He knows. They both do.
“Shhh!” she giggles when he groans, pressing a hand over his mouth. “My grandma has, like, super sonic hearing. She’ll wake up.”
He kisses her palm, waits until she pulls her hand away to say, “Cece loves me.”
“I don’t think she’d love you in bed with her granddaughter,” Serena giggles, letting him flip them over so that she lands on her back on the mattress, hair strewn out over her sheets. “And she loves me more than she loves you.”
“Understandably,” he murmurs.
She looks at him with those eyes, all soft and admiring. “And you?” she asks quietly, arching her back underneath him.
He presses his mouth to hers in a kiss that turns tender. “And me,” he agrees.
She blows out a perfect smoke circle, tangled in the sheets, his shirt buttoned between her breasts.
“Isn’t there a fine for smoking in hotel rooms?” he asks lazily, winding her hair around his fingers.
“You’re right,” she says in a quiet, decisive tone. Silence lingers between them for a moment. “We’re too old for this.”
He sighs, tracing his fingers down her spine. “Now you choose to listen to me?”
“She’s my daughter, Carter,” she says. “It’s not just us anymore. It’s her life, too. I have to put her first.”
“She’s our daughter,” he corrects her.
Her bottom lip quivers for half a second; he catches it before she presses her lips tight together. “So what?” she whispers. “I gave you a choice. I gave you a chance. You didn’t take it.”
“I wasn’t ready then.”
“Neither was I.” She puts out her cigarette in the ashtray. “We never are.”
“Serena, I - ”
“Don’t, okay? Please, don’t. Whatever you’re going to say - it’ll convince me, you know it will, and you know that it won’t last. Whatever you’re willing to promise me right now, it’s not going to stick.” She shrugs, her shoulders small and trembling under his shirt. “You want me to move here, but how long do we have until you get bored of it here? Until you want to move somewhere else? Until you want to slack off instead of working? Lil needs a home, she deserves that.” She bows her head slightly, her hair falling in a curtain between them. “And I think maybe I do, too.”
He clenches his jaw for a moment before he clears his throat and asks, “When do you two leave?”
“Saturday morning,” she whispers.
“Serena…” He sighs, cups her cheek in his hand and tilts her face up, wipes at tears with the pad of his thumb. “None of that, c’mon.”
The tears keep falling, though, slipping slowly from her eyes and sliding over his fingers, dampening them. “Do you love me?” she murmurs, a quiet question, a fragile one.
He leans in to kiss her, soft and slow, deepening in stages, his tongue sliding along the seam of her lips, asking for entrance to her mouth. She grants it to him after a long moment, her mouth smoky and sweet against his.
She tugs away from him after a few minutes, exhaling harshly, her forehead resting against his. “You can’t even say it,” she breathes.
“Hey, beautiful,” he calls after her.
She turns back toward him, wearing nothing but that flimsy little dress, her shoes in her hands. Her shoulders are sunburnt and her feet are grass-stained.
“I’ll see ya ’round,” he tells her, with a careless shrug.
“I know,” she says warmly, a laugh in her voice - summer in the Hamptons and she’s barely fourteen, but that smile could light the rest of his life.
fin.