Paul lowered his head between her thighs, his tongue conducting a symphony on her core. She moaned and grinded against his lips, imploding as he drank her ecstasy. Then, while her body pulsed with the aftershocks of euphoria, he stood up to enter her, inch by glorious inch. “I’ve been waiting for this,” he said, releasing a restrained breath. And again, her body fused with his, slick with sweat as they moved in a rhythmic dance all their own. Deven felt herself climbing and clenched against the budding orgasm. “Deven, I’ve always loved you.” His whisper was poetic and that was all it took. Deven choked on a scream and was sent tumbling into their interwoven rhapsodies of paradise.

Chapter Twenty - Before

Chapter Twenty

Before

She was already regretting her decision.

Deven drove slowly, hoping to prolong the unavoidable as much as possible. It was her first therapy session, so she’d grossly misjudged the distance, arriving much earlier than she’d intended. Now, she was pulling on to the street of the office building with thirty minutes to spare. It would look either really desperate or really pathetic. Neither of which were ideal for first impressions.

The card Paul had given her was in the cupholder. Dr. Felicia Bradshaw. She had sounded nice on the phone (Deven was surprised that she answered as opposed to an assistant or receptionist). She didn’t know why the idea of seeing a therapist was so demeaning. Logically, she knew she had nothing to be ashamed of. But in the same breath, it seemed to solidify that Deven had lost control; that she felt like a stranger in her own mind. And how weak she was, that she needed someone else, a complete stranger, to tell her how to fix her broken self?

But that morning, something was different. Deven got dressed, went for a walk, and stopped at the front of the complex, watching cars zoom by with enough velocity to have gusts of wind leaving her breathless. It wasn’t just the temporary suffocation that allured her. It was the fact that, for thirty seconds, she wanted to—no, craved to—walk out into the onslaught of traffic and find solace with her babies and her dad. And because the temptation was so strong, Deven knew she had to call someone. Kennedy was completely ghost, as she usually was when Benji was in town. Of course, her mother wasn’t much help, Justin still had a chip on his shoulder, and as much as it still hurt, her friendship with Paul was now nonexistent since the humiliated run-in with her boyfriend. So, it wasn’t like she had too many options.