Breathe Again by Joelle Charming Page A

again. And when he slid into me for the second
time that night, I nearly collapsed on top of him. But the pleasure of it far
outweighed any anxiety I had about being on top, and it wasn’t long before I
found a rhythm that made us both cry out. We moved slowly after that, but with
an urgency that neither one of us could hide.

CHAPTER 10
    I lost my virginity on my fifteenth
birthday. I’d always been taught, like most young women in Selden, that I
should wait until marriage before having sex, but nobody ever did. Especially
not when their boyfriends at fifteen were expected to one day be their husbands.
    My mom had made pot roast for dinner and a chocolate cake for
dessert. I’d invited my two best friends over, but my boyfriend, Daniel, had to
work. It wasn’t until nearly midnight, long after my parents and siblings had
fallen asleep, that I heard the tap at my window.
    We’d been dating only a few months at that time, but we’d
known each other almost our entire lives. We’d grown up next door to each
other, and his older brother was a best friend of my older brother. And while
Daniel was a year older than I was, my parents encouraged our relationship. The
walls in the Devlin house were thin, and my parents’ bedroom was right next to
my own, but if they heard the window open and close that night, they never said
anything. They didn’t say anything for the next eight years either.
    According to nearly everyone in town, Daniel and I were a
perfect match. We both came from families that had lived in Selden for
generations, and our fathers had gone to school together. Our mothers were even
cochairs of the women’s council at church. It seemed inevitable that we would
marry someday.
    We walked to the creek behind our houses, where he gave me a
charm bracelet for my birthday. He told me he saved his paycheck for two months
so that he could buy it for me, and had driven almost three hours to the
closest mall so that he could pick it up from the jewelers. It came with three
charms on it already, and had plenty of space left for me to collect more.
There was a heart with the date on it, an M for
Mellie, and a hummingbird for my grandmother. For the next six years, until he
proposed, it was the most precious piece of jewelry that I owned, after my
grandmother’s pearl necklace. It was now buried in a sock drawer in my bedroom
at my parents’ house, next to my engagement ring.
    He had spread out a blanket on the riverbank, and had a
cupcake and a bottle of stolen champagne waiting for us. I’d never tried real
champagne before, just a glass of white wine once at my cousin’s wedding. When
he popped open the bottle, I was afraid for a moment that someone would hear
it, but everyone was asleep and we were almost a mile away from home. I didn’t
like the taste of the alcohol at first, but it wasn’t long before the bottle
was almost gone. And when he kissed me, I didn’t stop him.
    The first time wasn’t anything like the fairy tale I’d always
dreamed it would be. It was painful and awkward, but we were both young and had
never made love before. So, even though the night was cold and the champagne
was warm, it was amazing to me. I’d found someone who loved me, and only me, in
every way possible.

CHAPTER 11
    I wasn’t really sure what I was
expecting after it was all over. We’d been going at it for nearly three hours,
finally stopping when we were both too exhausted to continue. He just wrapped
me in the blankets and held me close before falling asleep. I could feel his
heavy, even breathing on my neck, but I couldn’t sleep, no matter how safe and
right it felt in his arms.
    The air was a little chilly, so I pulled the sheet off of the
bed when I got up, making sure to wrap it around myself. I padded into the
front room, hoping to find a glass of water. I considered calling myself a cab,
but I didn’t have a phone and I wasn’t sure where Jackson kept his. It would be
too cruel to leave him while he was