“Stay where you are, woman,” he growled.
I obeyed.
Cal kissed the tip of my nose before he rolled off the sofa. He padded away, only to return seconds later with a condom pinched between his fingertips. He tore it open, stroked his erection a few times in front of me, and when I was good and ready and about to beg him to fuck me, he rolled the condom on and climbed back on top of me.
“Spread your legs,” he commanded.
Again, I was more than happy to oblige him. I opened my legs, and he dropped his hips to rest his cock right along my pussy. He slid himself up and down, dragging his shaft through my juices.
I hooked my arms around his neck. “Tease.”
He grinned. “You used to like it.”
“I still like it.”
“I’m going to make you scream my name when you come,” Cal said.
I shivered. “Then fuck me already.”
He gave me a crooked grin. Then he moved his hips down and angled them up before sliding his cock inside me.
His size took some adjusting to. I gripped his shoulders and forced myself to relax as my body succumbed to his girth and length. He worked his way in and out of me slowly, saving some of his length. He knew I couldn’t take it all at once.
As he thrust slowly in and out of me, he stroked my hair, kissed me deeply, and pressed his forehead to mine.
I wrapped my legs around his hips.
“You’re going to make me come so fast, baby,” he said. His voice was hoarse. Shaky. Aroused.
I held him tighter and used my heels on his ass to encourage him to fuck me deeper. He buried himself inside me. I gasped and then moaned, and I melted deeper into the cushions beneath me. “Yes,” I breathed.
Cal cupped my cheek and pressed his thumb under my chin, forcing me to look up at him as he leaned back a little and worked himself in and out of me in fast, deep strokes. I could hear how wet my pussy was as his hips slapped against the back of my thighs.
“Yes,” I cried again.
I was going to come. There was no holding on to it. I was going to unravel and let loose and give in to the delicious licks of pleasure running through my veins.
“Yes!”
Cal dropped to his elbows above me. His lips crashed against mine, silencing my cries of pleasure as he fucked me in earnest. My toes began to curl. I wrapped my arms around him, and right when I thought I was going to have to break our kiss to breathe, he let me.
And I came hard and fast. His name tore out of me in a scream, and the look of pride on his face had me smiling beneath him. His expression shifted as his orgasm hit him seconds after mine. His jaw clenched, and his brow furrowed, and I ran my nails down his chest as he bucked wildly against me as he came.
When we were done, he collapsed beside me on the couch, and we curled into each other. It just felt right. We caught our breaths and waited until the sweat had disappeared from our skin.
I looked up at him and smiled.
“What?” Cal asked.
I shook my head and giggled. “Nothing. It’s stupid.”
“Tell me.”
I blushed before I even started speaking. “I was just thinking that if that didn’t jog my memory, nothing will.”
I was glad that he laughed. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to kiss the top of my head. “Time will.”
We lay together for a little while longer. It was peaceful there. The lights on the Christmas tree lit up the room and so did the morning sun streaming in through the windows. It was especially white due to the fresh blanket of snow out on the lawn.
I sighed and sat up. “Should we get dressed before Asher and your Dad get back?”
Cal nodded. “Yeah, and then we can get the turkey in the oven.”
I watched Cal put his clothes back on. He moved with a careful tiredness that I hadn’t seen in him before, and I started to wonder if something was wrong. He seemed almost sad, and even though I couldn’t remember anything, I knew that men were not supposed to feel sad after sex. Neither were women. It was just not an emotion that should follow an orgasm.
“Cal?”
He glanced up at me. “Mm?”
“Is something bothering you?”
His eyes widened for the briefest moment, but he got his expression under control quickly. He shook his head. “No. Everything is just fine. I’m going to go wash up. Then we can go.”
“Okay,” I said, and I watched him leave.
I was left with only a single thought: that was the first time Cal had ever lied to me.
At least, it was the first time since I’d woken from my coma. And it didn’t sit well with me.
25
Callum
When I came out of the kitchen and into the living room with my morning cup of coffee, I found Lina and Asher sitting on the carpet, playing with his new toys. Asher was showing Lina all the features of his new electric truck, which was buzzing laps around the base of the Christmas tree as he steered it with the controller in his hands.
Lina clapped her hands together in excitement as Asher drove the truck all over the hardwood floors. When he spotted me, he raced the truck toward my feet then veered right at the last second. He leaned with the controller, and I pretended to lunge after the truck. Asher giggled, and Lina smiled at me as I came and sat down in my usual corner spot on the sofa. I kicked my slippered feet up on the coffee table, and Asher drove the truck under my legs and then back to the Christmas tree.
“Santa must have known you would love that,” I said.
Asher nodded. He pinched his tongue between his lips with concentration as he parked the truck under the tree. Then he turned off the controller and put his hands on his knees. “Santa always knows, Dad.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Lina said mockingly as she pushed herself to her feet. She came and sat down on the couch beside me.
If my father were here, he would have given me an earful. I was supposed to have told her everything yesterday. Instead, I ended up having sex with her, and now, I was in way over my head. This girl had me feeling all sorts of things that I had no right to feel. At the reunion, she’d let me know exactly how much I had hurt her and how much she didn’t want to have anything to do with me. And yet here I was, bulldozing her wishes in a selfish pursuit to have the girl of my dreams back in my arms.
The fact that it was working made me feel even worse. And really fucking confused.
Asher yawned and rubbed at his eyes.
“Have you brushed your teeth yet this morning, kiddo?” I asked.
Asher shook his head.
I nodded toward the stairs. “Go brush your teeth. It’s past ten.”
Asher got up and thumped his way up the stairs, where I heard the bathroom sink turn on.
Lina leaned sideways to rest her cheek on my shoulder. I stiffened momentarily and forced myself to relax. She wrapped her hands around my arm, giving my bicep a gentle squeeze before she lifted her cheek and rested her chin in its place. She stared up at me, a smile playing on her perfect lips, her green eyes electric in the morning sun streaming in through the windows.
Good lord, this woman was going to be the death of me. I was certain of it. I couldn’t hold on to her forever. Not like this. And when everything did finally come to the surface? Well, she would hate me more for this than she did for how I left her at the end of our senior year.
“Cal, I’ve been thinking.”
“About?”
“About my mother,” she said.
I resisted the urge to reach out and tuck a strand of dark hair behind her ear. In the sunlight, it gleamed with hints of burgundy. Beautiful. “What about her?”
Lina sighed and licked her lips. She had no idea what that did to me. It made my knees and chest ache. “I had a dream about her. At least, I think it was a dream. When I was in the hospital. And I can picture her—at least, I think it’s her I’m picturing. I think if I go see her, things might be a bit clearer for me.”
&
nbsp; “See her?” I asked.
“Where is she buried?”
Oh. Right. I peered down into the contents of my half-drunk coffee cup, like there was something in its dark depths that could get me out of this mess. Nothing appeared. No caffeine savior lurked down there. “Not far from here. There’s a graveyard outside the city. She and your father are both there.”
“Did we ever go there? You and me? When we were together?”
I nodded. “Yes. On her birthday.”
“My mom’s?”
I nodded again.
She looked down at her hands. “Is it weird if I ask you to take me there?”
I shook my head. Words seemed currently unattainable.
“Today?” Her eyebrows drew together. “I can’t explain it, but I feel like I need to go now.”
I put my hand on her knee. “We can go now. I’ll clean up. You get some warm clothes on. We’ll drop Ash off at my dad’s on the way.”
She smiled and cupped my cheek. “Thank you.” Then she kissed me. It was short and sweet, warm and minty. Lord, help me.
She hopped up off the couch and hurried up the stairs to get changed, leaving me staring down into my coffee cup once more, wishing I hadn’t blown things on Christmas Day. Wishing I’d had the strength to do what I should have done from the get go, rather than string along a girl who had no memory of what I’d done to her. How much I hurt her. How far apart our lives had grown.
I swung my legs down from the coffee table and went into the kitchen to wash out my mug. A knot of nerves had gathered in my stomach, and I knew it would stay there until we were back home. A quick call to my father confirmed that he was fine with watching Asher for an hour or two.
Asher came downstairs, and I told him the plan. He picked a couple toys from under the tree to bring to his grandpa’s for the afternoon, and by the time he’d packed them up, Lina had come downstairs and was bundled up to brace against the cold. She looked great, as always. She had on the same over the knee black boots she’d worn to the Christmas Eve special, but today, she was wearing a different, more casual jacket. It was navy blue, thick and made of wool, with a sash around her waist.
We all piled into the car, and I hit the road, heading to my father’s. When we pulled into the driveway, the car was just starting to get warm. I left the keys in the ignition and glanced at Lina. “I’ll just walk Ash to the door. Then we’ll go. Stay here where it’s warm.”
She smiled. “Tell your dad I say hello.”
“I will.”
I got out and so did Asher, and we both walked up the drive to my father’s front door. He opened it up before I knocked, and Asher bolted by him into the house, hollering “Goodbye, Dad” over his shoulder as he went. I smiled and shook my head as he disappeared around the corner in the living room.
“You didn’t tell her,” my father said. It was a statement, not a question. His eyes were flat, and the way he looked at me was the same way he used to when he’d caught me cheating on a science exam back in school.
I sighed and slipped my hands into my pockets. “The timing wasn’t right.”
“It’s never going to be right, Cal. You’ve let it go too long. It’s going to keep getting more and more wrong.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Apparently, you don’t because here you are, still stringing her along.”
“I’m not—”
“You are.”
I looked down at the welcome mat upon which I stood. He was right. There wasn’t a damn thing I could say to defend myself. So, I didn’t. “I know, Dad. I just… I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Do what?” my father asked. His voice had a sharp edge to it. He was angry with me. It had been a long, long time since I’d heard that tone.
“Lose her again.”
He stiffened. “Look at me, Cal.”
I lifted my gaze and met my father’s cool, stern stare.
“What you want and what you feel doesn’t matter. What matters is that Lina is given the proper chance to remember who she is. You are stealing that from her. You are behaving like a child. She isn’t yours to lose.”
I nodded.
My father sighed, reached out, and put his hand on my shoulder. “You are my son, and I know better than anyone that you’re a good man. You’re strong enough to do the right thing and to admit when you’ve made a mistake. So do it. Don’t let things get worse than they already are. If you don’t tell her, I’ll have to. And that isn’t fair to her or to me.”
I cleared my throat and swallowed. Then I nudged the corner of the welcome mat with the toe of my boot. “I won’t make you clean up my mess, Dad. I’ll tell her.”
“Good. Now go. She’s waiting for you.”
I went with my head hung low and my shoulders slumped. If Lina noticed my shift in demeanor when I got back in the car, she didn’t mention it. She turned on the radio, found a station she liked, and drummed her fingers on the door panel to the beat as I pulled out of the driveway. We both waved to my father, who still lingered in the doorway, as we pulled away.
Neither of us said anything as we drove outside the city limits. Finally, I worked up the nerve to start a conversation. “Are you nervous at all?”
Lina looked over at me. She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. Do you think I should be?”
“No, but I would understand if you were.”
She nodded and bit down on her bottom lip. The skin turned white. Maybe she was lying. Maybe she was nervous.
I sighed.
“Is something bothering you, Cal?”
I knew I shouldn’t say anything, but I did anyway. “I just don’t know if this is the best idea.”
“What do you mean?”
I frowned. I should have kept my mouth shut. I thought it was a bad idea for my sake. I didn’t want her to remember.
That realization hit me like a knife to the gut, and I grimaced with self-loathing.
“Cal?”
She was looking at me. I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. I shook my head. “Nothing. I don’t know why I said that.”
Lina pursed her lips and stared out through the windshield as I turned down the lane that drove through the middle of the cemetery. Trees naked of leaves loomed on either side of the car, reaching up to the gray sky with twisted branches. “Cal, you can tell me anything, you know?”
Fuck. “I know.”
Lina reached over and took my hand. She entwined her fingers with mine and rubbed her thumb along the back of my hand. “It will be all right. I have a good feeling about this. Moms have a way of reaching us, right?”
I clenched my teeth. “Right.”
26
Lina
I could tell that something was off with Cal, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it might be, so I didn’t say anything about it. My mind conjured up dozens of possible explanations during the drive to the cemetery, and by the time we arrived, I had to coax myself away from all the negative thoughts.
Maybe he’s tired of me and wants me to move out of his house.
Maybe his whole family thinks I’m intruding and have overstayed my welcome.
Maybe he’s over this whole memory-loss thing.
Maybe he thinks I’m faking it.
Maybe he wishes he’d never asked me to stay with him.
Maybe he got what he wanted when we had sex on Christmas Day.
Maybe that was all he wanted to begin with.
None of those thoughts led to anything productive, so when I got out of the car, I forced myself to stop thinking them. I knew Cal. Well, I was pretty sure I knew him. He wasn’t the sort of man to think any of those things, and I wouldn’t have been so close to him before my accident if he was.
Right?
I wrapped my jacket tighter around myself as a cold wind whipped around my legs and at my exposed neck. Cal got out of the car and waited for me as I walked around the hood. He had parked at the end of the lane. The
cemetery fanned out on either side of us, and he seemed to know where he was going when he offered me his arm and began guiding me through the rows of headstones.
They were all quite beautiful. So was the cemetery itself.
And it was old. Very old. The trees on the property looked like they had stood there for at least a hundred years, and some of the tombstones were so worn that the engraved letters had nearly faded away entirely. Remnants of names and dates lingered on the cool stone like memories, fading more and more with each passing day.
We walked a decent distance until we were almost at the edge of the cemetery where the grass gave way to hedge rows. On the other side were old heritage homes. All I could see over the hedges were the rooftops.
Cal tugged me to the right, and we walked between a row. He drew to a stop when we were about ten headstones down, and he turned me toward two flat plaques set in the grass. The stone was engraved with gold-dipped letters that read:
“Here lies Aleena Nelson, loving mother and wife, and Grant Nelson, adoring father and husband”.
I swallowed.
Cal wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Would you prefer to be alone, Lina?”
I shook my head. No, I did not want to be alone.
Even though I didn’t know them, I still felt the grief of knowing I was a daughter who had lost both of her parents. I still felt that sense of loneliness like a pit in the very bottom of my stomach. It felt like it kept growing and expanding the longer I stared at those little gold letters.
“They don’t have tombstones,” I whispered.
Cal nodded. “They didn’t have a ton of money. And they weren’t the sort of folks to like something as big and gaudy as a headstone anyway. This was more their style. Elegant and simple. Clean.”
I nodded like I knew what he was saying was true, but I didn’t because no memory of my parents was coming back to me as I stared at their names. “Aleena and Grant.”
“You were named after her,” Cal said. “Your mother.”
My Holiday Reunion: A Second Chance Holiday Romance Page 15