by Jewel E. Ann
“I hope the world treats you like the incredibly special person you are. I hope your list is long and daring. I hope you experience joy, surprise, anticipation, passion, and … love.”
Bodhi … I already have …
“I hate you,” I manage to get those three vitally important words out.
He nods. “I know you do.”
Easing off my gloves, I let them and my poles drop to the ground. My cold hands press to his warm cheeks, guiding him close to me, so we share the same breath. “But I love you more.”
His eyes search mine, and when he seems to find what he’s looking for, he smiles. “I know you do.”
The Law of Henna and Bodhi: When love breaks, fall inward, fall together, and fall hard. Then let time pick up the pieces.
I pull him to my lips because that’s how we fall. He kisses me like my mouth was meant to be kissed only by him. When his lips finish with my mouth, he kisses my nose, cheeks, forehead, and jaw.
“When are you leaving?” He doesn’t give me a chance to answer before his mouth covers mine again. My hands slide from his face to his neck, desperate to be closer to him.
In the distance, his horse makes a noise. Bodhi pulls away, out of breath and harboring a pang of disappointment in his eyes as he glances over my shoulder to his horse. “I have to get back.”
“Yeah.” I release him and grab my poles and gloves, putting them back on.
“Henna?”
After fumbling with my gloves, feeling shaken by his kiss, I glance up.
“When do you leave?”
“I’m uh …” I shake my head. He’s completely rattled my senses. “California. I’m going to California for New Years with my dad. Then I’m going to Japan.”
“Japan?” He jerks his head back.
I nod. “Starting with places I haven’t been. So don’t expect postcards from Paris or Rome.”
“You’re sending me postcards?”
“No. Well, yeah, sure … I can. I just meant …”
He nods. “I get it. I know what you meant. I don’t expect anything. Well, actually …” Bodhi rubs the back of his neck. It’s so Bodhi. He does it when he’s nervous. “It would be nice to know that you’re okay. But don’t feel any obligation.”
“Come with me.” The words are out before I realize they were even on my tongue.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t? Because you could have said something in the parking lot that day, but you didn’t. You could have contacted me, but you didn’t. You could have done a million things that you just didn’t do. And I don’t think it’s because you couldn’t.” It’s just the beginning. I have so many questions for him, it would take several lifetimes to ask them all.
He exhales, sending a plume of evaporation between us.
“Don’t.” I shake my head and hold up my hands. “You know what? I think it’s best if I don’t know all the answers. I know the ones that matter and that’s good enough.”
“What answers are those?” He narrows his eyes.
“Well, just one I guess.”
“And that is?” His head cants to the side.
“I asked you to come with me. You said no. That’s the only question that matters.”
“I said I can’t.”
“Yeah, well … that’s just another way of saying no.”
“No…” an edge of irritation hijacks his words “…I can’t means I want to but I just can’t. A simple no leaves it open for interpretation that maybe I don’t want to go, but I do. I just can’t.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters a whole fucking lot, Henna!” I step back. He rubs his gloved hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m frustrated and angry and …”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.”
“Jesus, Bodhi …” I shake my head, holding my hands out to the side. “What do you want me to say? Because for months I’ve wanted to knock on your door and ask you to just be with me, but I knew you’d choose your dad, your job, your reputation over me.”
“That’s not—”
“Then ask me to stay.” I stab my poles into the snow next to my shoes, gripping them tightly. “Ask me to move in with you. Ask me to marry you. Ask me for absolutely anything that keeps us together.”
He closes his eyes. “You deserve—”
“Stop assuming you know what I deserve or what I want! I want YOU! Don’t you get that?”
“It’s not that simple.”
I unhook my boots from the snowshoes and bend down on one knee.
His brows knit together.
“Marry me, Bodhi. I love you. It’s just that simple. I want to spend my life with you. I want to have kids with you. So, marry me. Please.”
This hurts. Bending down and handing over my entire heart to him just hurts, but I know that the regret of not giving everything I have to offer him will hurt more.
His eyes fill with tears as his head moves side to side. “I don’t have a life to offer you right now. You said it yourself. It’s a cage. That’s my life. That would be your life. And you can’t live like that. I can’t watch you live like that.”
I stand and turn. Ripping my hat off my head and throwing it as far as it will go, which is only a few feet. “Why do you live in a cage? Why can’t you hire someone to watch your dad so you can live too? Why is it okay for your sister to have a life, but your life is always taking care of your dad? It makes no sense!”
“I have to get back.” He walks past me.
“Why you?” I follow him.
“Why not me?” he mumbles as his boots kick up snow behind him.
“Because you deserve a life too.”
“I don’t.”
“Why?”
He stops when he gets to his horse. “Merry Christmas.”
“Why you, Bodhi?” I ignore his holiday greeting.
He mounts his horse.
“Tell your sister you’re getting married, and she needs to split the responsibility of watching your dad.”
“I can’t tell her that.” He stares off into the distance.
“Why not?”
“Because he’s my responsibility.”
“Why?”
“Jesus … I just told you because he’s MY responsibility.”
“That doesn’t answer my question, why? Why? Why? Why? Why?—”
“BECAUSE IT’S MY FAULT HE’S IN A WHEELCHAIR!”
The horse neighs and rears back a bit. Bodhi tightens the reins. After the horse settles down, Bodhi looks at me with regret. “In another life … I would be with you. Marry you. Have babies with you. Just … not in this one. I’m sorry.” He gives the horse a gentle nudge with his feet and rides off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Christmas
WE OPEN PRESENTS. Juni and Zach got me new luggage for my new adventure—and clothes.
“I couldn’t resist.” Juni shrugs, knowing that our tastes in fashion are not the same.
“I love them.” I fold the last item and set it next to me on the floor by the mammoth tree filling the spacious room with the scent of pine. “A new adventure calls for a new look. I’m sure you know what’s trendy around the world more than I do.”
“They’re just clothes. You’ll find your own international style as you make your way through new-to-you countries. God … the handmade items you’ll find are just extraordinary. Nothing like you’d ever find off a rack here in the U.S.” Juni gives me the best smile. Her excitement for me bleeds through every word.
We enjoy a small family dinner. It’s the first year in nearly a decade that it’s just been the three of us at the table on Christmas. It’s usually filled with grandparents and close friends. This year everyone else had other plans, and while it’s kind of a bummer that I won’t get to say as many goodbyes, I find it perfect that it’s just the three of us.
“We’re going to watch a movie. Care to join us?” Zach asks as my mom makes hot chocolate.
“I’m going to watch something in my room if that’s okay?” I slip on my boots, coat, hat, and gloves.
“Sure.” Zach gives me a big hug and kiss on the forehead. “Merry Christmas, darling.”
“Merry Christmas.” I close my eyes for a second and just enjoy his embrace.
“Sweet dreams.” Juni leans in while holding two mugs and kisses my cheek. “See you in the morning.”
I nod and smile while closing the door. The snow crunches under my boots when I step off the last porch step. “What are you doing?” I whisper to the wind, to Bodhi a mile down the mountain from me. Is he with his family? Is he watching an old movie? Is he …
Sliding my phone out of my pocket, I do something I haven’t done in a long time. I message him because I’m leaving, and I don’t give a shit about traceable calls and messages. I’m not his student. I’m not sure I’m his anything.
Me: I only wanted one thing for Christmas, but I didn’t get it. Hope you got everything you wanted. Merry Christmas. <3
Just as I start to slip my phone back into my pocket, assuming he won’t respond, it chimes.
Bodhi: I’m parked at the end of your drive. I’ve been here for over an hour, trying to get the nerve to ask permission to enter the gates.
I look up. The end of the lane is way too far and twisty to see from here, but it doesn’t stop me from running toward it anyway. With shaky hands from my body jerking to keep its balance in the snow, I bring up the gate app and open the gate for him. Within seconds, headlights appear in the distance.
I keep running.
The van stops.
The second Bodhi steps out, I tackle him to the ground.
He grunts from the impact. My hair falls around our faces. I inhale his addictive wood and citrus scent and the warmth of his mouth so close to mine. Lemons. His breath smells like lemons.
“I opened a hundred gifts today, but none of them were you. I was looking for you.”
“Me?” He grins.
“You.” I kiss him.
He threads his fingers through my hair and slides his tongue against mine. I don’t care if it sounds immature or ridiculous—we belonged to each other before we ever met.
“It’s cold.” He breaks our kiss.
“My bed is warm.” I rub my nose against his.
“So is mine.” He sits up, taking me with him so I’m straddling his legs.
“Mine’s closer.” I bite his bottom lip and drag it through my teeth.
“I disagree.”
“Uh …” I give him my best confused look.
“Up.” He lifts my hips and I plant my boots in the snow as he stands and brushes the snow off himself.
He opens the side door to Alice and flicks a switch.
“Oh my god …” I hold my gloved hand over my mouth.
Battery-operated LED lights line the back of the van, illuminating the mattress, pillows, and fluffy blankets that have replaced the backseats.
“Get in before all the heat escapes.” Bodhi pushes me in onto the mattress with my boots hanging out the door.
I giggle as he slips off my boots and plops down on the mattress next to me to take off his boots as well with quick moves before slamming the door shut.
My eyes dance with delight at this. He did this for us—for me.
“I can’t believe—”
Bodhi kisses me with urgency, covering my body with his. Our fingers intertwine above my head as his body settles perfectly between my legs like God made that space just for him. The mattress allows us one good roll in each direction, and we work the entire space to rid each other of our clothes without missing a single kiss, a single grin, or a single touch.
“Lock in the heat.” He pulls the sheet and approximately ten flannel blankets over our heads.
As I giggle, I feel his grin along my skin a split second before his tongue teases my nipple, hands squeezing my breasts while he hums his pleasure.
A heavy ache builds between my legs, longing for him, even if I know it’s going to hurt. And I just know it will. Maybe not as bad as the first time, but it’s going to hurt. Still, I’m turned on, desperate to feel him all over me and completely inside of me. It’s like getting a massage and the therapist hits a tight knot. It hurts in a good way. You want to scream no and YES at the same time.
I leave for California in a few days. And after New Years, I leave for … indefinitely. The unsettled part of my mind and my soul needs to do this. Traveling the world is all I’ve been able to think about for years. This is not an opportunity everyone gets. I’ve told my friends and family this is what I’m doing, garnering both reactions of envy and judgments of insanity—both drive my need to do this. Robbie didn’t get the chance to do this. She died. The pilot with a wife and three children died. Settling for anything less than living an extraordinary life and seizing every moment feels like I’m failing them too, not just myself.
“Merry Christmas to me,” Bodhi murmurs, taking his kisses down my body. He camps out between my legs, grinding his pelvis into the mattress at the same rhythm his tongue and fingers bring me to orgasm.
“Bodhi!” I wrap my legs around his head as my whole body convulses.
He throws the covers off and reaches between the two front seats, returning with a condom, like it’s a race. Once he’s fitted with the rubber, he crashes his mouth to mine, balancing on one arm while his other hand positions his cock at my entrance, making a few circles—spreading my arousal around.
“You’re so fucking tight.” He pushes into me one slow inch at a time, face strained.
I am tight. Apparently once isn’t enough to get everything broken in.
Bodhi moves slow at first then speeds up. Harder. Faster. I claw into his back, wanting so desperately to build up another orgasm, wanting so desperately to be his every dream. When I realize that’s not happening, I kiss him. This I can do. This I love. It takes my mind off the discomfort of feeling overfilled with Bodhi.
“Henna …” He grunts my name, slamming into me one last time before finishing with a few short jerks. Collapsing onto me, he buries his face in my neck. “I love you. I love you so fucking much.”
“I love you too,” I whisper, feeling a terrible ache in my chest.
I’m leaving and he’s staying.
He slides out slowly, sitting up on his knees to remove the condom. After disposing of it in a napkin from his console, he settles next to me, spooning his front to my back. Our arms tangle as we sigh.
“What did you do?” I ask because I have to ask. If I’m going to leave my greatest love behind to follow dreams that are starting to feel hollow … I have to know why.
“What do you mean?” He buries his nose into my hair and inhales.
Closing my eyes, I imagine a life where I can be nothing but the next breath in his lungs, the metronome to his heart, the blood in his veins.
“Your dad.”
He stiffens. I lace our fingers together, squeezing tightly.
“You can tell me anything. You know that, right?”
Bodhi hums his acknowledgment.
I want to crawl inside of him and pluck every ounce of pain from his heart like removing needles from a pin pad.
“I had some issues with addiction shortly after our band started getting some seriously respectable gigs. A year. That’s it. After playing out of a basement while in high school, we got our chance. I got to play to real audiences, for a year. And then I fucked up. Hell … we all did.
“I was drunk or high, usually a toxic mix of both. We went to this party. Ty was supposed to be the responsible one that night, but he ended up in worse shape than the rest of us. I remember feeling so fucking sick, I just wanted to go home. At the time, home was with my parents when the band wasn’t traveling. Some girl found me vomiting all over myself. She offered to get help. I gave her my phone, and she called my parents. My dad came to rescue me.”
He clears his throat. I squeeze his hand tighter, like the way his v
oice constricts each word, stealing all the oxygen around us.
“I couldn’t even walk, and I only know this because the girl later gave a firsthand account of what happened. My dad tried to help me out of the house, but I passed out. And seeing as I was nearly as tall and big as him, when I went down, he went down—a whole damn flight of marble stairs. I landed on him with not so much as a scratch. He … never walked again.”
“Bodhi …” The world spinning in my head, my hopes and dreams, they slow like they’re dying as a heaviness suffocates everything inside of me. My tragedy was different. It wasn’t my fault. My guilt is different. Everything is different.
“And as if that’s not enough, my sister hates me. She not only blames me for what happened to our dad, she believes the stress of it all eventually lead to my mom’s heart attack.”
I turn in his arms, clutching his face in my hands. “I don’t know what to say,” I whisper.
He blinks a few times, a lifeless expression stuck to his handsome face. “There’s nothing to say. I fucked up. I can’t change it. Now, this is my life, and I have no reason to ever complain. I’m not in the wheelchair. I don’t have cancer—”
“Wait…” I pull my head back “…cancer?”
Bodhi nods slowly. “He didn’t tell you?” He grunts a laugh. “Of course he didn’t tell you. He most likely had it before the accident, but they didn’t discover it until the accident. He went through treatment … Jesus …” He closes his eyes briefly. “As if the paralysis wasn’t enough, he’s had to deal with feeling like shit while strapped to a fucking wheelchair.”
Still, I have no idea what to say, so I let him have his moment, the one where he imposes more self-hatred upon himself.
“Anyway…” he blows out a slow breath “…he went into remission. A year ago they discovered it was back and spreading. Did you not wonder about his liberal use of marijuana?”
I shrug. “It’s legal here. No big deal. I just thought he was the coolest guy in a wheelchair I’d ever met.”
Bodhi grunts a painful laugh. “I love your innocence.”
“You should since you took it.” I try a small smile to lighten the mood, tempting him to step away from the gates of purgatory.