There was still a lot more hurt she could deal him. Every wound that had healed since she’d left was rising to the surface, the scars thinning out, ready to split open and bleed fresh.
“Reese?”
“Yeah.” He shook it off. “Scoot.”
She moved back into the bed, and he swung up. In the box he had two densely woven wool camp blankets and a pack of mylar emergency blankets. He pulled out the wools and handed one to her. They sat against the truck box, side by side, and looked up at the sky. Nostalgia hit Reese like a prizefighter, all his happy memories of being right here, just like this, with her, surged up and attacked him, and he sat there and took the blows.
He let the quiet go on for a few minutes, but he couldn’t just stargaze and remember. They were out here to talk. He had questions. And they were running out of time.
“Why’d you leave, Mac?”
She gave her answer to the sky. “I told you why back then. There was something missing inside me. Like when you lose a tooth and it leaves that hole that feels like it goes on forever. But in my soul.”
Yeah, she’d said something like that back then, somewhere in the midst of her crying and his trying to make her stay, then trying to understand why she wouldn’t. “Did you find it, out there in the world?”
She shook her head. “I guess it wasn’t out there.” Her hand came up between them before he could open his mouth. “And don’t say ‘I told you so.’ I know you did. But I still had to go. Anyway, I don’t know if you were right. I don’t feel it here, either.” She scooted down with a heavy breath and rested her head on the box. “Maybe it’s just a hole in me that can’t ever be filled. Maybe I’m just a void.”
“Don’t say that. It’s not true.”
“You know, I went to all these amazing places. Places people put on their bucket lists. I saw the Great Wall. Stonehenge. Machu Picchu. The Alps. The Louvre. The Tower of London. I was in Rio de Janeiro for Carnival. I worked on a crabbing boat one summer in Alaska. I did all kinds of jobs, met all kinds of people. But I don’t feel any different. It’s like all those experiences, all those wonders, just got sucked up in me and disappeared.”
She’d packed a lot of life into those ten years. In all his life, Reese had barely crossed the state line. Jasper Ridge had always been home, and it had always been the only one he wanted.
“Why didn’t you ever come home? Why did you just disappear?”
“I guess I was afraid.”
She said the words softly, but they hit him like a slap. “Of me?”
“Of me, I think. And you. And my family. Just everything. I’d get this sick feeling in my stomach when I went to check my email, and I started putting it off to avoid that feeling, and the longer I went without checking, the easier it got to not check it. Then when I did check it, I didn’t know what to say to you, how to explain anything going on in my head. Same with staying away. The longer I was gone, the more it felt like I couldn’t come home.”
Reese couldn’t think what to say, so he said nothing. He stared up at the stars in the last hours of this chilly, clear autumn night and tried to sort out his head.
“I know it was shitty,” she said after a few minutes. “It was a weak, shitty, inexcusable thing to do to you. To everybody, but especially to you. I was a coward. That’s the only answer I have. I ran away, and I kept running. For ten years, that’s all I’ve done.”
He didn’t disagree. “Then why come back now?”
“I know you don’t want me to say this, but I don’t know. I read the email from my mom, telling me that Maw was gone, and saw that I’d missed her funeral, and I just don’t know. I loved her so much, and I didn’t get to say goodbye to her. I was away from her almost a third of my life, and I’ll never be with her again. It hurt so bad. Even though it was too late and I couldn’t get any of that time back, that same night, I was quitting my job and getting a bus ticket. I didn’t even really think about it.”
“Where were you?”
“New York. Brooklyn.”
“Wow.” After all those exotic places, he’d expected her to say Australia, or maybe Antarctica. Or the moon. New York City almost seemed mundane.
“Yeah. New York is probably my favorite place I was. I stayed there longer than anywhere. Almost six months. You know how they call it the city that never sleeps? Well, it never does.” She laughed and looked up at the sky. “It’s like the exact opposite of here.”
“You hate it here so much?”
“No, I don’t. Being back—there’s a lot I love. The world here is so beautiful, as beautiful as anywhere else. And no matter how hard things are here, I don’t think anywhere else can ever be home.” She sat up and turned to face him. “But God, Reese. I don’t know. Everything is shit at home. Things were bad before, but it’s so much worse now. My dad and Maw kept things level. They were both calm-natured, and they made everybody else calmer. Even drunk, Daddy was mellow. Without them ... my mom and I never knew how to talk to each other, and that’s a million times worse now. She drinks light beer all day and thinks that’s keeping her sharp enough to take care of Tyson. Frannie’s working herself to the bone, and when she’s not, she’s drunk half the time and angry all the time. She drank like that while she was pregnant, and Tyson’s got problems because of it. She’s furious with me because I left, and she’s furious with me because I’m back. She’s about homicidal because I suggested she take Tyson to a specialist and he got diagnosed. We’re all cramped into that tin can of a trailer, and it’s like living in an acid bath. So when you ask me if I’m staying and I say I don’t know ... you’re the only reason I’m still here today.”
“What does that mean?”
She looked down and watched her fingers playing with the silver cuff bracelet on her wrist, circling the big turquoise stone at its center. “I figured out almost nothing while I was away. Anytime I started thinking about home, maybe feeling homesick, I ran off to the next place. Every time I started to think about a future anywhere, I did the same thing. Just running anywhere, trying to stay ahead of myself. I don’t think I was ever really looking for anything except escape, but it was me I was trying to run from, and that never got me anywhere. I never learned anything that stuck, I never figured myself out. But there’s one thing I always knew and never doubted. I never stopped loving you.”
Reese couldn’t see her face, her eyes; her head was turned down. Had he heard what he’d thought? He sat straight up. “What?”
“I love you,” she muttered to her lap.
“Mac, look at me.”
She lifted her head, and those soulful eyes settled on his. Dawn would soon take over the sky; Mac was bathed in the deep blue glow that was the last phase of clear night sky.
“Say it again.”
He saw her swallow, he saw her take a deep breath for courage, but she didn’t look away. “I love you, Reese. Anywhere I’ve gone, anywhere I’ve run, you’ve been with me. You talk to me in my dreams. I didn’t run from you. The wedding, I don’t know. Maybe I ran from that, but not you. Just ... I don’t know. I really don’t know why I ran. I was scared and sad, and overwhelmed. I missed my dad. It doesn’t make sense, I know. But it broke my heart to leave you. My heart has been broken every day. Maybe that’s why I stopped writing. It hurt so bad to hurt you.”
She paused and took a deep breath. Her hand came up and swiped at an eye. Reese sat where he was, jaw unhinged, unable to think, much less speak.
“You asked why I came home now. I don’t think I came home for Mom or Frannie, or even to say goodbye to Maw. I came home for you. So you want to know if I’m staying? I guess that depends on whether I came home too late for you to still love me, or want me.”
What could he say? What did he think? What did he want? Reese thought of the past ten years, those relationships that never went anywhere, his failed attempts to move on. He thought of Ellen, the most recent of those, still fresh. She was a good woman, a beautiful woman inside and out, who knew what sh
e wanted in her life. She had the strength of self to step back, out of this drama, and let him figure his shit out. Though she was Mac’s age, she was more mature, and what they’d been building had been calmer.
But that was just it—had they been building anything? If they had, would he have so readily let her step out? Would he be so fucked up now? He’d barely thought of Ellen since Mac had been home.
The truth was, he hadn’t moved on. He hadn’t gotten anywhere in his life in the last ten years. He was like the Mackenzies’ trailer: a little more worn, a few more memories, but otherwise exactly the same as she’d left him. He’d been waiting.
“If it’s too late, I understand,” Mac said, in a whisper that barely broke the long silence. “I don’t deserve a second chance, I know.”
Reese stopped thinking, stopped asking questions, and did what he wanted. He leaned over, hooked his hand around the back of her neck, and fucking kissed her.
Like the night she’d come to the cabin, Mac was with him right away. She sighed as his mouth covered hers, and he caught the breath and mingled it with his own. Her hands came up, pushed into his jacket and made fists in his flannel shirt. She hung on, pulled him closer, kissed him back with a desperation laden with ten years of waiting.
Reese got a full hold of her, clutched her close, and brought her flat down onto the truck bed. The rubber bed liner made a harsh mattress, but it didn’t fucking matter. Without leaving her mouth, without taking his mind or any of his senses away from this moment he’d been waiting for, he grasped a blanket and shoved part of it under her head for a pillow.
Mac broke away, sucking in a noisy breath. Unwilling to lose the taste of her, Reese dove in, sucked on her neck, her ear, buried his face in her thick, glossy hair.
“Reese,” she gasped. “Reese.”
Reluctantly, he lifted his head and gazed down at her. Jesus, look at her.
“Can you love me again?” The question was so soft and careful, she sounded like a little girl.
“Mac. Baby, I never stopped.”
A smile broke over her face that lit the last of the night. “Oh God! I want you so much!” Her hands fumbled at the buttons of his shirt, his jeans, back and forth like she didn’t know where to start. She ground her hips against his, rubbing his primed cock right at the place it wanted. “I need you.”
“I don’t have a condom.” The words pained him so much to say, they came out as a groan.
“I don’t care.”
That stopped Reese and his libido right in their tracks.
She smiled and worked the buttons of his shirt. “I don’t want you to come in me. Pull out. Just pull out.” His shirt fell open, and she brushed light fingertips over his bare chest. “Remember?”
He remembered. Their first time, another night out here in this no-name glade, beside that no-name stream. He hadn’t had condoms that night, either. Then, he’d left them back on purpose, wanting to take things slow with this girl not yet out of her teens, aware—because nobody let him forget it—that he was near ten years older than she, and trying not to pull her faster than she could run.
He hadn’t wanted their first time to be like this, with their clothes on, rutting in a frenzy in the back of his truck, but they’d wanted each other too much to hold off. He didn’t want this time to be so furtive and desperate, either, but fuck, here they were, hungry for each other again. This time, he didn’t have a condom because he hadn’t had any thought anywhere in his head that he might need one. It had been a damn long time since sex had happened to him out of the blue.
She had his fly unbuttoned, and she was trying to work his jeans off his hips. Reese got busy to catch up with her, opening her fly and pulling at her jeans and underwear. When her hand went into his jeans and took hold of his cock, he froze, and so did she. Their eyes met again, locked together. She reached deep, found his tip, brushed her fingertips over it, and Reese’s groan rose up from his very soul, rattling his chest as it made its way to his mouth.
“Fuck, Mac.” He stopped trying to yank her clothes down and instead slid his hand into her jeans, under her panties, and cupped the sweet softness between her legs. She was natural, as she’d been before. Her sleek little bush. He loved the feel of those wisps against his fingers.
She moaned and lifted her hips as his fingers pushed between her folds and found her clit, slick with need already.
Goddamn, he wanted all of her, all her body, all her skin, against all of him. He wanted to taste her, touch her, everywhere, refresh all the memories he’d been living with all this time, give his senses something new and alive to hold onto. But they were out here in the woods, in the chill near-dawn, dew already settling over them. All they had time for was frenzy.
Rising onto his knees, he grabbed Mac by the hips and flipped her over. She understood what he meant to do and helped him, then bared her ass and lifted it like an offering.
Reese freed his throbbing cock, held it steady, leaned over her, and pushed in.
He went in slick and smooth, straight to the hilt, and they both groaned in a harmony of relief and need. Leaning over her, as close to her as he could get without putting all his weight on her, he dropped his forehead to her back and reclaimed what he’d lost.
It wasn’t slow, or sensual. It wasn’t romantic. It was fast and fierce, full to the tipping point of desperate need. They rutted like livestock in the back of his truck. Mac shoved her hips back against his every thrust, faster and faster, each slam of their bodies forcing harsh, bestial grunts from them both. Her orgasm came quickly, signaled by the wild speed of her hips thrashing against his, and the high pitch of her grunts. When her spasms gripped his cock, his finish hit him, and he barely managed to pull out before his body went rigid, except for the pulses of his cock as it arced semen onto the blanket beside them.
Panting, Mac fell over to her side, and Reese dropped to his side behind her. He pulled the other blanket over their shoulders and then didn’t try to make his brain or any other part of him do anything useful.
After a minute or two, Mac muttered, “I have to get Frannie’s car back. She’s gonna need to get to work soon.”
Such a practical comment after what had happened between them jarred Reese, but she wasn’t wrong. The sun was getting a handhold on the horizon.
He nosed into her hair and kissed her head. “Okay. Let’s get back.”
PART THREE
Chapter Nine
Reese grabbed her hand. “Hold up.”
Gigi stopped, her hand on the door handle, and watched him jump from the cab and run around the front of his truck. She smiled, remembering this old-fashioned chivalry of his. When he opened her door and offered his hands, she turned to him and let him lift her from the truck. It was dumb, she was perfectly capable of exiting a vehicle on her own, but it was sweet, too, and kind of romantic.
He set her on the gravel and closed the door. Then they stood there, caught in the lingering threads of their evening. He took her hand, linking their fingers, and they simply stared.
The sun was almost up. Frannie would already be awake any minute, hung over, and furious her car wasn’t there. “I have to go.”
He nodded. “I know.” He’d pulled in right next to Frannie’s Honda, so all she had to do was take one step to the side, reach out, and open the door, but she couldn’t move. It felt like all this, these precious hours they’d shared, would break apart into fragments of fantasy the second she lost sight of him.
He loved her. He still loved her. She didn’t deserve it, and could hardly believe it. She needed more time to make things up to him, to make sure he didn’t come to his senses and remember that she didn’t deserve another chance.
And there was Ellen, too. Reese had never mentioned her, but just about every single other person in town—including her own sister, several times—had brought up Ellen’s name and made sure Gigi knew that, one, Reese had seemed happy with her and, two, she had been blue since Gigi had come back.
Gigi liked Ellen. Ellen had been one year ahead of her in school, and they’d both been cheerleaders. She was a genuinely nice person, who managed to get along with everyone and stay out of the clacking mouths of the gossipmongers, in high school and after it. She didn’t want to think of Ellen Emerson as an enemy, but damn, she hated hearing her name in the same sentence with Reese’s. Especially now, after tonight. Ellen’s shadow loomed over this parking lot, over them in this moment, and Gigi was afraid to leave Reese’s sight.
“I have to go,” she said again, to herself more than him.
He let go of her hand, cupped her face in both palms, bent down, and kissed her.
Gigi’s soul seemed to take a deep, calming breath. He loved her.
“Get some sleep,” he murmured against her mouth. His beard tickled her lips. “I’ll call later.”
“Okay.”
It didn’t matter that she didn’t deserve a second chance. It was enough that he was offering her one.
He opened the Honda’s door, and Gigi got in.
*****
Frannie was in the shower when Gigi got home. Mom was still asleep. Tyson sat on the mottled brown sculptured carpet, staring up at the television. An ancient episode of The Electric Company was on the PBS channel. The picture was terrible, coming from a Boise station and caught over the airwaves by an enormous old antenna on the trailer’s roof.
When she came in, he looked her way, then turned silently back to the screen. He held a raggedy piece of an old floral quilt against his cheek and sucked his thumb.
Gigi knew the quilt that piece had once been. It had served as her parents’ bedspread most of the years of her childhood.
“Hey, Ty.”
He swiveled his head her direction again and blinked at her. She got a little smile, but he didn’t say hi. In almost three weeks home, he’d yet to say a single word directly to her. He only had a handful to use at all, and she’d heard maybe three of them, but not said to her: no, Mama, which he used for Mom and Frannie both, and more.
Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3) Page 10