When We Are Old (If We Were... Book 2)

by Anna Bloom

  “Hey.” Matthew caught my arm and tried to wheel me around. I might be small, but determination firmly stood on my side. “Ronnie?”

  Pushing my palms into my eye sockets I dragged in a deep breath.

  “Her mum is going to tell her off for the mess.”

  I groaned.

  “And the headmaster will tell her off for the party.”

  Angela spoke from the door—that’s how many eyes-closed conversations I’d had in the space over the course of my lifetime. Even without seeing her I knew where she stood.

  “And I’m a shit parent.” I mumbled into my hands.

  There was a pause and then a gentle grasp wrapped itself around my wrists and pulled my barrier down. “Ronnie. None of those things are true or have to happen.”

  Lifting my face, I met his gaze. “Mum is a given, Jewson has me pegged already, and well, I think my own point speaks for itself.”

  Matthew frowned, his face of beautiful thunder clouding. “What’s this nonsense you tell yourself, Ronnie?” His minor notes rattled around my chest, making my breath tighten and quicken. “I’ll help you clean. I’ll come with you to school on Monday, and you are definitely not a shit parent.”

  “Harrumph.” I tried to pull out of his grasp, but he held me tighter. “There are two drunk fourteen year olds upstairs.”

  “So? It happens. When we’ve finished tidying, I’ll tell you all about what happened when Liam raided dad’s whisky supply. He was thirteen and was sick for hours.”

  I offered him faint smile. “Really?”

  “Yep. Dad went old school and made him drink another measure as soon as he stopped being sick.”

  Ugh. Even the thought made me want to gag.

  “See.” Matthew flickered a smile at me, and it warmed my heart like the first ray of the sun through thick clouds on a stormy day.

  “Looks like you don’t need me, Ronnie. I’ll go.”

  Matthew swivelled his head to look at Ange. “Oh no. You get to clean up too.”

  “What? I didn’t make this mess.”

  “Grow up, Ange, and help,” he barked and both Angela and I stood up straighter.

  Ange muttered under her breath about bossy bastards, but turned and walked into the lounge. “Oh shit. Ronnie do not come in here,” she called back.

  I shuddered and a squeaked a whimper. “Oh God. She’s going to kill me.”

  “Ronnie Childs. Thirty-five and scared of her own mother.” Matthew arched a dark brow. Hearing him say it made it brutally real.

  “She’s mean.” I stared at my shoes.

  “Ronnie.” He tilted my chin with his forefinger. “She’s only as mean as you let her be. My mam’s mean too: always bossing us about, organising us, telling us what to do.”

  “Really?” I thought of lovely Lynn and her warm kitchen with considerable longing.

  “Sure. You know what I do when she oversteps the mark?”

  “What?” A smile crept across my face.

  “I tell her to fuck off.”

  “You do not.” My hand connected with his chest, a light bat across firm muscle.

  “Aye, I do.” He started to laugh and pulled me in tight against his chest. My nose pressed up against his shirt and I inhaled him deep into my lungs. “Then the next day I take her flowers and apologise the shit out of it, so she makes me food and looks after the boys when I need her to.”

  “So you still need her even though you don’t want it all the time?”

  Our gaze met and he frowned. “Ronnie, it’s okay to need people. That makes us human, makes this thing called life real.”

  “I can’t imagine you being like that.”

  He laughed, bending low and brushing his lips across my cheek. “Well, I need you right now.”

  “In what way?” My voice tightened, with expectation and longing.

  “All the ways known to man.”

  “Hmm, in that case…”

  Reality

  Ronnie

  “I don’t actually know where she is.” I glanced at the endlessly ticking clock on the kitchen wall. “It’s late, she should be home by now.”

  Matthew’s lips pressed into the hollow above my collarbone, and then pushed another kiss a centimetre above it, followed by another. “Please don’t talk about your mother now.”

  I arched my neck giving him full access to my skin. My back pressed into the work surface and I held in a groaned gasp as Matthew caught my thigh in a large hand and hiked it up, his fingers kneading the sensitive skin of my… what is that muscle?

  “She could walk in at any moment.”

  “Shh.” His lips silenced mine with a demanding and searing kiss.

  “Hannah’s upstairs.”

  “Upstairs.” He kissed along my cheek and then blew into my ear. I shivered at his words. “We are here.”

  “Matthew.” I pushed a hand against his chest. “We can’t.”

  Oh my, did I want to. His free hand drifted a delicate brush across my breast, his thumb rubbing a slight circular motion around my nipple. I whimpered a strangled mewling sound. “See.” His lips curved against mine. “I can be very convincing.”

  I didn’t need convincing. He could whirl me around and push me over my mother's kitchen table and I’d happily take it… but then what if she walked in… what if Hannah came down…?

  His kissing stopped my protest. Every slip and slide of his lips and tongue took away all my logical thought. I became the kiss, pressed against my mother’s cabinets.

  I gasped into his mouth; little messages of desire wrapped into breaths of hot air. He let go of my leg and tugged at the edge of my thin jumper. “I’ve thought about this, so many times.” He held my gaze. “So many times you’d walk inside, and I’d imagine coming in with you. What it would feel like to do this here.”

  Another kiss.

  My legs wobbled together, my thighs hot under denim.

  That band I hated wove around my chest. Closing my eyes, I fought it with everything I had. He shifted back, his gaze almost pressing on me. I could sense it despite my lack of sight.

  “What are you thinking?” Cool air rushed against me as he moved away. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  I despised the way the words I wanted to say lodged themselves in my throat. He waited, while I found the will to open my eyes.

  “Can I show you what I always dreamed off?” My heart raced but I melted at the expression on his face. His patience for me knew no bounds.

  “Always.”

  He stood still, not touching me while I quickly reconnected myself to my teenage self who used to walk in the door every night, disappointment running bitter and virile through her blood stream.

  I met her, shook her hand and then I showed her the door.

  I didn’t need to remember the tang of disappointment. Instead, I could take my fantasies and morph them into a reality that existed right now in the moment.

  “It went like this.” My words shook, so stupid but blatantly obvious. I reached for his hand and then with my free one I lifted a finger to my lips and smiled. I towed him to the front door, opened it and then closed it, the fresh air of the night sky brushing over us with a delicate kiss.

  Then clutching his hand in mine, I crossed the short space to the stairs and gingerly stepped on the bottom step. He followed, pausing when I did and watching where I pointed at creaky floorboards.

  By the time we were up at the top, exhilaration coursed through me, and a large bubble of a giggle filled my chest cavity. Hannah’s door stood ajar and we tiptoed past.

  In my room I breathed low and harsh. His hands caught my waist as I shut the door, pressing me into the wood; my favourite place to be.

  “Then what happens, Ronnie?”

  His gaze burned with all the stars as we stood in the darkened room, my chest pounding under my ribs hard and fast.

  “Then you kiss me.”

  We fell back into the game from the train. “Easy.”


  I shuddered as his lips crashed down. Hungry and demanding, they pushed my mouth open so he could steal inside with the stealth of a thief operating under darkness.

  My hands slid through his hair, my breath hitching into shallow inhalations.

  “Then?”

  I giggled, “Then my limited imagination ran out of ideas.” The dark shadows hid my burning cheeks.

  Another kiss, lingering and teasing. “Well I don’t have issues with my imagination. Not when it comes to you.” His voice rumbled, electric hot wire to my insides.

  Lifting my jumper and pulling it over my head, discarding it onto the floor, his lips returned to tormenting my throat.

  I fell back against the wood of the door, my legs not holding my weight. His white teeth flashed in the darkness and then he dipped his head, kissing along my collarbone and back again. His hair tickled my chin and I breathed in that scent of fresh air that clung to him.

  “Are you smelling me again?” He dotted each word with a kiss that went lower. Lowering to his knees, he peeled me off the door and unhooked my bra. I breathed a freeing breath as it landed on the floor, my nipples standing to attention, ready for the brush of his thumbs. Slowly, he cupped the weight of my creamy flesh and gently teased with his hands. I let out a whimper, pressing myself closer to his face. His lips clasped around one nipple, sucking it into the warm recesses of his mouth. “Oh God,” I tried to whisper, but in the quiet of the house it sounded like a wild shout.

  He edged closer, pressing himself alongside the fronts of my thighs, pushing warmth into me as he sucked and licked, his hands running free over the bare skin of my back. Heaven. Every stroke of his fingertips was heaven. They trailed around the front, across the softness of my tummy, to the edge of my jeans. His lips let go of my aching nipple, leaving it stood like a lone soldier, and followed the trail down, licking every slither of skin his fingers unwrapped as they peeled off my clothes. He fought with my jeans around my ankles, and I kicked them off, nearly booting him in the face.

  When I stood in my black knickers, he turned back, his hands on my hips, thumbs caressing the curve of my hipbone.

  “I think I might have imagined this.” I whispered as he pressed his lips against the sheer stretch of lace.

  “This?” His finger edged under the elastic, running just lightly across my sensitive core. I whimpered, placing my hands on his shoulders, just about ready to smash myself into his face.

  “Yes.” I whispered.

  “And this?” Turning his hand, he pressed his thumb against my clit, circling slowly.

  “Oh, yes.” I pushed my shoulders back into the door as he circled lazily. My hips rotated automatically with the movement of his thumb.

  His free hand edged down my knickers, his delving fingers pulling away for the briefest moment to allow the material down before falling back into his rhythm.

  I groaned as his lips pressed a kiss in the place of his thumb, then another. Pushing my hips forward, I reached a hand for his hair, guiding him forward.

  Oh God. Unbelievable.

  His tongue delved, slipping against me, his fingers strumming and delving in time with his mouth.

  I arched further and his free hand pushed my thighs further apart.

  “Oh,” I tried to not make a noise. “Oh, shit.”

  He didn’t stop. His tongue unrelenting. I grasped his hair not sure whether I wanted to pull him away or ride it out onto his face.

  This was a fantasy. It was everything.

  “Matthew,” I gasped his name and his fingers dove inside me with firm thrusts while he sucked my clit, alternating with a deep swipe of his tongue.

  I couldn't move away if I tried, so I gave myself to the tingle rushing up my legs. Until the front door shut downstairs and I stilled.

  “Matthew.” I whispered, trying to pull at his hair.

  He didn’t stop though. Tilting me forwards he trust his tongue deep inside me just as my mother climbed the stairs.

  I came, my legs shaking, unable to stop myself, while silently holding in my cry.

  I shivered as he kissed up my belly, up along the space holding my pounding heart, dancing along my throat until his lips landed on mine and I tasted the tang of his hot breath and me in his kiss. I trembled uncontrollably, clinging onto him.

  “How come you’ve got your clothes on again?” I whispered.

  “Believe me, they are coming off.” He swept me up into his arms and I gave a squeal, giggling loudly in the darkness.

  I tried to stop. Tried to be quiet. Tried to not make a nuisance of myself and disturb my mother, but I couldn’t rein it in.

  My laughter bloomed from inside me, like a flower unfurling under the hot summer sun. With Matthew I became completely free.

  He lowered me onto the bed, and I caught my arms tight around his neck, fitting my mouth against his, slanting and a perfect fit. I kissed him so hard there couldn’t be any doubt I shouted I love you in the silence of our pants and moans.

  ***

  “You stayed in my mother’s house.”

  I pressed my nose and mouth into his chest, inhaling the warm skin scent of the morning after.

  “Does it feel strange?” His fingers trailed down my spine.

  “No. It feels perfect.” I pushed a kiss onto his firm pec to prove my point. Which brought me to a question I needed answered. I shifted over him, rubbing our warm skin together.

  “I have questions that need answering.”

  He raised a sleepy eyebrow. “No questions before eight.”

  With a glance at the bedside clock I nibbled on my lower lip. “It’s seven forty-five, what can we do?”

  His smile glinted with a wicked edge and he tackled me over. “Fifteen minutes is my speciality; be prepared to be amazed.”

  My giggle was cut short with the exploration of his fingers.

  “Can we stay in here forever?” Matthew frowned at the bright sun from the other side of the window.

  “You know you have to go home though?” I didn’t want him to go. I wanted us to stay tangled in cotton until we were ninety-five.

  I wanted our universe to be this house, with tea and toast and crumbs in the bed. Hannah had left a note for us that she’d gone to Annabelle’s.

  I knew the truth; she didn’t want to see us. I should have been parenting, but I’d been distracted by Matthew's glorious naked perfection.

  And for once I didn’t want to parent. The phone calls of apology I had to make loomed in the distance like a black cloud. Another five minutes… Maybe ten… Another kiss…

  “I don’t have to get the boys until Wednesday. I could stay a couple more days?” He watched me carefully.

  My heart picked up an erratic race.

  “You want to stay here in my mother’s house?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “You always call it her house, but it's yours, you know that?”

  “It will always be hers and my dad's to me.”

  “So you aren’t tempted to say you want to buy it from her?”

  “I can't afford this!”

  “You’ve got Paul’s money in it though?” He watched me carefully, gauging my responses.

  “Yes, but I’ve spent loads on the business. The money I inherited from Dad is also in the house…” I huffed a breath, puffing my cheeks like a hamster after a feast.

  “Do you want to stay here to be with me, or because you are avoiding your dad’s shop?” I narrowed my gaze, my shit detecting meter ticking over.

  He pinched his eyebrows with his index and middle finger. “It’s hard for me to see myself in his shoes.”

  I snuggled closer, wedging myself under his armpit. “You don’t have to wear his shoes though, do you? Isn’t this the time to make it yours? I thought that’s what I did with the rebrand.”

  He nodded, kissing the top of my head. “You did. I guess during all those wilderness years working for Julie’s dad, I always thought I would get more out of life, that I would achieve something.�
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  “But you are.”

  “Says the woman who runs her own business?”

  “A business that has been dying for the last year. A shiny office does not a career make, take my word for it.”

  Matthew sighed, pushing his ribs against my skin. “I think back to the dreams we used to have at uni. I remember you wanted to be a teacher.”

  “And you said I’d just drop red wine over all the books I had to mark.”

  “You would.”

  “I know.” I snuggled further, trying to seep myself into his skin.

  “Don’t you miss those dreams?”

  I shrugged. “I think my biggest dream is you being here. It still doesn’t feel real.”

  Reaching down, Matthew grazed a warm kiss on my lips. “I’m here. Will be here until Tuesday if you like.”

  “I like.”

  “So you had questions?”

  It took a moment for me to remember the conversation from hours ago. “Ah! When did you stop smoking?”

  His face clouded and I wanted to chase it away. “When my dad died.”

  “Why are you so ripped? You were always slim and sexy, now you are built and sexy.”

  I loved the pink on his cheeks. ‘I’m not ripped, Ron. I run, I run a lot.”

  Laughing I shifted out of his grip so I could throw back the duvet. “Nope. This is ripped.”

  “Although, I’m flattered you think I’m sexy.” He smirked and it made my stomach lick with warmth.

  “When you say run… exactly how far do you mean?”

  “A few miles, nothing major.”

  I pulled a face and he laughed. “I might break into a gentle jog in the morning to get my coffee.”

  “What’s it like owning your own company?”

  “Hard work. Being the boss all the time is tough.”

  He nodded and pressed a much-wanted kiss on my hair. “I can’t imagine it yet; maybe that’s why I’m dragging my arse on the shop. As soon as I actively start then I become my dad.”

  “You guys really didn’t get on?” Another kiss to my temple; firmer, unspoken words.

  “He didn’t get me. He thought you could work—do your hours, the weeks, months, years—earn your money and just keep going. Work. Earn. Work. Earn.”