by Catie Rhodes
I shrugged, pretending nonchalance as best as I could. “Your love for your wife and kids, and theirs for you, the intensity of it, is what most of us want and never get.”
“But our fates went in different directions,” he said. “Keeping them around has kept me from giving myself a second chance. I wasted the time I had left living in the past.” He let out a sad chuckle. And now it was too late. The words hung between us, unspoken but loud as a tornado. He faced me. “We’ve still got some time left. Would you let me kiss you again?”
I didn’t answer. I just leaned toward him. He bent his head with maddening slowness. Each second elongated, stretching to the point of madness until finally our lips met. We’d already gotten past that shy hesitation, the dance of figuring out what was too hard and what was gentle enough. Our tongues touched, and my pulse stuttered. Tanner moaned deep in his throat. I trailed my fingers down the side of his neck. His heartbeat throbbed against my fingers, proof we were both alive and real in this moment.
Was I really about to make out with Tanner on the bones of Miss Ugly’s victims? It made a weird kind of sense. We were celebrating life with death surrounding us and death waiting on the other side.
Tanner gripped my hips and slid me out from the wall. Eyes locked on his, I let him do what he wanted. He braced his hands on either side of my head and lowered his body to hover over mine. His lips teased against mine, and our breath mingled.
A tickle started at my center and spread, fighting the part of me that didn’t want to let Wade go. Moving on, living in this moment, was the right thing. So why did it feel so disloyal? I wasn’t the only one with baggage to shed. The spirits of Tanner’s family beat at my skin. They wanted out before he moved on.
Tanner stopped kissing me. “I feel them here. I feel like I’m cheating on Bea. I never did that, and I can’t start now.”
I let go of him, trying to hide my disappointment. Bad timing. The story of my life.
The voices of Tanner’s wife and daughters rose in a mournful howl. He’d almost let them go but chickened out. The force of their cry rocked the cage back and forth on whatever it hung from. Dirt sifted to the floor and into my face.
I began trying to get out from under Tanner. He blocked my escape and kissed me again, but it was halfhearted. I put one hand on his chest to push him away.
“You’re not ready to let them go. That’s why you feel guilty.” I said the words as gently as I could. Sex often meant nothing, but this time it meant everything.
“I want this with you. Without feeling guilty.” His voice rose in frustration on the last sentence.
“You can’t have both.” My own words hit me like a blast of cold water. Who was I to talk? I pretended to accept that Wade and I would never be. Yet I trotted out the memory of him every time I tallied up the wins and losses of my life. Maybe there was something I hadn't let go of in my little ceremony.
Tanner frowned at my pronouncement. His wife’s spirit swirled the strongest around his head. She tried to comfort, but she also pleaded with him to let them go. Maybe she saw this as a final opportunity. I didn’t have time to wonder why because Tanner picked that moment to take action. He pushed himself off me, stood as much as he could, and turned his back.
“Bea,” he whispered, as though I wouldn’t be able to hear. “You will always be my first true love. I’ll cherish you every day.”
Bea’s spirit whipped faster around Tanner, almost a cyclone. She sent her love, her devotion, but then she pleaded with him to release her and their children.
“I wish things were different.” Tanner choked on the words. Then he swallowed and seemed to regain control. “Go with my blessing.”
Bea gathered her two daughters to her. The spirits moved faster and faster in a whorl of blinding light. At the last second, the older daughter leaned in and whispered something in Tanner’s ear. Then they blasted between the bars of the cage, finally shooting red against the dark sky. Tanner watched them go. When their light faded, he spoke.
“All this time, letting go felt like a betrayal. But holding on to them was the betrayal—to them and to me.” His voice broke.
“The way to honor the dead is by living our lives to the fullest.” The words were just as much for me as for Tanner. Wade still lived, but clinging to the idea of him was a dishonor to both of us. A weight I hadn’t even been aware of carrying fell off my shoulders.
Tanner turned back and crouched in front of me. “None of us knows how much time is left. Each moment needs to count.”
I nodded, heart too full to speak.
“Let’s make it count together.” He held out one hand, and I took it.
Tanner had the right idea. I didn’t want to lose another second to what might have been. Tanner lowered his mouth onto mine again and pushed me gently onto my back. I hooked my legs over his hips, and we twined our bodies together, hearts beating harder.
The wheel of life lay next to my head. Something came from it, not quite heat, but more like a wisp of magic, tingling over my skin. Tanner shivered against me. He felt it too. The power of it rose, and the nimbus of light appeared around it again.
Had making out with Tanner given me another chance to change my fate? It didn’t make sense. And yet it did. Sex was another ritual of death and rebirth. But it wouldn’t work unless I accepted that Wade Hill wasn’t the great loss of my life but instead the loss that opened the way for good things to happen.
Tanner trailed kisses over my jaw, calloused fingers drifting over my neck. My body, starved for attention, responded to the point I could barely think. He raised his head and crushed his lips against mine, moaning.
His smell drifted into my nostrils. Turned earth, primal, full of energy. The thrumming of his heart against mine.
In the back of my mind, I saw Wade. The ghost of my failed love life. Perfect because he was untouchable and untested. We hadn’t had to weather life as lovers or partners. It was easy to say he was the great lost love of my life, my only chance at true love. It gave me the perfect excuse not to give anybody else a chance. That had been fine until I met Tanner and felt that odd, consuming connection. Things had changed. Now I had to let Wade go and face the future.
Tired of the pain, I was willing. But I didn’t have a symbol of Wade on my person to destroy. Then it hit me—I did. The mojo bag I’d created from what he left in the hospital room after he’d been shot.
But I had to act fast or lose the opportunity. With only a torn shirt between us, Tanner had already unhooked my bra, pushed it aside, and began teasing his thumb over my nipple. Soon, I’d quit thinking, and I wanted this to be right before I did.
“Just a minute,” I mumbled against Tanner’s lips.
“What? Did I do something you didn’t want?” He raised himself off me, voice raw with disappointment.
“The opposite. Just give me a second.” I slid out from under him, dug in my pocket, and came up with Wade’s mojo bag. Tanner craned to see what I had. I held my hand open so he could see. Stretching as far as I could I dropped it out of the side of the cage, expecting it to fall. It rolled to the end of my fingers and hung there. In a hurry to do with Tanner what I’d wanted to do since the first second I saw him, I gave my fingers an impatient flick. The mojo bag stayed where it was.
Wade’s smell overwhelmed me. Wind from long-ago motorcycle rides whipped across my face, and I heard his laugh. But then it faded until nothing was left but a scared girl-woman trying to let go of the past. The mojo bag clung to the ends of my fingers as though it knew I hadn’t quite closed the door on all that could have been.
But was the past so golden? In all my mourning for days and loves gone by, I had forgotten the truth. The past was nothing but ashes and broken dreams.
Everyone I’d known and loved in Gaslight City had either died or moved on. Even Hannah, after all she had been through, was a different person. Wade was just someone who reminded me of a time when I had Memaw, and the appearance of controlling my own life.
Things look better, happier in a rearview mirror, even though reality is often far different.
Reality didn’t dress up and play sweet-sweet. That bitch was a glowing bed of coals banked by bushes with poison-tipped barbs. There were quicksand, minefields, and sheer drop-offs of hundreds of feet. Monsters with names like guilt, regret, and sorrow lurked int the shadows.
I had learned about the landscape of reality by the virtue of sweat, failure, and bad decisions. My reality had become a game of weighing consequences and deciding what I could live with.
According to Desiree, the reality of Wade and me ever getting together was his death. I loved Wade too much to be the cause of his death. Would I always love him? Probably, in some part of my heart. But I had to love him enough to let him go; to love myself enough to move on to whatever happiness I could find. I deserved that much.
Wade’s mojo bag slipped off the ends of my fingers and dropped into the endless darkness.
“What was it?” Tanner had himself braced over me with one arm. Our bodies still touched, but we’d almost lost our connection. The dulling nimbus around the wheel of life said so.
“We both had ghosts to let go of so we could change our fates.” I traced one finger down the side of Tanner’s sweat-slicked neck, gripped his shirt in one hand, and pulled him to me.
He held back, lips smiling, eyes intense and serious. “You using me to change your fate?”
“Only a little. I wanted this the second I saw you. Even if it doesn’t work…” I shrugged.
He nodded. “Seeing what happens is worth whatever I lost. I want this too.” He shifted on top of me so I could feel how much he wanted it.
We moved our bodies together, staring into each other's eyes. The darkness hid a lot of detail, but the intensity that had so attracted me radiated off him. It channeled between us, wrapping around us, pulling us tighter together.
Tanner dropped his lips to mine, devouring me. It was another first kiss, the one where both of us didn’t have the past hanging over us. The wheel glowed brighter than ever.
“Take off your shirt.” I tugged at the stretchy T-shirt material, which Miss Ugly had left in shreds. “I want to feel your skin on mine.”
Tanner raised onto his knees, jerked his shirt off, and began tugging what was left of my clothes. I let him pull the ruins of my top over my head and push my bra down my arms.
His hands slid up my ribs, the touch leaving trails of fire. My body throbbed, begged for more. I pressed toward him.
The wheel of life glowed brighter, sending a warm glow through our cage and into my body.
Gazes locked together, Tanner and I peeled off the rest of our clothes. Bathed in the golden glow of the wheel of life, Tanner’s muscles stood taut on his body, as though carved in marble.
I let my fingers trail down his chest, through the crisp strip of hair in its center, over his navel, and wrapped them around his smooth, throbbing hardness. He moaned, eyes fluttering shut. A wave of desire crested and slammed through me.
“No, baby. Look at me.” My breath came in quick pants.
Tanner opened his eyes and pushed me onto my back. When our faces were less than an inch apart, so close his breath whispered over my tender skin, driving me almost over the edge, I guided him into me. We both groaned and stiffened.
“Not yet, not yet,” Tanner chanted, his whispers like caresses on my overly sensitized skin.
I kissed his lips light as a feather. We moved together, hips rocking in a rhythm as old as time. The wheel brightened to the point that it could have been daylight. Its magic caressed that of the mantle, driving the sensation of Tanner’s body moving against mine to heights I’d never felt before.
Our bodies bucked together, and my fingernails dug into him. We stared into each others eyes, breath mingling, lost in each other. He touched me deeper than I’d ever expected. Tanner’s and my souls, our destinies, joined, and we moved forward in life together, the dark past a few steps behind.
The scar tissue surrounding the mantle thinned even more with the scar of Wade becoming less important to me. This time I felt it for sure. Rays of the mantle, bright and pure, began to seep through the membrane, still stunted, but stronger than ever before.
It quivered, titillating, maddening. It spread through my body, part of this ancient ritual of death and rebirth. Tanner, seeming to feel it too, quickened his movements, eyes still on mine.
Our bodies slapped together. My legs squeezed around his hips. His arms tightened under my shoulders, and our movements reached a hard, desperate pitch.
The light from the wheel took on weight, encapsulating us in a bubble of gold.
Tanner moaned deep in his throat. “Now?”
“Now,” I said against his lips.
We stepped over the edge together, eyes making love just as much as our bodies. My vision grayed out. I heard a woman scream. It was probably me, but I didn’t care. Then I came back to myself, alive again.
The wheel opened up and took me in. A million neon threads zipped in front of me, electricity running down each one of them, taking it to its final destination. Tanner and I had opened up fate by trusting one another, by giving one another a chance, and I wouldn’t let it go to waste.
I looked down at my naked, love-slick body floating in the sphere of light and shining energy and found my fate. It stretched out from me, a line of neon sunshine.
Tanner spoke next to my ear. “That’s the one you keep…if you’re still willing to give me a chance. The one you want to cut’s behind you.” He slipped his hand in mine and turned me.
I twisted my body and saw the line of fate stretching out behind me. It glowed black with infection. I leaned down and picked it up with the hand Tanner wasn’t holding.
“I don’t have anything to cut it.” My voice sounded so calm, like a goddess out on a casual walk, not like someone desperate to escape the worst fate had to offer.
“Bite it.” Tanner kissed my cheek and then moved onto my neck, his hands already tracing fire down my body.
I lifted the thick cord to my mouth and bit into it. Sour, spoiled life force filled my mouth. My mouth drew up. Repulsed, I let go of the cord. It flopped to the ground at my feet.
Don’t quit. It’s not finished. I picked it up and bit again, hard as I could. The cord crunched between my teeth and shot more sour awfulness into my mouth. I chewed like it was the best damn steak I’d ever had because this was my last chance.
Finally the cord broke, spilling its blackness into the sphere, where it turned to bright, gleaming light again and drifted away. The discarded line of fate lay in lazy squiggle on the floor, like some child’s abandoned toy.
“Adios, motherfucker,” I muttered. The sourness in my mouth left as though it had never been there.
Then Tanner turned me to face him. With one finger, he teased open my folds, stroking until I moaned. His lips met mine, and he eased me onto my back, sliding into me like we’d been doing it every day for the last ten years. We moved together, and my new thread of fate filled with life.
When I woke up, sun blazed into the cage from above. Tanner and I lay naked, bodies tangled together, one of his legs resting over mine. For the first time, I saw the dirt walls surrounding us, confirming my suspicion that we’d been dangling over a chasm no telling how deep.
The cage moved again. I realized what had woken me. We were being hoisted out of the pit. I nudged Tanner awake. Even the small movement irritated my sex-sore muscles and reminded me how many times—and ways—Tanner and I had enjoyed each other before the sun came up.
“Get up. She’s raising the cage.” I tried to pull myself from underneath him.
Tanner put one hand behind my neck and kissed my lips gently. Then he let me up. We both yanked on our clothes and prepared to find out if I’d succeeded in changing both our fates.
The cage jumped up maybe a few inches at a time. From somewhere above came the sound of gears turning slowly. I slipped the wheel of life back into the
hip pack and clipped it around my waist.
Tanner came to stand behind me, arms encircling my waist, and nuzzled my hair aside to kiss my neck. “You sorry?”
I curled my fingers around his wrist. “Not a bit.”
The night before had freed us both from some demons. What lay ahead didn’t matter as much as the journey of getting there. Leaving my old fate behind felt like shedding a dirty, dead skin.
The top of the cage broke the edge of the pit where it had hung. Daylight gleamed dull on the bones, making them appear bleached and dry. I couldn’t wait to be out of the cage and back to our side of the veil.
A few more cranks, and Miss Ugly’s face appeared. Daylight didn’t make her any prettier, not even the daylight of her side of the veil. It brought out the greenish cast of her skin and made visible ropy veins just below the surface of her skin pop out.
She smiled at Tanner and me, a thin line of saliva snaking from the corner of her thin lips. “Did you enjoy your final night?”
Tanner and I exchanged a horrified glance. My chest tightened. No. This was wrong. I’d escaped my fate. My business with Miss Ugly was finished.
“That’s not right. I cut my fate.” My mouth puckered with the memory of the sour taste of it in my mouth.
“You cut your fate line, but someone else must take your fate for you.” She untied a strip of thick white tendon and let the cage’s door swing open.
“That’s not fair. You didn’t tell me that.” Frustration chased out the horror of having made a simple, stupid error out of ignorance. I was sick of operating on only half the information I needed, sick of stumbling around in the dark.
Miss Ugly’s crazy eyes settled on mine. “Fair is a lie.”
Bullshit. I grabbed at Tanner’s hand and tried to run around Miss Ugly. She caught me, yanked me away from Tanner, and swung me around. The bones making up the cage slammed against my face. Tanner shouted something. The hanging cage rocked with the force of my blow and pulled me off balance. My foot hit the edge of the pit and slid in the dirt.