by Emilia Finn
“Fuckin’ independent women.” He makes the finger quotes around ‘independent’, and huffs like he’s not afraid of dying. “Why couldn’t I find myself a quiet little lamb who wants to wait on me twenty-four-seven?”
“Well, first of all, that was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard you say… and that’s a pretty big deal, considering who I’m speaking to. And second, she would bore you, and you know it. So stop being a caveman, and chill the hell out.” I step up onto my toes and press a kiss to his lips. “And since we’re on the subject, I’m probably going to base my final paper around Jason.”
“What?!” Just as I expected, Luke blows up. “No you’re not.”
“Yes,” I try to swallow down my laughter, I swear I do. “I am. The things he spoke about in session yesterday struck a chord with me.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is enchanting,” he growls. “He was fucking enchanting.”
“He was passionate about someone he loved and lost,” I counter and violate the very thing I, as a therapist, swore I would never do. Confidentiality is paramount in this job, and here I am, spouting secrets off to my jealous boyfriend. “He loved someone deeply, Luke. He still loves her, and he still longs for her. The story he has to tell is intriguing, and the side avenues to which his storytelling veers are entertaining. It’s not two-dimensional. It’s vivid and wild and loving and passionate, and I think it’s kind of special that I was here, in this town, in Sonia’s office when he walked in.”
Luke growls, so an actual rumble moves through his chest. “I think he’s a scam artist who got a look at the beautiful woman with dark red hair.”
I tilt my head and smile. “You mean like how you saw me at the bakery?”
“Exactly! And look what happened; we fucked, and I fell in love like a punk.”
“Such a punk,” I tease. “He’s in love with someone else, I assure you of that. And I think he’s just possibly arrogant enough to want to annoy you. You give him a reaction every single time you’re in the same space. What he discusses in therapy and what he does when you’re around, I think, are entirely unrelated. But again, that’s another layer for my paper, right?”
“You’re mine, right?” Luke’s eyes flicker between mine and sparkle with uncertainty. “Remember that thing I said about vulnerability, and wanting hugs, and there was also that thing about cavemen and that time my father fought another dude for no reason?”
Luke Hart is beautiful when he’s vulnerable. Sexy when he lays his truths out so visibly for everyone to see. “Well…” I hesitate. “Depends. Are you gonna ask me out for ice cream on Saturday?”
His lips twitch with a ghost of a smile. “Yes.”
“Then I guess I’m gonna ride this out at least till then. I’ll observe which ice cream you choose for yourself, then I’ll add more data to my Luke Hart analysis.”
“I bet it’s enchanting as fuck.” His gaze narrows. “Why aren’t you writing about me, huh? The fuck is up with that? Am I not enchanting enough for you?”
I shake my head and take a step away from the perpetually childish man in front of me. “How about I make you a deal? I go in there and ask Jason if he wants a relationship, then I can write about you. Switch it up.”
“Not funny,” he grumbles.
“Well, in this arrangement, which option would you prefer? The analysis, or the sex?”
He’s like a toddler. Popped bottom lip, scowling gaze. “Sex.”
“Exactly. So stop being a brat, and go to work. You’re already late.”
“You heading to the office now?” Luke takes the keys from his pocket, but he doesn’t step closer to his truck. Instead, he watches me. “No time for iced coffee?”
I shrug and take another step back. I’m running out of time, and I can’t be late to work. “Darcy knows my order now, so I don’t even have to line up and wait. She just makes it and sets it on the counter.”
“Wow,” he grumbles. “I still have to order.”
“You’re just full of petty whining today, huh? Even after a whole night of sex.”
“Some men just can’t be pleased.” He flashes a wide grin and finally turns to unlock and open his door. “I’ll text you when I get a free minute.”
“And I’ll bring the picnic for tonight. I’ll come down around six.”
“Works for me. I’ll be the hot guy with no shirt.”
I smile and try for one last swipe at that fragile ego. “Is Rob gonna be there?”
Luke swings around with a menacing snarl. “I’m gonna kick your fucking ass, Allyson Moore.”
Throwing my head back and laughing, I walk away from the truck and toward the street surrounding the hotel parking lot.
I have a car here, but with Sonia’s being so close, and my coffee stop at the midpoint, there’s no real need to drive it to work unless it’s a rainy day. Perhaps, as winter draws closer and the temperatures drop, I’ll start driving more. But for as long as the weather is the way it is today, I’m going to enjoy the stroll, and soak up the sun’s rays.
“Goodbye, Luke. I’ll talk to you later.”
“I love you!” He shouts it loud and obnoxious, so it’s more of a shove in the back than a gentle hug. “Allyson Moore, I fuckin’ love you!”
I spin and walk backwards. “Wow. Thanks.”
Gritting his teeth, Luke claps his hands together – not applause, but threat. He’s going to spank me and make me sorry for not saying it back. And though I could do as he asks, I could return the sentiment and give him something he so desperately wants, the words remain lodged in my throat.
But that’s not the excuse I give myself. No, I tell myself that the thought of being spanked tonight, thrust after thrust while he declares his love over and over again, is too tempting to throw away.
So I wave goodbye and blow a kiss, then I turn and head toward the bakery for my shot of caffeine. And since we never got to have breakfast, I order something quick and tasty to scarf down before I reach the office and start my day.
This thing I feel in my heart is too complicated to label. Too scary to admit. And too permanent to give. So I swallow it all down, push it to the side the way I’m so skillfully able to do, and, thinking about Jason and his Maria – thinking about the pain he feels after decades of loss – and thinking of my mom after she lost Stanley, I’m able to remind myself why I can swallow my feelings down.
The risk is too great. The pain too traumatic. And since I have such a good record of losing men in my life – first, the father I never knew, and then the father I did – I choose not to take the risk.
Go to work, Allyson. Then come home, and continue this wild affair with the guy who was probably voted in his graduating class as ‘least likely to ever settle down’.
He’s the safe bet, the easy choice. And though he says he loves me, I know love can so easily be mistaken with lust.
For now, I’ll enjoy the passion he throws at me. I’ll absorb it, and love it, and smile for it, and hell, I’ll probably even perform for it. But when it’s all done and gone, I won’t bleed for him the way Mom bled for Stanley, because I’ll have protected my heart. I’ll have been proactive and smart.
Ally
Time Passes
Summer in a small town really does go the way the movies portray it. The running around at the lake, the squealing laughter, and the wild, passionate lovemaking at the end of each long day.
Work keeps me moving from nine till around six or seven each night, but I’m only at the office until five, so that last hour or two is done with a laptop on my legs, and my feet in Luke’s lap while he massages them and I work on my paper.
Maybe I look and feel like an adult in most facets of my life, but until this paper is complete, I’m still a student, still young and in need of that validation from a professor and a college.
But hell, things could be much worse. I could be stuck inside my hotel room, all alone, while I hammer out these words. Or worse yet, I could have stayed
in the city and never have come here at all. That would mean missing out on the weekly dinners that Sonia invites me to. That would mean missing out on witnessing how she and Christopher interact, the way he loves her dearly, the way he’s a senior citizen, but his eyes and mind… they still belong to that twenty-year-old rogue who went away to war and came home a changed man. It would mean never knowing Sonia, she herself an old woman, but her brain as alive and sharp now as it ever was.
When dinner is served in the Rivera dining room, and all three of us are seated, all I have to do to be transported to another time is close my eyes and listen. Listen to the words they speak to each other, the joking, the teasing. The laughing… the giggling. Because Sonia still giggles for her husband.
If I’d never come to this town, I’d have never met Rob, the man who is identical to mine, but just as Emma said, the confusion is gone almost immediately once you meet them both. These days, I can pick them apart as though I was raised with them and know their every nuance.
If I’d never come here, I would have missed out on watching Rob and Emma tiptoe around each other, how he watches her when she’s not looking – he has a special interest in her backside, as rounded and sculpted as it is – and she watches him too, but she’s far less subtle about it.
She watches his dick, and encourages the wearing of gray sweatpants.
Jason has attended sessions every single Wednesday since the first, and as time wears on, the stories of his Maria grow more animated, more detailed and in depth, and for every session he attends, I fall a little more in love with the woman he loves. He’s able to speak in such a way that he’s not drawing Sonia and I toward him. He doesn’t seek to make us love him, but to love Maria. He’s on a quest to keep Maria alive long after he lost her.
The tragedy, I’ve since discovered, is that she has not passed away. She was sent away. They were separated when they were still young, pushed into other parts of the country, and he was too young himself to do anything about it.
He still loves this woman, this ghost, and that might be more tragic than if she had in fact passed away.
September made way for October, for Halloween. Luke dressed up as Dracula, he forced me to be his bride, he bit my neck a lot, and then I met the children of the estate. The elementary-school-aged children who wanted to trick or treat, and thrilled at the idea of Luke being a bloodsucker.
That was also when I met those sexy, sexuality-questioning, fighting warriors from the canvas print in the photography studio window. Turns out, the women I was semi-lusting after, are just two more that Luke has declared his undying love for.
One is his cousin by blood. The other, a cousin by love.
November means Thanksgiving, which, according to Luke’s family, means weird sweater season, where the sweaters are to be as discreetly salacious as possible. The dirtier, the better, but the kids can’t read them and understand, or you’re disqualified.
It also means frigid cold winds, swapping out my iced coffee for the hot version, driving my car to work or risking frostbite, and at the end of the month, the first snow.
It’s like I’m living a movie: the summer romance, the wild abandon I allow myself to feel, the adventure, then the winter, which almost feels even more magical.
The nights Luke and I spend bundled up, sitting outside on his balcony or mine, as snow slowly drifts to the concrete parking lot down below. Luke will sit sprawled out on a chair, and then I’ll lay on top of him, because although getting a second chair would be the logical, easy solution, neither of us want to give up the excuse to snuggle, to hug for hours and sync our hearts.
Maybe it’s because he is a Hart. Maybe that’s why it’s all so easy, so effortless to verge in a direction that terrifies me, or maybe it’s watching Sonia and Christopher play out beside us. Perhaps it’s listening to Jason about his Maria. Love seems to be all around, and that doesn’t even account for Luke’s mom and dad. His aunts and uncles. It seems love is quite literally in the air, so all Luke and I have to do is breathe, exist, allow it to bewitch us.
And at the end of the year, I guess I’ll have to choose. Am I going left? Or are we going right?
One ends with me taking a leap of faith and trusting someone else to care for my heart. The other ends with me following the plan, going home again, back to my life, to my friends, to my mom and the codependent relationship we share, to my cat who now thinks Mom is his new owner, and her pillow is his bed.
I have a whole other life somewhere else, and a whole lot of reasons not to abandon it for a guy who, after his initial ‘You’re mine and I love you’ talks, remains somewhat silent on where he falls when it comes to commitment.
Just as I suspected, love and lust are confusing, and Luke is a passionate guy.
I made the right choice a couple months ago by keeping my lips closed when words like love and forever were being tossed around. I enjoyed us for what we are – passion and lust, spontaneity and wildness. I didn’t ruin us by falling in love. But rather, I enhanced what we have by maintaining that slight independence and not tainting us with feelings that cannot last forever.
I saved us by keeping my feelings to myself. And that was my cross to bear.
At the end of another long day in the office with Sonia – two days out from our last session with Jason – I pack up my things and think about my plans for tonight… which are basically Luke and me at my hotel. Or Luke and me and Rob and Emma at the apartment while we play cards and get just buzzed enough to be smiley, but not so bad that we wake up dehydrated and ill.
The Stacked Deck tournament is just weeks away, a tournament I’d heard of even before coming to this town, but not something I’d given much thought to until it turns out I have a boyfriend who competes.
The fact he owns shares in this tournament, which at its most basic level is a thriving, multi-million-dollar company, is just a small detail that I don’t obsess over, lest I lose sleep over something I absolutely cannot control or predict.
And ask anyone who knows me – cough, cough, my mother – and she’ll tell you, ‘Ally likes control. She likes predictability and stability.’
Both Hart boys are competing this year, which means both of them are forgoing Friday night pizza, wings, and intoxication in the weeks leading up to fight night, and in place of those binges is protein and smart choices – with a side helping of ‘Let’s go steal shit’, or ‘It’s cold, let’s go make a bonfire… on property we do not own.’
“Do you have plans this weekend, Ally?” Sonia collects her used teacups from today, and places them on a tray to be washed overnight. She looks as beautiful as ever, regal and perfect even as she juggles dirty dishes and kicks the corner of the rug down to neaten it up as she passes. “Luke have anything special planned?”
I smile and poke through my purse in search of my phone and keys. “It’s funny, because I was just thinking about that.”
“Yeah?” She sets the tray on the very corner of her desk, and turning back, she gives me her full attention. “Why’s it funny?”
“Because I was thinking about a typical Friday night with Luke. He’s training for the tournament, so his eating and sleep patterns are much more structured now than they were a few months ago. But…”
Sonia’s lips twitch. “But?”
“But,” I continue, “he’ll probably still suggest we go out and do something illegal.” I laugh and shake my head. “It’s like he thinks of his rap sheet as a card that he needs to have punched each weekend. Like, if he does something stupid six weekends in a row, he might get a free corndog on the seventh.”
Chuckling, Sonia turns back to her desk and collects her things: phone, keys, bag. “I think you’re fairly on the money about him. But it’s not a corndog he’s aiming for. It’s just… life experience, do you understand?”
I nibble on my bottom lip and nod.
“He has this finite amount of time on Earth, and I think he’s afraid of wasting any of it. It’s passionate and inspir
ing, really, if not occasionally dangerous.” She stops and smiles. “How’s your schoolwork going?”
“Good.”
I grab my purse when Sonia grabs hers, and when she makes her way out of the office, I follow toward the sound of ferocious wind outside. It’s been storming all day, and the weather forecasters are saying it’s only going to get worse tomorrow.
“I’m having a lot of fun with it,” I explain. “I’ve never written something so in-depth before, but this one comes with a gentle flair of romance.”
We head to the front door, past Calla as she packs her things away, and prepares to leave as well.
“I mean, this paper is being written in a scientific manner, of course – facts, my observations, Jason’s thoughts and emotions all laid out in black and white. But the way he speaks of her…” We step outside into the dreary gray darkness, and shiver at the slicing wind. “I don’t know.”
I look into Sonia’s compassionate eyes. “I just think my professor will notice the weaves of romance that I just can’t seem to squeeze out no matter how many times I rewrite sections.”
“Well…” She pulls up the collar of her long coat, and rubs her hands together to create friction. “I think it’s okay that you’re able to tell a story, even while studying another human being. In fact,” she smiles, “your professor will probably thank you for it, because by the time he’s read hundreds of others that are probably much dryer, he’ll be looking for a little respite.” The wind picks up with a vengeance and blows her hair around her face. “And on that note, I’m going home. You should too. Get your car under shelter before the hail falls.”
“Here.” I reach out and weave my arm around hers. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine.” She pats my hand in kind rejection, and pulling it away from her arm, she tucks her hair back with her other hand, and smiles. “I parked on the street, just over there, and you parked out back. I don’t want you to go twice as far for no reason.”