Broken and Beautiful

by Ryan, Kendall

  Now, I’m feeling every adrenaline-packed hour.

  I can barely stay awake long enough to wolf down the teriyaki chicken and Hawaiian shortbread cookies on my dinner tray and then I’m out, sucked into my first deep, peaceful sleep since Sam stopped returning my calls six days ago.

  No matter how long we’ve been together, or how much we’ve been through, a part of me had been certain she was about to end it. End our seven-year relationship and take a sledgehammer to my life in the process because I can’t imagine who I would be without her.

  I’m the owner of a thriving adventure-tourism business, but only because it’s a career I knew would blend well with our dream to travel the world before we settle down. I’m a brother, an uncle, and soon-to-be an uncle again when my sister Caitlin’s first baby is born, but no matter how much I love my family, they could never fill the place Sam holds in my heart.

  Sam and I have grown up together, and all I want is to grow old with her. We’re like trees planted too close, our roots tangled and our trunks fused together. If I lost her, I would lose my foundation, a part of my heart, and everything that makes me happy. Without her, I can’t imagine what there would be to look forward to. There would be no reason left to dream, and without a dream there’s no fucking point in being alive.

  Watching my father piss his life away taught me that lesson early.

  The world would have been better off without Chuck Cooney in it, and I never want to be anything like him. That’s why I’ve been sober for two years and fight through temptation every time someone, who doesn’t know I’m an alcoholic, offers me a drink. But if I’d lost Sam, I might have started shuffling through life in my father’s footsteps, drinking too much, caring too little, choosing selfish oblivion over facing the world.

  To say I’m relieved that Sam and I are still together is an understatement.

  I feel like I’ve surfed past a shark lurking beneath the water and escaped with all my limbs intact, and when I wake up to the humming silence of a darkened plane and feel Sam caressing me through my faded khaki shorts, the bliss of her fingers gripping me through my clothes is enough to make me dizzy.

  “What time is it?” I ask, my voice rough with sleep as I shift toward her, granting her easier access.

  “The middle of the night,” Sam whispers, her full lips moving in the shadows. “You’ve been out for hours. I was getting lonely.”

  “Sorry.” I scan the aisles across from us.

  Everyone in my line of sight is passed out and snoring, and that’s all the permission I need to reach under the blanket covering Sam’s lap and return the favor.

  I slide my fingers up and down the ridge of her jeans, lingering over her clit, wishing she were wearing one of her sundresses. It would be so easy to push the fabric up, pull her panties to one side, and get my fingers inside her. It’s been almost half a year since we’ve been together, and I’m dying to touch her, taste her, feel her body gripping my cock as her muscled legs wrap around my waist and pull me deep.

  “It’s okay.” Sam’s breath hitches as I pop the button on the top of her jeans. “You’re awake now.”

  “Wide awake,” I confirm, teeth digging into my lip as Sam drags my zipper down and reaches inside my boxer shorts, taking my cock into her hand.

  She wraps her fingers around me and slides her fist up and down, tugging me with the perfect amount of pressure before she pauses to circle her thumb around my swollen head, spreading the cum leaking from my tip in teasing circles that are almost enough to set me off. Her palm is warm, but my dick is on fire. I’ve jerked off more than my fair share the past few months, but it’s not the same.

  I know I’m going to come fast, but I don’t want to come before her.

  Even our first time, the summer before our sophomore year of high school, when I was so horny I felt like I was going to pass out from excitement the night Sam told me she wanted to go all the way, I made sure to go down on her first. I brought her over on my tongue before I slid on the condom we’d stolen from her mom’s latest boyfriend and pushed inside her.

  She’d been so wet, so tight, and the sounds she’d made as pain became pleasure were the most erotic things I’d ever heard. I can still remember every moment of our first time—all sixty seconds of it. Tonight I’m going to last longer, but maybe not by much.

  As Sam continues to jerk me off with the skill of a woman who’s spent years pleasuring the same man, I slide my hand down the front of her jeans, beneath her panties, and begin to demonstrate my own expertise. Her jeans are tight, but not so tight I can’t reach her entrance. When I do, I curl two fingers inside her, fighting the urge to groan as her wetness coats my skin and her breath rushes out over my lips.

  “Danny,” she whispers, her head falling forward until her forehead rests against mine.

  It’s only my name, but those two whispered syllables tell me a thousand things at once.

  They tell me she’s as desperate for this as I am that she’s felt just as lost without this connection, this touchstone to who we are together. Sam and I have always been able to talk, but there are some things that can’t be communicated with words. Like the fierce and forever way I love her, like the fact that I’d fight an army single-handed for the chance to lie by her side for even one more night.

  “I love you.” I slide my fingers in and out of her with long, sensual strokes, summoning more heat from her body, letting me know my touch still affects her the way it always has.

  We haven’t lost this.

  We’re still us, and we’re going to find our way back to each other, the way we always have.

  My pulse picks up and my cock swells beneath Sam’s increasingly firm grip, but I ignore the pressure building in my balls and focus on pleasuring her. I shift my hand until the heel of my palm rubs against her clit as my fingers drive deeper inside her, ignoring the cramp in my wrist and the faint stirring from across the aisle. At this point, I don’t care if someone’s watching. I need Sam to come on my hand, I need her release as much as I need my own.

  More. I live for her touch, but I would die for the chance to watch her features twist as I bring her over, to know I’m the one responsible for unraveling her so completely.

  “Yes,” she whispers, chest rising and falling more swiftly as her breath comes faster. “So close.”

  There is just enough pale blue light in the cabin for me to see her nipples hard beneath her tee shirt and it’s all I can do not to reach up and cup her breast in my free hand. I’m dying to pinch and tease her nipples between my fingers, to take her in my mouth and suck her pebbled skin. But that will have to wait until we have something more than a tiny blanket to hide behind.

  Fuck…we can’t get to that hotel fast enough.

  I can’t wait to get Sam naked beneath me, above me, or in any other position she’s up for.

  The past couple of years, our lovemaking has been veering toward the kinkier side of the spectrum. It started with having sex in every waterfall on Maui two summers ago, and ended with a paddle last December.

  Sam is one of the strongest people I know, but she also has…unexpected fantasies. When she’d first mentioned wanting to be spanked and to play with toys—bringing it up in a sexy whisper when we were already half naked—I wasn’t sure I’d be into it. But by the time I had Sam tipped over my knee, her bare bottom in the air, and her pussy dripping down her thighs as I reddened her ass, I’d changed my mind.

  After that experience, I’d been sold on kink, and looking forward to all the new ways we would find to get each other off.

  But then Sam’s emails and texts grew shorter and further apart, and when we talked on the phone on Saturday mornings she sounded distant. She said it was because of her new roommate—her old roomie was studying abroad for a semester, and the new girl, Tate, was an eavesdropper and a gossip. Sam blamed Tate for our shorter, less intimate phone conversations, and I didn’t have the courage to call bullshit when she was acting so weird.

&nb
sp; Sure, a nosey roommate meant we couldn’t have phone sex, but it didn’t mean we couldn’t talk. Sam could have gone to the park or one of the hiking trails near her apartment for the privacy we needed to catch up on our usual news. For her to tell me about her classes, and me to tell her how fast the business was growing, and how weird it felt to have employees for the first time in my life. Instead, our catch up sessions grew microscopic, and I started to worry our last encounter was to blame.

  Maybe Sam regretted what we’d done.

  Maybe I’d screwed up seven years of loving each other with one night of raunchy sex.

  No matter how much I’d enjoyed it, losing Sam wasn’t worth the novelty. I’d rather have normal, amazing sex with her than all the kinky shit in the world.

  But when I’d finally worked up the nerve to mention my concerns, Sam had refused to talk about it. She’d said she wasn’t in a safe place to have that kind of conversation and made an excuse to get off the phone as fast as she could. That time, she hadn’t returned my calls, texts, or emails for four days. When she finally picked up the phone again, I was too grateful to hear her voice to do anything to spook her again.

  The sex conversation had been tabled, but the fear that our easy physical relationship was damaged lingered, driving me crazy as winter turned to spring and Sam still sounded weird every time she answered the phone.

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever touch her like this again. I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear her breath hitch the way it does right before she gets off. I’m so grateful to be with her I’m pretty sure I could have lost it just from hearing her whimper and feeling her hips buck into my palm as she goes over.

  The combination of her pussy pulsing around my fingers, and her hand working my cock is enough to make me come so hard I see stars.

  The bliss coursing through me lasts for what feels like forever. I bite my lip to keep from making noise, but as soon as I’m sure I can keep quiet, I lean into Sam and kiss her with all the emotion making my chest feel like it’s about to explode. I slip my tongue between her lips, exploring every inch of her sweet mouth. She tastes the way she always does, like sea air, clean sweat, and summer time. Like the best parts of being a kid, the freest parts of being an adult, and everything I’ve wanted since the moment Sam agreed to be my girl.

  She tastes exactly the same, but the way she ends the kiss after only a few moments and tugs at my wrist is different.

  Strange.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper, glancing across the aisle to find the other passengers still dead to the world. “No one’s watching.”

  “The stewardess could be by any minute,” she whispers, her tugs at my wrist growing more insistent. “Come on, Danny. I need to get zipped up.”

  “Let me help.” I slip my fingers from between her legs and reach for her zipper only for her to bat my hand away with a sharp slap.

  “Sorry,” she says with a breathy laugh that makes me think the slap startled her as much as it did me. “I’m just afraid we’re going to get caught. I’ll run to the restroom for some tissues for you. Be right back.”

  Before I can tell her to stay, that I have napkins left over from dinner shoved into the seat pocket in front of me, she’s slipped out into the aisle and is hauling ass toward the bathrooms at the back of coach. She’s the one who started this, and I know she enjoyed it as much I did, but it feels like she’s running away from me.

  No matter how physically close we were a moment ago, that emotional distance is still there, and I don’t know how to make it go away. Even when she gets back and asks in a sexy whisper if this means we’ve joined the mile high club, it’s hard to play along. I say the right words, insisting we deserve all bragging rights, but there’s nothing lighthearted about the way I’m feeling. I’ve known Sam too long and too well to be fooled by her attempts to muscle through the strained moment before she bolted for the bathroom.

  Something is wrong. Something’s been wrong since January and if it’s not her and me, or that last night before she left the island in December, then it has to be something else.

  Something or someone has rattled Sam so badly that she’s let our relationship—the one thing she promised she would fight to protect, no matter how busy our lives, or how great the physical distance between us—suffer.

  And I’m going to find out what or who that is.

  And then I’m going to kick their fucking ass.

  No one hurts Sam and gets away with it. No one.

  Seven Years Earlier

  Danny

  “And both were young,

  and one was beautiful.”

  -Lord Byron

  It’s raining on the approach to Maui, and the captain warns us to keep our seatbelts fastened and all our belongings safely stowed. It’s only my third time on an airplane, and as we lurch toward the runway, the plane stuttering up and down like an EKG monitor, I’m certain I’m going to die.

  I’m going to die, and I’ll never get to tell Sam that I love her.

  That I will always love her, for the rest of my life.

  I’m only thirteen years old, and no one believes I’m really in love, but I’m not some dumb little kid. I’ve been helping my big sister, Caitlin, raise my younger brothers and baby niece since I was nine. I was making breakfast for my family when most kids were still getting their pancakes cut up by their mom or dad and giving Caitlin grocery money from my odd jobs around the neighborhood while my friends at school bitched about not having enough allowance to buy video games.

  I know what it feels like to shoulder big responsibility, but until Sam, I never wanted any of it. I helped out and pitched in, but deep down, all I wanted was to grow up, get out, and never have lives depending on me—even a little bit—ever again.

  And then I met Sam.

  Sam, with her wild, curly brown hair, a living thing that follows her head around like a crazy pet. Sam, with her sharp blue eyes that make my stomach flip every time she looks at me. Sam, who rocks a skateboard like it’s her job, never cries when she shreds her skin on a fall, and didn’t make fun of me a single time when she was teaching me how to surf, even when I wiped out for the ten thousandth time.

  Sam, who let me kiss her for the first time right before we left for my dad’s funeral.

  It’s all I’ve been able to think about for ten days. I guess I should be torn up about my dad, but it still doesn’t seem real, and I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about the fact that I basically have no parents, not even shitty parents, and that Caitlin, with all the crazy stuff going on in her life, is the only thing standing between me and a foster home. I’d rather think about the way Sam’s lips felt so warm and soft against mine, the way she tasted like sunscreen and salt water, but more than that, too. She tasted like freedom and secrets, like a promise someone finally kept instead of running off and letting me down.

  Kissing Sam was everything the movies make a kiss out to be—magic and lights dancing behind my eyes and my blood rushing so fast I thought I was going to pass out. I already loved her like a best friend, but the second I kissed her, it became so much more.

  I’ve never loved anyone like I love Sam. I would do anything for her. I want to make her happy and keep her safe and I wish like hell I wasn’t still just a kid.

  I don’t want to say goodbye, even though I know moving is the only way Caitlin can keep our family together. But I wish I were old enough to stay in Maui. The entire plane flight from South Carolina, I’ve been daydreaming about us fixing up the old abandoned lifeguard lookout on the beach and living there with Sam. About what it would be like to come home to a place that was just mine and hers, nobody else’s, where no one could hurt us because it would be her and me against the world.

  But now the plane is going down, and I’m going to get crushed into the tarmac like a bug on a windshield, and I’ll never see Sam again.

  I swallow hard, but I can’t seem to force my spit down my throat, and the next time the plane lurches, my chicke
n dinner pushes against the top of my stomach, fighting to get out.

  “It’s okay, D.” Sherry, Caitlin’s best friend, squeezes my hand. “We’ll get down safe.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I pull my hand away and cross my arms.

  I like Sherry, and I’m glad she was cool enough to let me fly back to Maui with her to say goodbye to Sam, but I don’t need to be treated like a baby.

  I lift my chin and try to look bored for the rest of the flight, but by the time we land—bouncing back up into the air twice and swerving on the wet landing strip before the pilot gets the plane under control—I have red crescent moons on both palms from where my nails have been digging into my skin. I follow Sherry off the plane, my legs feeling like rubber bands that have lost all their stretch, and we head down to the luggage area to get the suitcases.

  The airport in Maui is almost all open to the outside, so the wind from the departing storm whips against our skin as we watch the carousel spin and wait for the bags to get spit out. I check my cell every few minutes, willing the baggage people to hurry. I’m supposed to meet Sam at the Fish Market Restaurant, where we get fried calamari on the weekends, at four o’clock, and it’s already three thirty.

  After what seems like a zillion hours, our bags finally slide out of the shoot, and Sherry and I head to the curb to look for her boyfriend, Bjorn. Outside the sun is shining again, like the storm that almost killed us was just a dream, and there’s a rainbow stretched across the sky above the sugar cane fields.

  “There he is!” Sherry makes a squealing sound and jumps up and down, waving like an idiot, as Bjorn’s old yellow truck pulls up.

  When he gets out, Bjorn has a big, dumb grin on his face to match Sherry’s. I try to stay cool, but I can’t keep from rolling my eyes when they kiss, making all these lovey dovey sounds, and cooing about how much they missed each other.

  I may be in love, but I’m never going to act like those two.