by Aly Martinez
I gave him a confused look that made him fall over in laughter. I wasn’t sure if he was laughing at me or at his own joke. I’d never seen Till drunk before, but I knew right then I preferred him sober.
I sat next to him and patted my lap and handed him the sketchpad. “Here. Hold this and lie down.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Look at you going all old school on me. You must be really worried,” he teased, but he didn’t waste any time getting situated so his head rested in my lap.
It wasn’t the most ideal position, with his legs wedged crookedly between two of the overgrown bushes, but he didn’t complain. He opened the sketchpad and handed me the pencil.
I began scratching his head with one hand and drawing his eyes with my other. I didn’t say anything for several minutes, and eventually, I felt his shoulders relax as he let out a content sigh.
“I’m going to assume it didn’t go well at the doctor today,” I said quietly.
His eyes snapped to mine. “What?”
“I said, ‘I’m going assume it didn’t go well at the doctor today’.”
He slightly shook his head. “I’m still hearing at about seventy percent.”
I stopped drawing and looked down at him. “That’s good, right? It’s only gone down, like, ten percent in six years. It’s fading slowly. That means you have years before you have any real issues, right?”
“He couldn’t predict that. He said everyone’s different. Sometimes, it’s slow. Sometimes, it’s rapid.” He didn’t seem too thrilled, but I felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
Later. We could deal with this later. Many, many years later.
I went back to drawing in an attempt to downplay my enthusiasm. This should have been good news, but with his lips sealed tight, I couldn’t figure out what exactly was going on with him.
“So, why were you drinking, then? I thought Slate had a strict no-drinking policy.”
“That’s only for the kids. I’m twenty-one. He can’t stop me from having a drink if I want one. Besides, are you planning to rat me out?” He reached up and tugged on a piece of hair that had fallen free of my ponytail.
“Maybe.” I shrugged, filling in his long, black eyelashes on the paper. “Now, tell me what’s really going on.”
Till avoided my question by glancing down at the paper. “You always make me look like a chick when you draw my eyes.”
“No, I don’t. And who said those were your eyes?”
“Okay, then whose eyes are they?”
“My ugly, old accounting teacher.”
“Well, he has some seriously sexy eyes, then.”
“She really does, doesn’t she?” I smirked, and Till burst out laughing.
He suddenly sat up, causing my sketchpad to fall to the ground. His laughs were silenced as he dragged me onto his lap and buried his head in my neck.
“Oh, God, Doodle.” The agony in his voice shredded me.
“Talk to me,” I said louder than necessary since he wasn’t looking at me.
“The doctor I saw today thinks it’s genetic,” he confessed against my neck. “He wants to test Flint and Quarry.”
My stomach twisted.
“What am I supposed to tell them? If they have this too . . . I . . . Fuck! I can’t do this.”
“Okay. Let’s stop for a second.” I crawled off his lap so I could see him. “What exactly did the doctor say? He thinks it’s genetic, so he doesn’t know for sure?”
“He’s pretty positive. He said he couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t fit into any one category of sensorineural hearing loss, so he’s assuming it was some combination that was passed down.”
“All right. What did he say were the chances of Flint and Q having it? They haven’t shown any symptoms, have they? I mean, you were already at eighty percent by the time you were thirteen, right? Surely, we would have noticed something, at least in Flint. What type of test would he want to run on them? And when does he want to do it? The sooner the better, right?” If I just kept talking, I felt like I could sort it out. But the more questions I asked, the more it seemed to piss Till off.
“I don’t know!” He jumped to his feet and drunkenly stumbled.
“Well, let’s figure it out.”
“Goddammit, I don’t know how to figure this out!” he shouted, startling me.
“Hey! Don’t yell at me! I’m just trying to help.” I pushed to my feet and brushed the dirt off the back of my pants.
“Well, you’re not. You’re making me feel stupid for not asking all that shit.” He shoved a hand through his hair.
“I’m trying to figure out a way to fix this!”
“You can’t fix this! No one can. They are either going deaf or they aren’t!”
“Calm down and let’s—”
“No. This is a fucking nightmare. I’m going to bed. I can’t do this.” He stormed off, tripping over the edge of the flowerbed.
“Not a bad idea. Sleep that shit off,” I barked as he staggered away.
“You ruined purgatory!” he yelled over his shoulder, and I rolled my eyes at his dramatics.
Drunk Till was an ass.
I walked back to my apartment, and I heard his feet clomping up the steps. I knew he wouldn’t want the boys to see him drunk, and as much as I wanted to stay pissed and not care, I still did. I went straight to my bedroom and dragged off my shoes. And after crawling into bed, I listened for Till to make his way to his room.
Several minutes later, when I still hadn’t heard his door shut, I began to worry.
“Till?” I called to the ceiling.
“Yeah,” he replied, lifting my window open.
“Shit!” I cried. “What is wrong with you? Why are you never where you are supposed to be tonight?” I shouted at him as I tried to slow my pulse.
He folded his bulky body inside. As much I wanted to hold on to my anger, with his next words, Till Page robbed me of my God-given right as a woman to be mad at a stupid man.
“Maybe I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
“Maybe you’re drunk,” I snarked in order to hide the way my heart skipped.
Throwing back the covers, I issued an unspoken invitation for him to join me. It wasn’t unusual for Till to hang out in bed with me. We would lie there late at night and talk about random shit. We didn’t exactly cuddle anymore, but he always found ways to touch me.
“I’m sorry.” He kicked his shoes off the end of the bed, making it quite obvious that he was planning to stay for a while. “It’s just . . . I’m in over my head, Doodle.” He paused to cross his arms behind his head. “I want to give those boys so much more than we had growing up, but I just don’t have it to give.” He turned to look at me, and his eyes sparkled with desperation. “I want to be there for them, but in order to pay the rent and buy the shit they need for school, I have to work damn near twenty-four-seven. Then there’s the commitment at the gym. I love the way I feel inside that ring, but I guess I could give it up. We eat two meals a day there though. If we quit doing that, I’d have to pull more grocery money from the already negative bank account.
“Then Quarry’s just starting to fit in at the gym, and he’s really showing talent. I’m not sure what would happen if I stopped showing up to train him every night. He’s still not sold on the work ethic Slate instills. Although, it’s been a month since he tried to skip school, so I guess that’s progress. And Flint . . .” He went silent. I had almost convinced myself that he had fallen asleep when he boomed, “Christ, that kid is smart! I can’t pay for it, Doodle. All the after-school stuff he wants to do. And I mean the good stuff that parents pray their kids will be interested in. He’s a beast in the ring but equally as talented out of it. They’ve never had it easy, and now, they have to be tested to see if they are ultimately going to struggle for the rest of their lives. It’s just not fucking fair.”
“Okay. First off, they already have more than we did by you caring enough to be freaking out about this right now.”
<
br /> “I’m not freaking out,” he mumbled to himself.
“Yes, you are. And that’s a good thing. We didn’t get that from our parents. I had you and you had me. That’s the way it’s always been. Well, now, Flint and Quarry have you, but guess what, they have me too. I can’t do much to help in the financial department, but I can pitch in with getting them to and from the gym to allow you some more time in the mornings or afternoons. Maybe you could pick up a few extra hours at the shop to help loosen things up.”
He stared at me as I spoke, and I could see the weight lifting from his shoulders with every word. Yeah, I loved Till, and I had grown to love Flint and Quarry too, but my offer to help was completely selfish. He wasn’t alone in this. Because if he were, that would mean that I was alone too. I needed the Page boys far more than they needed me.
Till did things a little differently that night. He started with the best.
“I don’t deserve you.” He rolled over and pulled me into a hug. “You and those boys are all I have,” he whispered into my hair, and I melted against him.
Then he pulled a better.
“You know I love you, right? I don’t say it enough, but I do.”
My response was muffled against his chest. “Yeah, I know.”
“Good. Just checking.” He laughed and tickled my sides.
I squirmed back to my side of the bed.
“So, what do I do if they test positive? What if my worthless parents passed this shit down to all of us?”
“We do what we always do. We go to battle against the world.” He grinned with both sides of his mouth, and it was a truly amazing sight. “You’re a fighter, Till. This is no different.”
He barked out a laugh. “I can’t fight the inevitable.”
“Maybe not. But we can.” I returned his smile, but his fell instantly. He blinked at me in what I could only describe as awe for several beats.
Just as I began to question his reaction, Till made everything harder.
With both hands, he cupped my face and pressed his lips to mine. He took a deep breath as he held my mouth hostage. My eyes were wide with shock, but Till reverently closed his own as he opened his mouth and slid his tongue against mine. I didn’t know why my mouth opened with his or why my tongue stroked against his, and I had no clue why a moan escaped my throat as he rolled on top of me. Why wasn’t even part of my vocabulary at that moment. I knew but one word.
“Till.”
I GASPED AS HE SLID his heated mouth over to my neck. His tongue left a wake of chills as it made its way down to my chest.
“Take this off.” His callused hands glided under my shirt.
Lifting my arms, I gave him permission to pull it off. He watched as I licked my lips. Then his eyes heated before he roughly took my mouth again.
It was then that I tasted it.
Beer.
I slammed my arms back down to the bed. “Till, wait. We can’t do this.” I turned my head to disconnect the kiss, but it only caused him to latch on to my neck again.
“Yes, we can,” he growled, raking his teeth across my skin.
Yes, we could.
“No. We can’t. Remember last time? It almost ruined everything.” I groaned as he ever so slightly rolled his hips against my core. “Seriously, we have to stop. You’re drunk and not thinking straight. You’ll thank me in the morning.” I shifted to the side, trying to squeeze out from under his large body, but he had me pinned.
His hand found my breast, sending a rush of heat between my legs, bypassing my brain completely. “I’m not drunk. Yeah, I was drinking, but I’ve wanted to have you again since the second I pulled out of you the first time. I need you.”
But I needed him too—in a totally different way.
“No. Last time, you disappeared for six months. I can’t go through that again.” I shimmied myself up the bed to escape the mounting pressure his hard-on was coaxing as he continuously slid it against me.
“I won’t leave ever again. I swear. It’s me and you forever, Eliza.”
Eliza.
Forever.
With Till.
His hazel eyes studied me as I weighed my options. I knew that it was going to rock our world, but with his promise of forever still ringing in my ears, I didn’t care if the entire world flipped upside down. I could have sat there all day and tried to rationalize everything out, but the fact was that my body had made its decision the moment he’d said my name.
I licked my lips again then leaned forward and licked his. “Take it off.”
He let out a loud growl then tore the shirt over my head. His mouth covered mine as I began fumbling with the button on his jeans. I barely even had them unzipped before I wedged a hand inside and wrapped it around his cock.
“Fuck,” he gasped, dropping his forehead to my chest and rolling his hips, gliding his shaft through my hand.
Supporting himself on an elbow, he popped a breast from my bra and sucked it into his mouth. My hand froze as I arched off the bed. I remembered the first time Till’s tongue circled my nipple, and this was nothing like that. This was rough and raw. His teeth nipped and his tongue soothed. His hand kneaded the soft flesh as he held my breast to his mouth.
Suddenly, his mouth disappeared, but it reappeared in the form of gentle bite at my side. He dragged his tongue up the curve of my breast and plucked my nipple between his fingers before sensually rolling it.
“Oh, God!” I gasped and grabbed the back of his head, trying to aim his mouth somewhere, although I wasn’t particularly sure where I wanted him to start.
My hand fell away as Till rose to his knees. He watched as I undulated under his skilled touch. He wasn’t the only man I had ever been with, but he was the only one my body recognized.
“Fucking hell, Eliza. Do you have any idea how hard you make me?” He glided his other hand up my stomach until it reached my breast. “I fucking love when I get here and you’re already in bed. Your nipples get hard for me the second I crawl through that window. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left here with blue balls from these fucking nipples alone.”
That was definitely news to me. Fan-fucking-tastic news to me.
He firmly squeezed my breasts before leaning forward and swiping his tongue across one. Then he switched to the other and came back again.
“Goddamn, I love your tits,” he said through breathy kisses then sucked as much of my breast into his mouth as he possibly could.
His hand massaged and his tongued swirled. I wished I could have come from that alone, but I needed more. My legs opened and I inched myself down the bed as I sought out some form of pressure against my clit.
“Please. Till.” My hips circled off the bed but came up empty.
He noticed my need and shifted up the bed, pressing his thigh against my covered core. Sparks ignited me the moment I found friction. Just as I reached down to once again find his cock, his hands disappeared, causing a strangled objection to escape my throat.
“I need to see it,” his jagged voice demanded, but it wasn’t like I was trying to stop him. I’d have shown him damn near anything he wanted at that point. I just didn’t know what he was referring to.
He guided my back off the bed, and then, with one hand, he unclasped my bra and slid it off my arms. No sooner than I was exposed, he groaned deeply and brushed his nose across my nipple, laving his tongue under the curve of my right breast.
“I haven’t been able to come without envisioning this freckle. It fucking ruined me.”
“It’s a just freckle. It can’t ruin you,” I said breathily, continuing to grind myself against his thigh.
“Bullshit. It’s your freckle. It could destroy me.”
My chest seized at his words, and my hips stilled.
It had always been Till for me, but with that sentiment, I felt like maybe it was always me for Till. The sense of overwhelming belonging set me ablaze. The burning heat made its way to my hands as I threaded my fingers in his hair and fisted
it to tilt his head back.
“I want you. Now,” I said brazenly.
He drew in a hiss through his teeth, leaning away from my grasp to increase the tension. The muscles of his neck flexed as his eyes narrowed, and a one-sided smile tipped his lips. It was the wrong side though. This smile was dangerous, but under his touch, I was fearless.
“Take whatever you want. It’s all yours anyway.” He finished with a nip.
I tugged his shirt off then went to work on his pants. They were already unzipped, but I wanted them gone. I roughly pushed Till down to his back and slid off the bed, taking his pants with me. After that, mine gave his company on the floor.
His cock sprung free, and without a second of hesitation, I kneeled on the bed and took him in my mouth.
“Fuck,” he groaned through clenched teeth as his hands made their way into my hair. He brushed it to the side and watched me intently. His abs rippled as I worked him, but as much as I loved his every involuntary reaction, his eyes were what really commanded my attention. They owned me, and we both knew it.
Till gently guided my head into a rhythm. It was unapologetic yet permissive. Possessive yet desperate. Dominant yet seeking validation. It was the ever-present dichotomy of Till Page. The boy and the man.
I wished that I’d had more time to really enjoy watching Till lost in the sensations I provided him. But there would be plenty of time for that later. Forever.
With a groan, he dragged me up his body. “Goddammit, Eliza. I could fuck your mouth for days, but I’m not finishing until I’ve had you completely.”
After he rolled us so he covered me, his mouth crashed into mine in a needy meeting.
There was nothing gentle as his hand dived between my legs. I had barely adjusted to the intrusion of his fingers before they were gone and his length pressed to my opening.
“God, Till,” I breathed, lifting my hips to urge him forward. Knowing I was only seconds away from having him again—and getting to keep him—made me impatient.