He stops instantly, almost in shock, like he’ll scare me away if he dares to move or twitch. Groaning my name, he wraps his hands around me before pulling me closer. Then, we hug, of all things. My hands are trapped, and I’m virtually unable to move. I finally manage to slide them around his waist. He has me tightly against him with my head now resting on his shoulder and his on top of mine as he clings to me. We would probably make a strange sight to anyone that came upon us. We stand up, and I’m naked but for my white ankle socks; and Sam’s also naked, but for the jeans wrapped around his ankles. He’s rock hard and very turned on, pressing against my stomach, and yet, we can only cling to each other for several long minutes. The time presses on and on and on… yet nothing about it feels ridiculous. It is serious and intense. I feel just as vulnerable toward him as he does to me right now. Again, that sense of powerfulness sweeps through me. He finally realizes how much he needs me, and knows he loves me. His fear of losing me has changed his physical approach to me.
He gradually slides his hands down my bare back, landing on my butt, which he grasps with both hands. I moan with eager anticipation.
But then he stops and I’m briefly startled to find myself in his arms, as he slowly lowers me down. The ground beneath us consists of long, dry grass. It is also dirty, and certainly not a bed. We’ve never done the deed outside before. I feel the cool ground underneath me, and I don’t care. The heat of his hands makes the rough substrate easy to ignore. He leans back, gently touching my thighs and spreading them wider, his gaze so hot, it’s nearly blistering me. He watches me open wider as he leans forward until his mouth touches me. I buck up enthusiastically towards him. All the blood in my body seems to congregate right there. I swell in wanting. He moans before his tongue touches me ever so gently. He softly nibbles around my clit. It’s so good. So fulfilling. I close my eyes, running my restless hands through his hair, tousling it mindlessly, while he satisfies yet creates something even deeper, burning inside me. On and on he kisses and sucks me while this radiant sweep of heat flows all the way down to my toes. I finally find sweet release and whisper his name gratefully.
He lifts his face from between my thighs, and kisses my stomach, moving up to my cleavage until he is hot and hard, waiting at my entrance. I’m so wet, he slides in effortlessly and fills me in a second. I hold him close to me, my nails raking his back as I lift up my knees and adjust the tilt of my pelvis, making us both groan in response. It’s so freaking good. His hands cover my hands and he grasps them, entwining our fingers. I open my eyes and find his face right over mine and his gaze solely fastened on me. Deep. Unsmiling. Intense. He doesn’t close his eyes, or break our connection, not even once. Then he shoves himself inside me over and over and over again and I feel him coming as my own body welcomes him in total abandon.
Only then does he lower his head and fall off me, to the side. Our bodies are hot and warm as we embrace, clinging to each other on the uneven ground. I finally open my eyes. The sun is starting to slide across the tops of the trees. We are most unlikely to be seen or heard, but what if one of the Hendricks girls comes looking for us? Talk about eyesores and traumatizing them. I push Sam’s shoulder to loosen his arm around me and sit up. My back is now to him as I clasp my knees to my chest.
I feel him wrestling up as he leans behind me and plants a gentle kiss on my shoulder. “Don’t regret it. Not already.”
He knows me too well. Now that I am no longer on the verge of hysterical crying, or a living mass of pulsating needs, I am thinking just that. Way to teach him, Natalie. He puts his penis in some other woman and I turn around and let him put it inside me again? I shake my head, getting cross at myself, and rest my chin on my hand.
Now, I’m not sure I should have done that. But when it started, nothing else could have felt more right. I don’t know what to think now, other than I really can’t decide while being naked in the woods. I pull my bra up as I slowly get back to my feet. At least it’s Sam. There’s no part of me he hasn’t seen naked a hundred times and ways. I grab my underwear and pull them up. He gets to his feet and leans down to slide his jeans and underwear back on. He was never totally out of them.
As I take my shirt off the bench, I tell him, “This was just sex, Sam. It doesn’t change anything.”
He is shrugging when he stops dead. He reaches out and takes my shoulders, making me face him. “It felt like something more.”
“Why? Because the last time you had sex, it meant nothing? Well, God, I hope it meant more than some strange pussy on your desk. But it’s over. Us. This…” I flap my hands around, helpless and struggling for the right words to say. I don’t feel total regret. I wanted and needed that. I required sex right then. I’ve always needed it. It releases something dark from inside me and resuscitates me back to life. So I don’t totally hate myself. I really don’t think, however, that sex fixes anything at all for us. “That was sex.”
He closes his eyes. “No, it was more. But I know it fixes nothing. Even though you hate me, detest me, and wish I was castrated, while we were here, it’s the first I’ve felt… like us. I’ve felt we were us again, where for so long, you became distant to me. A mirage. I lived with you, saw you all the time, but in so many ways, it felt like I didn’t really see or live with you. I didn’t even realize our connection was missing, until your anger allowed us to find some connection again. No apathy here in Ellensburg.”
I want to lash out at him. But his shoulders are hunched and his hands are now buried in his jeans pockets. He hangs his head as he stares down. This is not a happy man. Or even a man at peace. This is a man who appears hopeless, as if he lost everything. I don’t know if I feel vindicated by making him feel so low or not. I sympathize. I feel his pain. But I don’t reach out to him. I don’t know what any of that means.
“Apathy. I agree that was something we both used as deterrent and to avoid dealing with each other, and the straight fact that I can’t easily conceive a baby. But the surest way to kill that was for you to have sex with someone else. It might have shaken us out of our apathy, but it doesn’t suddenly shoot us back into being connected. We are… lost. I don’t see any other outcome. Not one that will allow me to go on and live with myself.”
“I’m glad I was here. Whatever happens with us, I’m glad I came here.”
Strangely enough, I am too.
But that doesn’t mean anything long term. Spinning on my sneaker, I slowly head back to civilization. I get in my car and take off for a while, needing the space. I need to think about what I just did with Sam, and how best to proceed with Jessie. I am riddled with guilt for betraying a woman who was so horribly victimized herself. I feel like I exploited her. I drive to a small park and walk for what seems like forever along the river and the picturesque farmland it follows.
Chapter Sixteen
Natalie
I trudge back to the main house. It’s late and dark by then. My last night here and I haven’t seen my sisters. The only illumination comes from the hood light over the stove as I enter from the deck. I stop dead. Jessie sits up. Alone. She is staring at her nails, and sitting at the kitchen table.
I walk forward and set the bundle of letters on the table. She doesn’t grab them, or look up at me.
“I’m… sorry. I should have never…” The words get trapped in my throat. For a second, I almost understand Sam. Begging for my forgiveness and needing me to hear it. I feel that way with Jessie now. I want to beg for her forgiveness and I need her to hear me.
“I didn’t read them all. I stopped.” Her silence is unnerving. The house is so awfully quiet. A clock’s soft ticking. The hum of the fridge. The spicy smell of tacos still lingering from dinner.
She doesn’t answer, but finally pushes them back to me. “Maybe you should finish them.”
I’m shocked. I fully expect her to storm away from me with them and never look at me again. When I meet her eyes, I turn away, ashamed. Her brown eyes are stark and cold. “They tell your story.
Not mine.”
“I heard Christina. I knew what she was doing. Somehow, I think I might have counted on her doing so. It’s in her nature. No secrets. No lies. I’m glad she’s that way. She’s never had a reason not to be. None of my daughters do. I always had secrets growing up. I always knew other people’s secrets and lies. So it’s okay if she just wanted you to know the truth. Those…” She nods at the box. “Those are the raw, ultimate truth. There is nothing more I can tell you that will explain it. No one else but Will has ever read them. No one ever will either, if I have any say in it. But I realize if anyone has a right, it’s you, Natalie. You just want to understand the reasons behind my decisions. I’ll bet you blame yourself sometimes and wonder what was so bad with you, don’t you? I understand that, Natalie. Needing answers. What I’m going to tell you is, your answers will hurt. They will make you feel sick and ill. But they might also provide the closure you’ve never had before. But hear me, okay? You have an idea now of what I had to face. But it was never your fault. I never blamed you for it, not even then. Even when I was broken down and toxic to myself. I never blamed you.”
“One of them has the same blood as me. That disgusting, cruel vileness is in my lineage.” I shudder and cringe. It’s enough to make bile climb up the back of my throat.
“Yes, but the other half of your lineage is mine. I spent my youth figuring out I was a good, decent person. And you are too.” She leans across the table, and for the first time ever in my life, my mother touches my hand with comfort. She has small fingers. Her cool fingers grasp mine and she squeezes them. “It is just a story of conception. The rest of the story is mine. But listen to me. Please, Natalie, hear me. I don’t want you to waste any energy now questioning whether you are an inherently good and decent person, simply based on the identity of your father. Read my words. Read my story and you will learn how I spent half of my life falsely believing who my father was. I thought his blood was mine, too and it made me feel dirty and ashamed, because I let it. It turns out, he wasn’t my father, but that didn’t change much, since he was the father who raised me. We both share very bad fathers, but that doesn’t determine who we are. It took me years and years to realize that. And believe it. It almost destroyed my mental health. I was never going to tell you because I didn’t want any daughter of mine to suffer the pain of learning her father’s identity as I did.”
Tears fill my eyes. I had no idea. I finally grip her fingers with mine. She smiles softly and leans forward, touching my cheek with her other hand. “I’m sorry I could not be your mother. I think you are a lovely, kind, tough, strong, interesting and gentle daughter.”
I push the papers at her. “I don’t want to read anymore. I want… I want you to tell me about it.”
She leans back. Our hands still gripping each other, she nods slowly. “I’ve never really told anyone what happened from the start to the finish. Will told Lindsey, and he also told Christina. Will usually tells it for me.”
“How can he tell it for you?”
She sighs. Her lips tremble. “He was there.”
My heart skips. Whoever expects that?
“How could he be there?”
“It’s a very complicated and long, almost impossible story.”
“I have time,” I say after an extended pause. “I’d like to hear it. To understand it, and you. I think I’d like to know you better. Would you tell me?”
“You think you’d like to know me better? You mean, who I was then?”
I nod and swallow, admitting, “Yes, for context. But I think more than that, I’d like to know you now. I-if that’s okay with you.”
She holds my gaze and then her slow nod answers me. “I would like to know you better too.”
My smile is the weakest, most tremulous version of my mouth curling up. But there is no joy. Just a lot of confusion and conflicting emotions. “Will you tell me?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you.” She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and starts to talk.
It is a long story and she takes hours to tell me all of it that night. Into the wee hours, we talk, ensconced sheerly by the dim light and surrounding darkness. I don’t think we could have done it in the harsh light of day, or an evening lamplight. She tells me about a place in Mexico where she was kidnapped and held hostage. That was also where she was gang raped and I was conceived. She tells me how Will rescued her, not only figuratively, but also in every other way. I listen to her long, arduous journey through mental health and cutting herself. I hear about her own father and how he virtually sold her to his cronies for sex. She is right, her father is every bit as bad as mine. We cry many times. We stop, and start again. She tells me about the night I was born. She was in a hospital in San Francisco with her sister.
Not too long before I was born she came to Ellensburg to live with friends of Will as he wasn’t in her life at that point. That was how they ended up here. She went back to San Francisco, however, to give birth to me. She had the help of a family friend, Will’s ex-wife, overseeing her treatment. This woman lived in northern California and that was where Jessie wanted to have me. She said she held me, looked at me, loved me, and let me go. She went back to Ellensburg and tried to move forward with her life without trying to destroy herself anymore. A task she said that took her years to complete. She thought she sealed her heart forever from me until the day I showed up on her doorstep.
She was exhausted afterwards. I could see the grief in her eyes. The thing is, I think she was more upset for me than for herself. “Christina knows this story?”
“She knows a lot of it. You can imagine how hard it was for her to hear.”
“That’s what made her come after me?”
“Yes.”
“And why she freaked out a bit when I showed up. She was worried about you. Which I totally understand and sympathize with now.” My gaze travels over this woman for whom I can’t help feeling a profound sympathy and respect. Remembering the start of the week, when I might have completely rejected her, I never believed I could ever feel any of those things for the woman who gave me up. But I see now, life’s events are so much more complicated than human actions appear. The “why” behind our actions, like cheating, or giving your baby away, matters just as much as the action itself. Recognizing the parallel of my own life right now isn’t lost on me. I rejected all of Sam’s whys. I told him it didn’t matter why he cheated. But it does. It matters a lot why he did it. Maybe it doesn’t always have to matter. Not if the person is a stranger or an acquaintance. But what if it’s the only person you loved more than anyone else in your life? It feels like in those circumstances, maybe it does matter. Maybe I need to try and figure out or understand the why behind my husband’s betrayal. It’s a profound revelation that so easily slips into my brain. It instantly makes my spine snap straight, it’s so shocking for me to realize. Judging other people is so easy. Understanding them? That’s a whole different ballgame.
And understanding someone’s motivation doesn’t always mean forgiveness. It doesn’t guarantee that I can let go of the offensive action either. But maybe someday, it could allow me to let it all go.
I’ve felt a lot of anger in my life. I formerly resented the concept of this woman sitting before me now, more than probably any other part of my life. And as it turns out, understanding her isn’t hard at all… but forgiving her is even easier. Surprisingly, that concept releases something powerful into my bloodstream. Something that feels really good.
Silence, but a strangely content quiet, descends until she points up at my head. “Something happen with Sam today?”
Puzzled, I tilt my head. “How did you know?” She leans forward and her fingers clasp something in my hair. She opens her hand and shows me a small leaf. I blush and shrug. I oh–so–rarely blush about sex or anything else, but seeing that leaf immediately has me blushing. I grab the leaf and crumple it in my hands, smoothing my hair for more telltale signs. “Yes. I had a moment. After reading some of your letters to Wil
l, and thinking about what happened to you… but that sounds disgusting. It didn’t make me want to have sex. It made me realize how lucky I was to never have experienced something as degrading and horrible as rape.” I groan, grasping my head with my hands. “I didn’t mean to say anything like that out loud.”
Jessie smiles and a small laugh escapes her mouth. She’s pretty cool, even about that. Gotta give her credit. “No one can take in this story easily. But especially you. It had the most direct effect on your life. Don’t ever doubt that. And feel free to say whatever you need to in order to deal with the stress of it, okay? It’s not an easy story. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you love Sam?”
“Yes. I love him. But can I forgive him? I don’t know.”
“Whatever happens, you are always welcome here. Anytime. Any day. I will be here in support of you. I still don’t know what we should call each other, but you know now. Everything I feared you finding out about, you already know. I never intended to hurt you, or make your life worse, but I guess I already did. I’d be very grateful if you came back for another visit.”
“Honestly? It’s hard to hear, but maybe Christina was right. She stirred up a sympathy and willingness to give you a chance with me that nothing else could.”
“Maybe that’s my point. No one knows what is right in how they react to things. Good or bad. We’re all wrong. Whatever you decide about me, or your sisters, or Sam, you’ll get no judgment from me. I just hope from this day forward, you’ll feel welcome here.”
“I feel like maybe I would like to come back.”
She squeezes my hand for only a fraction of a second. “I hope more than anything that happens.”
We smile very weary smiles and look away. Something strangely good came out of the worst story I ever heard. The story of my conception. The story of why I was subsequently given away. The story of my ancestry. It is dark, ugly, sick and twisted. And yet, here I am. I’m none of those things. I know that much about myself. Nothing will make me think otherwise either.
Leanne Davis - Natalie (Daughters Series #2) Page 23