by Kata Čuić
This man. It’s a wonder I ever made it without his big heart and bigger brain at all.
The empty wine glass tumbles to the carpet before I launch myself at him.
Our bodies hit the floor with a dull thud, and his laptop gets pushed to the side as I cover his face with kisses and pepper his ears with a litany of gratitude.
He wraps his arms around me and takes every one of my blows in stride until finally capturing my mouth with his own, kissing me long, deep, and so thoroughly, I feel tingles all the way to my toes.
He pulls away and laughs. “If bein’ a good father is enough to turn ya on, then she’s gettin’ a pony for her birthday. I’ll even fashion a bridle to turn it into a unicorn if that’s what she wants.”
His hardness throbs against my center. I slide along it, delicious friction warming me more than the wine. Hunger I haven’t had time in years to acknowledge builds in my chest, slipping lower and lower and lower.
“Nora.”
“I need ya, Jesse.”
He raises upright and pulls his shirt over his head, giving me access to run my hands over a chest so much more muscled than the last time I touched it. “Ya have me, darlin’. You’ve always had me. I’m yours.”
I raise my eyes to his, shocked at how good the years have been to him. “I don’t look the same as you remember. My belly isn’t flat; I have stretch marks…”
He growls, then hauls me in by the back of my head to his waiting mouth that licks, sucks, nips, and pulls all my insecurities into himself. “Ya damn well better not look the same ‘cause I ain’t wishin’ away that little girl for nothin’.” He tugs a fistful of my hair to make sure I’m looking him in the eyes. His words are even but forceful. “I promised my best friend I’d love her for my whole life, and I ain’t breakin’ my word. I wanted ya then, and I damn well want ya now.”
I slowly slide my shirt up and over my head, giving him the chance to change his mind.
“Darlin’.” A breath gusts out of his chest on a wisp of a breeze against my bare skin. He drags his big hand down my throat, my chest, across my breasts before settling on my belly that bulges even more in our seated position. “Ya are the most beautiful thing I done ever seen, but I reckon this old bra’s seen better days.”
He’s not wrong. It’s threadbare with the wire sticking out on one side and constantly poking me. Strings hang lose all around the edges, and the cups are bunched in places instead of smooth.
Oh so slowly, he slides his hands to my back to undo the clasp. With his eyes staring into mine, he drags one strap down my arm then the other until he removes the offensive lingerie and tosses it aside. With his lips against mine, he mumbles, “Might be I’ll get us both a Christmas present while I’m in Beckley. Your perfect breasts shouldn’t be covered up by anything but the finest lace if they gotta be covered at all.”
“I don’t think you’d like it if I didn’t wear one to school.”
His lips trace a path down my neck, through the valley of my chest, but he doesn’t lavish my breasts with the attention they’re itching for. Instead, his soft lips glide along my rib cage, soothing the irritation from wearing a garment that hasn’t fit in years. He raises my arm and kisses the spots where the underwire has left slight bruises on my sensitive skin. “Ya ain’t gonna wear nothin’ that hurts ya ever again. I’d go without food before I see your perfect body take a beatin’ like this.”
I glance down at the stripes that zig-zag across the pouch where my stomach used to be. “I ain’t perfect no more.”
He follows my gaze then lays me back flat, crawling over top of me until he’s face to face with the part I’m most self-conscious about. He wears a small smile when he looks up at me. “This is where she grew in ya.”
The way he loves Anne melts my heart. I thread my fingers through his hair as he takes his time relearning every changed ridge and bump.
“Was she early or late?” he whispers against my skin.
“Right on time.”
He lays his cheek against my stomach and wraps his hands around my waist. “Did she kick a lot? Keep ya up all night with it? I can’t imagine her bein’ quiet even in here.”
A funny memory pulls a laugh from my chest. “She was a kicker all right. Even with a thick sweater on, the other students in my classes would stare at my stomach jumping and wriggling. It looked like she was about to break free any minute.”
“I would’ve liked to have seen that,” he murmurs softly before tucking his hands in the waistband of my leggings. He kisses my hip as he draws them low. “You’re the finest mother I could ever imagine, but you’re still a woman. I wanna please ya, but I don’t right know how anymore. He rests his forehead against me, the barest brush of his breath across my center near enough to drive me wild.
“Just you, Jess. I just want you.”
He pulls away with a groan. I’m afraid I’ve said the wrong thing, but he lifts me into his arms and kisses me stupid.
He trips over my sweater as he heads toward his bedroom. “The floor ain’t a fittin’ place for ya. I wanted to lay ya in the softest, biggest bed when the time came again, but I ain’t gonna deny ya a second longer.”
He has to pull my arms from their twined position around his neck to even lay me down on the same twin-sized mattress he had long ago. Slowly, he finishes undressing me until I’m naked and shivering on his old, tattered sheets.
“I’m buying you new bedclothes for Christmas,” I tell him as he unbuckles his belt then pulls down his pants.
“Why?” He seems truly confused. “We ain’t gonna sleep here none.”
Impatient, I lift onto my side and reach out to pull down the sexiest underwear I’ve never seen. Every inch lower uncovers more of the man he’s become. I sit up on the side of the bed, eager to expose every taut line and muscle.
My mouth waters for a taste, but Jesse holds me back by my hair, staring down at me with black eyes. “Don’t even think about it. I want your sweetness tonight, and nothin’ else is gonna satisfy me.”
I wrap my hand around his length, the thick, silky soft feel of him returning to me in a rush of desire.
His head falls back, and a groan spills from his lips. “I done lied. Oh, Nora, your hand feels so much better than mine.”
I chuckle as my center throbs, knowing exactly how much better he makes me feel than my fingertips on rare nights.
He slips out of my hand when he kneels quickly before me, latching onto my shoulders and staring deep into my eyes. “No one has warmed my bed. No one. I gone five years without a woman’s touch ‘cause ain’t no woman alive could ever make me feel the way ya do.”
I wrap my arms around his neck again and pull him close, infusing all my relief into my kiss, showing him without words that the same holds true for me.
“I’ve missed you so much, Jesse,” I confess on a tearful whisper.
“Ya don’t gotta want no more, darlin’. I’m here. I ain’t never leavin’.”
I fall back onto the bed as he leans over me, promises exchanged between our lips—soft and slow, hard and passionate, and everything in between as past ease bleeds into new desire and lessons learned between us.
He pulls back—panting from his effort to show me his love—and holds a finger in the air. “Hang on.”
I rise onto my elbows and watch as he opens and struggles to close one off-track drawer after another until he finally pulls out a box of condoms.
“I couldn’t remember where I stashed ‘em,” he confesses with a wry grin.
I raise my eyebrows. “If no one’s warmed your bed, then what need have you of those?”
He raises his eyes to the ceiling before ripping open the box and pulling out a single square. His gaze intent on me, he rolls the protection onto himself before approaching one measured step at a time. “I knew ya were gonna be here when they gave me my faculty roster, so I had time to prepare. I didn’t right know if I could make ya love me again, but I sure as hell prepared for my wildest
dreams to come true.”
“Jesse Yates,” I whisper, staring back into his eyes. “I never stopped lovin’ ya.”
He folds his body overtop mine, adjusting us in the bed until his heaviness settles between my thighs. Our mouths gasp for air against each other, hands grasping for purchase only to fall short of the ultimate goal of being closer than two bodies pressed together.
“I love you, Lenore Euphemia Wheeler,” he states emphatically on a choked whisper before pushing into me.
My head falls back on a long, low moan. It’s been so long. I’m too full, simultaneously fulfilled, yet starving for so much more.
His hand burrows beneath my head and tangles in my hair as he tips my gaze up to him, his eyes wide open. “Stay with me, darlin’. Stay with me tonight.”
My mouth opens and closes in soundless words and gasps of air as we move together, undulating through the past into the present. He intertwines our hands, dragging them up over my head and clasping hard enough to make me believe the promise of a future. I’m lost in the haze of his green eyes—all the colors of the mountains I hold so dear.
Every thrust, each rise of my hips, the way my legs curl around his muscular, constantly moving thighs to pull him tighter pushes me closer toward the edge of bliss.
His breath stutters against my lips.
The feather-light sensation sends me soaring.
A keening cry built up over years breaks free from my chest as wave after wave of pleasure elevates me so high that I might not be able to come back down.
He never stops, never slows his steady thrusts until his body breaks in a guttural sob ending in trembling limbs and a total collapse.
I stroke my shaking hand across his sweaty hair, pulling him closer and wrapping my other arm around his heaving back. “Jesse. Oh, my love, it’s all right.”
He lifts his red eyes only to place a heartbreakingly tender kiss on my lips. “I ain’t ashamed to admit how many nights I cried for ya, darlin’. I ain’t afraid anymore to tell ya how I never thought I’d feel your love again. It was only sheer, stubborn hope that kept me goin’.”
His softly spoken secrets shake loose any ounce of pride I ever cherished or condemned.
“I don’t wanna leave ya.”
“Then don’t,” he implores with another kiss, deeper than the last. “Don’t leave me. Stay.”
With a deep breath that moves against me, he lifts himself up and slips away. He sits on the edge of the bed and scrubs his face with his hands, but it takes a few moments for his shoulders to square. He doesn’t look at me when he grips my thigh. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go yet.”
No matter how much I fight to hold onto the ecstasy still swirling through my body, the weight of my actions slams down on me in the absence of his touch to anchor me to hope. My lungs gasp for air, tears slide down my cheeks, and all the judgment I deserve flattens me to the mattress, paralyzing me with fear. I hung on for five long years. If I’ve tasted him one last time, then that’ll be enough to sustain me until Anne finds love of her own.
Jesse slips back into the room on silent feet, climbing in beside me and stroking the wetness away from my face. “I never pretended this would be easy. I never imagined any amount of pleasure I could give ya would be enough. For the love of Anne, don’t turn me away again. I can’t bear that any more than I can bear to see ya cry.”
I roll my face away and confess what I should’ve the first time he said her name. “She’s yours. She’s your daughter.”
My breath hitches in my chest as I wait for the final blow. I’ll go on for our daughter, but life is so bleak without him in it.
He pulls my gaze toward him with a firm hand and laughs a little though his eyes are still full of tears. “That’s what’s eatin’ at ya so? I know, darlin’. I know she’s mine.”
I swipe at my face with fists of frustration. Of course, he does. I suspected as much many times over the last couple of months. “What gave it away? The dimple in her chin? Your mama told you she was four and not three?”
Jesse settles himself beside me but makes no move to pull me close like he used to. He inhales slowly. Time seems to pause as he holds his breath, then it resumes again in a rush of soft air that brushes my bare shoulder. “I’ve always known.”
“From the first moment ya laid eyes on her?” The stranglehold on my throat isn’t quite enough not to let a little laugh slip through. The man is brilliant. Nothing slips by him.
Jesse’s voice sounds too big in the blanket of silence in the old trailer. “I’ve known since she was just a tiny speck of white on a black background. Lenore Wheeler, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, February 3rd.”
I bolt upright as the magnitude of his memory shifts my burden of guilt into something else entirely. “How?” I demand. “Who?”
He doesn’t reach for me. “Your daddy.”
Five Years Ago
“Lenore, you’re going to hyperventilate. Take some deep, even breaths.” Liz rubs my back and glances toward the closed bathroom door. She lowers her voice. “The sisters are going to hear you. If you don’t want anyone else to know, then you’ve got to calm down.”
With effort, I focus my blurry vision on the distinct two blue lines, sobs racking my body. My lungs have never burned like this. Not even when I stumbled through the field to search for our missing goat in the middle of a blizzard. Not when I fell into the deep pool in the creek and couldn’t tell up from down for almost too long. Jesse pulled me out of the cloudy water.
It was only once. Just once. Life is so unfair. So is history repeating itself.
“He can’t know,” I wheeze.
“Who can’t? Your father?”
I clamp a hand over my flat stomach, a fierce protectiveness rooting deep in my belly along with this baby. “Her father. He can never know.”
Liz dries my cheek with a tissue. “I guess if you’re already assuming the gender, we don’t need to have a discussion about your options.”
I know my options, and I already know my choice. I can’t do anything else. I won’t.
I love him so much.
He isn’t a faceless, nameless one-night stand. He isn’t a deadbeat with no plans, no love to give, no future.
He’s my Jesse.
“The things I said to him, Liz. I’ll never get the chance to apologize now.” I clamp a hand over my mouth, another wave of nausea overtaking me.
“It can’t have been that bad if you made a baby together,” she soothes.
“We did. We made this baby together.” For weeks while symptoms I couldn’t ignore anymore piled up, I’ve racked my stupid brain for the truth, and it’s this. “But it’s all my fault. I made our bed. Now I’ll lie in it. Alone.”
Still Waters Run Deep
I fight the urge to slam the door.
Daddy glances up from watching the television, blue light casting the deep lines on his face in shadow.
“Where’s Anne?”
“She wouldn’t sleep in your room alone, so she’s in bed with Mama.” He rises from the couch, his knees creaking with the effort. “We reckoned ya might not be back tonight. Where’s Jesse?”
“Ya had no damn right!” I let my anger fly. “No damn right to bind him to a responsibility that didn’t fall on his shoulders!”
Daddy nods then collapses back into his seat. “I’m right surprised he held his tongue this long. He’s been beggin’ my permission since before ya arrived. I knew I couldn’t rightly hide it much longer. He’s done toed the line more’n a dozen times.”
So many memories flood my vision. He had time to prepare. He knew we’d be here. He was waiting for me to tell him in my own time. I reach for the wall to keep myself upright.
“What did you do?”
Daddy pats the cushion beside him. “Reckon this is the night for confessin’. Come on, then. Let’s out with it.”
I stumble to the couch in a daze. I’ve never been so terrified to learn something new in my whole life.
Jesse perfectly described an ultrasound photo.
“I mailed that to you and mama with explicit instructions that he should never lay eyes on it.”
Daddy sighs. “Figured it didn’t matter if I told him seein’ as how I was gonna end him.”
I rub my aching forehead. It’s a sheer miracle Jesse’s still alive. He’s cheated death so many times, he’s bound to be down to only a few close calls left. “What changed your mind?”
Daddy’s eyes cloud in memory, but the corners crinkle in only the way genuine happiness can create. He shakes his head and chuckles. “His gut reaction. He didn’t deny it. Didn’t even try to question what he was holdin’ in his hands. Not a plea for mercy or an excuse to give. Never attempted to run for his life. Threw his dang arms up in the air and yelled at the top of his lungs. You was havin’ his baby. He was gon’ be a daddy.” He shakes his head, but a smile tips his lips. “Dumb hillbilly acted like he’d done won the Nobel Prize.”
“Daddy,” I choke out. “What am I gonna do?”
He wraps his arm around me and pulls me close. “Ya gon’ build the kinda life your mama and me always hoped for ya, that’s what you’re gon’ do. Why ya so broken over the truth finally bein’ revealed? It should be settin’ ya free not movin’ ya to tears.”
I reach deep for the courage to ask the one question truly burning me the most. “Did he only come back because we did?”
Daddy’s gaze softens with understanding. “And so what if he did?”
“If he did, then all the lies I’ve told, all the years I’ve kept him from his daughter, all the times she asked why she didn’t have a daddy like her friends have been for nothin’! Nothin’ at all! He coulda gone anywhere, done anythin’, been anyone he wanted to be!” I gasp for breath as my imagination runs wild with possibilities. “He finally had friends! Real ones! He was top of his class and enjoyin’ the whole ride! He had a future on the horizon! He had hopes and dreams and goals, and I…” A guttural sob wrenches me into the fetal position.