by Savannah May
He withdraws his shaft to the tip before gliding all the way back in until my pussy lips grind into his root. His eyes never move from mine. I’m not sure how long we make love, but I come numerous times before we come together. I’ve never felt so connected to anyone in my whole life.
I want to stay. I want to sleep in his arms all night and wake up in the morning and make love to him again. But I know I should go. It will be better if I get home a decent hour so as not to aggravate my father. I want him to be open to what Carter tells him tomorrow. I tiptoe into my own home after a long and torturous parting from Carter and fall asleep, hoping against hope that everything will work out between the two of them.
The next morning as I pull in Carter’s driveway, I’m nervous. He promised me last night that he’d call or text after he’d spoken to Dad. But I haven’t heard anything from him. It’s Nine in the morning and I should already be at work. I need to see Carter first. There’s no way I can concentrate on work all day without knowing what happened between them.
He’s sitting out on the front porch when I pull up. His forehead is resting in his hands, his shoulders dropped. My stomach clenches. I know before I even get out of my jeep that something’s wrong. When I walk up to him on the porch, he reaches up and grabs my hand then pulls me down in the chair next to him.
I search his eyes. “Carter?” I whisper. My heart won’t stop pounding with all the harbingers of doom.
He rubs his hand over his face. He looks like hell. There are dark circles under his eyes. “Livy. I can’t. I didn’t. I couldn’t,” he stammers.
I want to scream at him so he’ll tell me what happened. But I don’t. I just wait for him to talk again. He won’t look me in the eye. Finally, after light years, he clears his throat.
“We can’t do this anymore,” he says flatly. “I’m not right for you, Liv. You need to find someone your own age. Someone with a regular, a safer, job. I’m too old for you. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. This has to stop.”
I can’t hear the words now. I’m in shock. Tears well in my eyes and stream down my cheeks. No. I don’t believe this, I won’t. I get up from my chair and climb on his lap straddling him and put my hands on his face forcing him to look at me. His eyes look dead.
“That’s not true. Carter. I don’t want anyone else. It’s only us.”
His eyes look downward, either not hearing me or refusing to.
“Carter!” I beg him, “No. What did he say to you? I don’t care. If he doesn’t want us together. I don’t care. We belong together. I don’t need him. It can be just us.” He still won’t look at me and he won’t say anything. I pull him closer to me and whisper in his ear, “Please Carter.” I feel my heart ripping apart.
He peels my arms off him, powers his amazing thighs to stand and lifts me to my feet. He walks across the porch, leaving me standing there, bereft, shattered, turning his back to me. When he does speak, his voice is cold.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with your dad,” he says. Like he’s an automaton speaking, no emotion whatsoever. “I didn’t even talk to him about it. The problem is I don’t do relationships. I’ll never get married again. One woman will never be enough for me. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have ever let things go this far between us, but it has to end now.”
I feel like the breath has been knocked out of me. That I’ve been ripped up into a hundred tiny pieces that I won’t ever be able to put back together. Last night he told me he wanted me forever. Now he doesn’t do relationships. None of it makes any sense. But there’s nothing at all left in his eyes and his voice is scary cold.
I watch helplessly as Carter turns around and walks in his house. “I’m sorry,” he says again, like that could ever mean anything. Then without even a glance at my face, he closes the door behind him. I hear the locks turn and my knees crumple out so I fall to the porch in shock.
12
Carter
I’m sitting in my office at the firehouse shuffling papers around on my desk. I should be working on reports that were due weeks ago, but I can’t concentrate for shit. I should be completing the paperwork I need to transfer out of this town. I can’t breathe anymore. I need to get out of here. But I haven’t had the energy to do it.
It’s been almost a month. A month since I let Livy go and I still feel dead inside. It’s as though my heart has been ripped out of my chest but it was my own doing. It killed me to end things the way I did, to lie to her. But I didn’t have a choice. I can’t be the person that comes between Liv and John. They are everything to each other, all they have. No other family.
I knew right after I spoke to him that morning, it was the only option.
I rub my hands over my face and through my hair as I remember my conversation with John, my best friend, a month ago. I was so damn nervous when I walked through his office door that morning. I hadn’t slept all night, going over and over in my mind what I’d say to him. He’d barely spoken to me for weeks and I didn’t blame him. He was at his desk, reading a report. When he looked up at me and his eyes were filled with a mix of pure disdain and rage. I slid in the chair in front of his desk.
“John, we need to talk.”
“We don’t need to talk about dick, Carter. I’m busy. If it’s about the job, email me. Otherwise, get the fuck out of my office.”
“John—look, I should’ve come to you sooner, I know that. But we need to talk about Livy.”
I watched as he came up out of his chair. His face was red. Everything about him seething with hatred. His fists were curled by his sides like he was clenching up to deck me. If he did I wouldn’t resist. I wouldn’t fight back. I deserved all of it.
“You want to talk about my daughter? You came here to talk to me about my daughter? Fuck you, Carter. It’s a little late for that, isn’t it? Don’t think I don’t know what’s been going on. I’m not blind. So, help me God, you were my best friend. I trusted you. You betrayed me in the worst way. She’s the only person I have left in this world Carter and you take advantage of her—so what, you can get your dick off with my daughter who is twenty-three fucking years old? Okay, Carter. Let’s talk about it. How about we talk about how you’re not near fucking good enough for her. You’re too old. Too fucking old for her. And Jesus, this job. It’s bad enough that she has to worry about me coming home. You too, Carter? Not to mention you’ve dipped your cock in half the female population of this shitty little town. So, what the fuck do you want from me this morning? My blessing? Because you’re never going to fucking get it.”
His rant of words knocked the wind right out of me. Every single thing he said was true. So I didn’t bother apologizing because there was not one thing I could say to make it any better.
“You’re right, John. About everything.” I told him as I stood on shaky legs and walked towards the exit. “You don’t have to worry anymore. It’s over.” I open the door and stand there with my back to him. “But there’s one thing I want to you to know before I go. I never took advantage of her down there. And that I love her. I love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my whole god damn life. It wasn’t about taking advantage or the fearful situation. It was about so much more, way more than you think.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond before closing the door.
The emergency siren blasts through my head, rattling me out of my thoughts. I snapback to present time and turn on the scanner to hear the chatter. There’s a fire on the east side of the mountain near the base. If wind speed and direction sustain, residential areas will have to be evacuated. I gear up immediately. I already know without asking John that the entire crew will need to respond.
As we make our way up the mountain towards the fire, I can tell it’s gonna be a bad one. DC-10 aircraft are already dumping water from the air, but at this point, it’s like spitting on a campfire. The plan is to score a thick line through the vegetation to keep the fire from spreading down into the residential area of the valley. It’s an effective ta
ctic but only under specific circumstances and today I don’t have a good feeling.
The wind is erratic. Gusting at intervals that could easily send sparks and embers leaping across the divide. We also need another crew to assist, but the closest available is hours away. As I hop down from the truck and watch as the crew readies their packs, my glance slides over at John. I’ve known the guy long enough to be close as family and I get that he’s worried too.
When he catches my eye, he nods almost imperceptibly. I don’t have to guess what it means—it means, let’s put the bullshit behind us today and get the job done. I nod back.
We’ve been working for over six hours. We’ve made some progress, but the wind has just shifted and the fire is coming back towards us fast. I look over the crew. They’re exhausted and we’re still waiting for back up. I can tell John’s worried by the way his eyes drift back towards the fire coming at us.
Bowen, Jones, and Dunkirk are in the midst of downing a forty-foot pine tree. Bowen is battling the chainsaw and Jones and Dunkirk have the tree roped, to ensure that it falls in the right direction. But when I look up, I can tell there’s a problem. The wind has just shifted again. The ropes aren’t tight enough.
John is right in the line of the fall. I holler at him to move. He’s at least a hundred feet away and my yell gets lost in the dense foliage. He can’t hear me anyway. He’s wearing ear protection.
I watch as the tree starts to fall in a slow motion scene of horror and take off running across the forest floor. I pick up speed moving faster than ever before in my life, almost. One other incident comes flashing through my mind as I hurtle faster and my body crashes against John. I hear a loud crack and then feel a sharp pain. Everything goes black.
I open my eyes and I’m not sure where I am.
I’m flat on my back and when I try to get up, discover I can’t move. There’s intense pressure in my chest and I’m having trouble breathing. Only when I look down at my chest and see a massive tree trunk stretched across it do I realize what’s happened. I can feel the heat of the fire close now and see an occasional ember floating by. It’s too close, but I’m not sure how much. The crew are rustling around near my feet, clearly trying to figure out the best way to move the monster trunk.
I turn my head and another jolt of pain sears up my back but I realize my buddy John is sitting on the ground beside me. Blood is pouring from a cut on his forehead. He’s holding my hand, but I can’t feel it. I blink at him and open my mouth to tell him it’s bad. I’m having trouble getting any sound to come out.
“Don’t talk Carter,” John growls. “We’re getting you out of here.”
I shake my head and manage to rasp. “Leave me.”
He lets out a low laugh. “You must not know me at all if you think I’m leaving one of my crew behind.”
It hurts to talk, but I have to convince him. “We’re behind the line of fire, John. You have to get the crew out. Go.”
“You’re not in charge of this fucking crew, Carter. I am,” he barks the order. The way he does when things are looking really bad and he’s determined to tough through it. “Shut up. We’ll have you out of here in no time.”
“You can’t risk the crew,” I croak. It’s fucking impossible to talk. I could even have a collapsed lung.
“Carter, watch my lips,” he grits back. “I’m. Not. Fucking. Leaving. You.” I lie there prone and watch his eyes carefully. He’s scared.
“Go,” I beg him. I can’t stand that the guys are putting themselves at risk for me. Plus there’s something else. “I need you to tell Livy something for me. Tell her I love her. I didn’t mean what I said to her. Please. John. Go. Tell her for me.”
“You tell her yourself, God Damnit!” John growls, furious and feral.
As everything fades into luxurious black, the last thing I hear is John shouting my name.
13
Olivia
It’s Friday afternoon and I’m leaving work early. I promised my editor I’d get some pictures of the fire to support my article and email them to him. I’ve been living in this town long enough to know that the Park Rangers won’t let me near the scene of the fire, even with my inside connections, so I’ve decided to take some wide-angle shots from town.
If I was half-decent at my job, I’d sit at the bottom of the mountain and wait for the Laurel Mountain Hotshot Crew to come down. I’d get my own hotshot shots of them all dirty with soot and covered in sweat. It’s a favorite image for the papers around here, the women go wild for them, but I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to see my father or Carter. All I want to do is go home, shower, and get into bed. Maybe not even bother with the shower.
I look down at my phone. Reese has called three times. I know I should answer him, but I need to be alone. The day that Carter broke things off with me, it felt like the world had stopped spinning.
I spent a week in bed, even calling sick into work and telling my father I had the flu. I’m not sure if Dad believed me, but it didn’t stop him from dropping off chicken soup and orange juice in my room several times a day. For a while, I was convinced that Dad had said something to Carter to make him break things off with me and a huge part of me wants to believe it still.
Because the alternative is that Carter never really cared about me at all and was just using me for some amusement. But the other part of me wants to believe my Dad would never intentionally cause me so much pain.
Weeks have passed and neither of us have so much as uttered Carter’s name. Sometimes I feel like I’m barely living. The only thing I have to look forward to is work and it’s hard to put my heart into it. Reese has been visiting on the weekends. I tell him not to come, but he shows up anyway, saying, “get over yourself, I’m here to see Ben”.
But he isn’t.
He always brings too much ice cream, too much chardonnay along with large bags of peanut M&Ms. We spend the weekend in my bed, getting drunk and fat while bingeing Gilmore Girls. It's not remotely fair to Reese, because I’m a miserable moaner to be around. And that’s why I’m ignoring his calls. He should be out with Ben having fun this weekend, not on guard duty in my bedroom.
The truth is, I feel like Reese has kept me alive for the last month. I haven’t gone into detail with him about what happened between Carter and me, but it’s like he just knows. He doesn’t try to give me advice. Every time I cry, he just holds me and tells me that he knows everything will be okay. I want to believe him. But I can’t. It just seems like there’ll never be an okay again.
I glance down again at my ringing phone again. It’s a number I don’t recognize and I decide not to answer. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message. As soon as it goes to voicemail, the ringing starts again for fuck’s sake. Ready to decline, I look down and see Reese is calling yet again. Let’s just get it over with because I have a feeling he’s not going to stop until we do.
I pick up, “Hey Reese.”
“Thank God, Livs.” I don’t like how his voice sounds. My heart does that leap into my mouth Iv’e gotten used to in my life.
“Reese, what’s wrong?” I blurt.
“Where are you?” He asks.
“Driving, downtown, what’s going on?”
“Livy, you need to go direct the hospital. I’ll meet you there.”
“Reese, you’re scaring me. What’s happening? Just tell me.”
“Ben called. It’s your dad and Carter. There was some sort of accident.”
My he’d spins and I feel light-headed as goosebumps rush up my spine. It can’t be true. Fear overwhelms me, leaving me so breathless I can hardly get out the words.
“Oh God, Reese, are they okay?” He hesitates. Why isn’t he saying anything? “Reese.” I’m shaking and tears are welling in my eyes. I brush them out furiously.
I hear him take in a breath. “I don’t know Liv. He said Carter was unconscious. Our connection dropped before he could tell me about your dad. I’ve been trying to get him back on th
e phone, but my calls aren’t getting through.”
“Shit, no,” I moan.
“Just meet me at the hospital Liv,” he orders, “And be careful driving. I’m at the bus station, waiting on a Lyft. I should be there in around fifteen minutes.”
I don’t remember driving to the hospital. Everything around me looks hazy and out of focus when I park and climb out of my Jeep. I feel like I’m walking through a fog. Every part of me is consumed with fear when I blunder through the doors. I run to the front desk but it feels like I’m moving in slow motion. The lady behind the glass is on the phone. I need her to hang up the damn phone.
“Excuse me,” I say to her, as politely as I can.
She looks up at me and holds up a finger and I want to reach behind the glass and jerk the phone out of her hand.
After what seems like an eternity, she hangs up. “How may I help you?”
“I’m looking for John Mitchell and Carter Tyson. They were brought in this afternoon, I think.” My voice wavers and I don’t know if I can keep it together.
Her fingers start clicking across her keyboard.
“Are you a family member?” She asks looking up at me.
I choke out a sob. “Yes. John Mitchell is my father.” Tears have escaped and are running down my cheeks.
She looks more sympathetic when she looks up at me again.
“Mr. Mitchell has been admitted and it looks like his condition is listed as stable. He’s in room 307.”
I nod, gratefully. “And Carter Tyson? Can you give me any information on Mr. Tyson?” I ask, my eyes pleading with hers.
“Are you a relative?”
I put a hand over my mouth to suppress a sob. I want to tell her he belongs to me but of course I can’t. I just shake my head.
“I’m sorry dear, I can’t give you any information on Mr. Tyson.”