by Ivy Jordan
He said nothing, merely kissed down my neck and held himself up over me as he pumped his fingers in and out of me. It was his thumb, though, that I kept grinding up against, bringing me closer and closer until he hooked his fingers up towards my belly button and I shouted when I climaxed.
I hadn’t expected him to do that so suddenly. While my heart began to calm down, he kissed me, and then released me once more.
I could only lay there, dazed, utterly spent and yet craving more.
He sat up and started going through his drawer. I snatched up a condom before he could and undid it carefully—as much as I appreciated the animosity behind taking off a condom with one’s teeth, I didn’t want to tear it. Instead of letting him do it, I rolled the condom down over his erection.
“Quinn,” he murmured like he had more to say and didn’t know quite what.
I let him hover back over me, holding my waist with one hand and supporting himself on his elbow with the other. His weight over me was enough to make me feel drunk on the moment. I wanted to keep him there forever. I could feel him pressed against me, and slowly but surely, he pressed into me.
The groan he issued as he seated himself inside me was enough to ready me for another orgasm. Oddly, I couldn’t force myself to feel the same rush to do so as I usually did. He moved slowly, carefully, but drove deep and hit his mark inside me often enough to have me disoriented, grasping at the sheets.
I could hear him speaking, too, and it wasn’t long before his thrusts were deeper, faster, more insistent. The bed squeaked beneath us, and my eyes slammed closed as he burst with a shout, still moving, coming to a slow stop.
I still had my lips pressed to his neck, to his cheek, to any exposed skin. He moved away from me with care and disposed of the condom in the wastebasket by his bed. I expected him to get up, then, to go and clean up as he usually did. I probably could use it, too—though the smell would air out by the morning, it wouldn’t do to revel in this dirtiness now.
Instead of getting up, though, he rolled off me and pulled me closer to him. I inhaled the soap-sweet smell of his bare skin and tried not to think about the way that I felt. It was always easy to get lost in the moment, I knew, and I was guilty more than most of letting myself believe that anyone I slept with was someone special.
I looked up at Sawyer’s eyes, drifting closed, exhausted. His hold on me didn’t lax. I thought of how familiar he was to me, and how I’d been trying to reconcile that with the fact that some part of me still wondered if I was supposed to be his therapist. He had come to his last meeting, after all.
With the steady rise and fall of his chest, my head moved, too, but in a pleasant way. Rather than be disruptive and cause a problem with my going to sleep, it lulled me. I listened to his heartbeat.
I’d been so scared when Stacy came to the table at dinner. I’d been so convinced that she would say something just right and Sawyer would run off with her. That, or he would break again, and all the progress we made would shatter. Instead, he’d held his own, talked to her without growing angry or making a scene, and then had done everything he possibly could to extinguish the idea that he might prefer her over me. And then some, in my opinion.
I thought back to how she’d specified Sawyer and my relationship as a point of conversation. Sawyer hadn’t liked that—I couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but he didn’t like it, and it made him suspicious. Still, that was only all the more reason to feel at ease. If Sawyer were dismissive of the situation, I might be more worried.
Now, I didn’t know if I could worry about anything, except maybe having to ever get up and leave. It seemed perfectly reasonable at that moment to never get up from this spot.
Off to the side, on the bedside table, a phone buzzed. I thought at first that it was mine, so I sat up to look at it. My patients all had my phone number and permission to call me at any time if they were in an emergency. I’d calmed several suicidal patients down that way, and gotten CPS to some houses where kids needed help. In any case, it was good for me to check my phone when it went off, and so I sat up to look at what was going on.
It wasn’t my phone, though. The screen was different. I glanced at the time on the digital alarm clock and was only more confused as to who could be texting him. I wasn’t going to go through his phone; that was hugely rude, and I wouldn’t breach his privacy like that. But I was curious, so I peered over to see if I could read what was on the screen from where I was.
‘Good to see you again. XO,’ from ‘Stacy’ in his phone.
I wrinkled my nose. The first emotion that came up, try as I did to stop it, was anger. I hated that he still had her number, hated that she had his number, and didn’t want to know how it came to be that she was saved in his phone. I didn’t want to think that he’d added her back in recently, and I didn’t want to think that he’d never deleted her in the first place.
I especially didn’t want to think that she was texting him regularly. There was no way for me to confirm or deny that without looking at his phone in-depth, and I’d already decided not to do that. But based on that text, I reasoned, I didn’t have anything to worry about. I thought about what Sawyer said, about not needing anyone else. He cared about me, and I was beginning to care about him far more than I’d intended to.
What Stacy said didn’t matter. I laid back down in bed and shook my head to myself. I wasn’t going to be some ridiculous jealous girlfriend about this. She had his number, and she’d texted him—that wasn’t a big deal. He was obviously not interested in her, and he was obviously aware of how dangerous he was for her. If Sawyer knew those two things, he could keep her away. And he wouldn’t do it because I wanted him to—he’d do it because he knew he had to.
I could help him, too, if he needed it. If Stacy continued to butt her nose into our relationship, I knew I would eventually need to do something about it. Now, though, there was nothing to be done. There were crickets off in the distance, chirping quietly. There was the sound of Sawyer breathing quietly beside me. When I set my head on his chest, there was the sound of his heart thudding. If I focused hard enough, I could feel mine, too, clunking along sure and steady.
I knew the truth. Hell, maybe Stacy had sent that text knowing that I would see it. I knew her, and I knew Sawyer. There was nothing for me to worry about. There wasn’t ever going to be anything for me to worry about, not so long as I could continue to trust Sawyer the way that I did so unyieldingly unconditionally.
Chapter Thirty-One
SAWYER
“How’s Quinn?”
I looked up from the flower I was planting in the ground. Pete looked over at me from the porch, taking a drink from a bottle of water after he spoke. The sun had started to press the heat into the back of our necks, and I had one or two more plants to put in the ground, but he was done for now and had gone in for water.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Pete spat off to the side. “Well, you know. She stayed over at your house a week ago. You’ve been involved. How is she? How is it goin’?”
“It’s going fine.” I patted the dirt around the flowers and frowned when I realized I’d forgotten to plant the cucumbers. “She’s out of town this weekend. Some kind of conference.”
“A conference?”
“Some psychiatry thing.” I wiped the sweat from my brow and leaned back onto my ankles. I couldn’t remember the details of what Quinn had told me about the conference, but it had something to do with psychiatry and pharmaceuticals. I’d told her she could go as long as she didn’t make me take any pharmaceuticals, and then we’d made out in the back of her car, and then I’d forgotten what she told me about the conference.
Pete walked up to stand next to me. I turned to look at him and lifted an eyebrow.
“What?”
“It’s just strange you don’t talk about her more,” Pete said. “I’d expect you’d be chattering up a storm about her. You doing alright?”
“We really are,”
I emphasized. “I’ve always been kind of quiet, Pete. You know that.”
“I suppose. Take a load off; we don’t need those cucumbers in the ground until tomorrow.” Pete clapped my shoulder, and I stood up.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s supposed to rain tonight, and the roof’s got a tear.” Pete pointed at the tarp that he used to cover the garden when it rained. He liked to control the water in his vegetable garden, and since he maintained it regularly, he liked to keep the rain out of the equation. Unfortunately, he’d been unable or unwilling to have someone out to build a roof over the garden, or even put up a cheap tin one, and so he’d been using a tarp over some posts. With the rain straight on the ground, any seeds I put in would only get washed up. I didn’t like the thought of having all my work go to waste, so I didn’t protest.
I stood up and pulled my gloves off. “Sun’s just now starting to go down,” I noted. The worst of the heat was over. “I think I might head back if I’m all done here.”
“Well, shoot, Sawyer, I was hoping we could go to George’s.” Pete looked across the yard at his car, like he wanted to go immediately.
I leaned against a shovel and raised my eyebrows. “Yeah, sure, we could go. What’s the occasion?”
“I just want to,” Pete offered.
It was as good a reason as any. I went to his bathroom to clean up a little so I wouldn’t smell, and then we left to go to George’s.
Just like last time, the bar was empty except for a few people mulling around the back. A few people I recognized from my time as regulars still seemed to haunt the place, with longer beards and deeper recesses behind their eyes. I pulled my cap down onto my head and walked up to the bar.
“You know, I don’t think I like the idea of you going off and getting married,” Pete said.
I nearly spat my drink. “Jesus Christ, Pete. No one said anything about getting married.”
“Well, it comes along!” Pete raised his arms in a physical defense at my protest.
I shook my head and put a few quarters in the billiards table and watched the balls fall in a clatter. It bought me time to put them together in the triangle and formulate some kind of response to the escalation Pete was talking about.
“It comes along in years,” I said. “Years and years.”
“Yeah, sure.” Pete waved his hand and picked up a cue. He looked down the barrel of it, like it was a shotgun, and I ignored it; berating him for his odd habits never went well for either of us. He was a sensitive soul at heart, and I knew better than to poke fun at him for the little things.
“Even if it’s years from now, I don’t like it.” Pete lined the cue up with the cue ball and licked his lips, cap covering his eyes from the angle I stood at.
I shook my head. Pete had been eager to see me in a relationship, or so I remembered, and he’d been supportive of the endeavor. In fact, I could specifically recall him telling me to distance myself from Quinn professionally so that I could be closer to her romantically. Not to mention that when he’d met Quinn, it had been smiles all around. He didn’t seem to have an issue.
“You’re not making a whole lot of sense,” I told him. I watched him shoot the cue ball and a few stripes fell into the pockets.
Pete rubbed his nose and looked to me. “Your shoot.”
“It’s yours; you sank two.”
“And a solid.”
“Nope.”
“Oh.” Pete walked around the table and lined the cue up again, nearly knocking over his drink in the process.
“Didn’t answer my question,” I reminded him, lifting my glass to my mouth.
“Right,” Pete said. He fired the cue ball and didn’t land anything. “See, once you’re married, you’ll be out and on your own. And that’s all well and good, I suppose, for you. And I’m happy for you, and I will be then, too. But I’ll have to find another friend to shoot the shit with, and that’s not something I look forward to doing.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “I don’t follow. In what world am I not going to be your friend anymore?”
“You’ll be busy,” Pete said.
I lined up my shot. I’d played an inordinate amount of billiards overseas, since all we’d really had for entertainment was a pool table and some TV’s lying around the barracks. I played billiards until I saw billiard balls in my sleep. That being said, I wasn’t ever terribly good at it, but better than the average player, I supposed. Better than Pete, though he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“I’ll be around.” I took the shot and sunk a solid. I walked to line up another shot.
“That’s what you say,” Pete said. “But you’ll get busy.”
I looked up at him from lining up my shot. “I don’t understand why you’re all worried about that now. Even if that was something I’d been thinking about, which I have not, it would be years.”
“Because you obviously care about her,” Pete said. “And a fair amount more than constitutes casual affection.”
I made my second shot, putting two solids in separate baskets. I didn’t have to walk far to line up my next one. “What are you aimin’ at?”
“Well, shit.” Pete leaned against the table and frowned when I sank another shot. “You know, I only have so many quarters if you’re planning on wiping the damn tables with me.”
“Sore loser,” I commented, and missed my next shot.
“Ah.” He waved his hand to brush me off and settled over the table. “Do you think it’s true, then?” he asked. He fired his shot and sank the ball he was aiming for—and a solid ball, which turned the game back over to me.
“What’s true?” I lined up my shot but missed a bit intentionally. I didn’t want Pete to get irritated, and I didn’t care much about winning.
“That you love her. That it’s just a matter of time before things get a little more serious,” Pete said.
I raised my eyebrows and took my shot. The ball sank into the basket at the last second, and I rubbed the chalk on the end of the cue ball.
“I don’t know, Pete.” I pulled my cap back a bit and then pulled the bill down with my thumb and forefinger.
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to think about it?”
“Both.” I watched him line his shot up. “I think things are going well now. I certainly do care quite a bit about her. I’ll see where it goes, but I don’t see myself seeing either one of you out any day soon.”
“I should hope not. It’s not easy to find friends, you know,” Pete said.
I smiled at him and shook my head. It was hard to tell whether Pete wanted to be my friend because I was convenient for him or because he genuinely liked me, and frankly, I didn’t think that it mattered much to me one way or another.
We played a few games of pool before deciding to call it a night. Neither of us was particularly fond of staying out too late, and besides, I had some work to do around the house the next day. The kitchen sink needed fixing, and I could do it without a problem, but it would require a few hours of uninterrupted work. We set our cues back on the rack, and I realized I’d left my wallet in the bathroom earlier.
“I’m gonna head out,” Pete said. “You drove up here, right?”
I nodded and headed to the bathroom. The wallet was where I left it, thankfully, so I stuffed it back in my pants and walked back out. Before I could get very far, a hand came down on my arm and pulled me back.
I fought the instinct to strike out at the person who’d grabbed me, and instead glared behind me.
Stacy had her hand firmly on my arm, and she released it when she saw my stare. She looked even more exhausted than the last time I’d seen her, if that was even possible. I glanced around, looking for a boyfriend or someone she’d brought with her to rough me up. But there was only Stacy.
“Sawyer, listen—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I started to turn away, and she grabbed my arm again.
“Sawyer, please. Please. It’s not like that.” She hadn
’t even explained herself, and yet I felt like I already knew what she was going to say.
“Leave me alone. Okay? Leave me alone.”
“It’s not like that. I’m not trying to get with you.”
“Then what do you want?” I looked around again. Maybe she was here to warn me about someone else. Who that might be, I didn’t know, but this was inherently suspicious.
“I left the rehab center,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. The doctors just pushed pills and didn’t listen to me, and I had to get out. But Mom and Dad didn’t want me back if I wasn’t getting treatment. I have nowhere to go.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t believe you.” I’d seen her parents bend over backwards for her time and time again and there was little reason to believe that they’d changed their minds all of a sudden. Besides, what did that matter to me?
“I ran them out of money.” Stacy swallowed hard and tucked a piece of brittle hair behind her ear. “I ran them out, and they don’t have anything left. Dad picked up extra hours at work and Mom’s substitute teaching again, and they can get by, but they don’t have anything left. They can’t keep me around.”
I hadn’t considered that. It made some sense that eventually her family would run out of money. Rehab programs were insanely expensive—that was part of the reason I’d joined the military instead of going to one of them. And she’d been in and out of them for some time, not to mention costing them money by stealing and taking what she could get.
“What does this have to do with me?” I crossed my arms.
“I have nowhere to sleep.” Stacy folded her arms, but it only made her look smaller. “I have nowhere to sleep. I’ve been staying around bars, but they’re not letting me do it anymore. I just need to sleep somewhere and then I’ll be fine.”
I set my jaw. I had half a mind to call her parents and ask them if any of this was true. To call Quinn and ask her what I ought to do about this situation. I only wanted some kind of outside opinion, because I didn’t know that I trusted my own empathy.