by Sarah Buhl
“You know I can say the same thing to you as you did me earlier,” I said as he lifted his eyebrow in question. “This photo is because of you. That expression on my face is all yours.”
I rolled onto my side and propped my head with my arm as he lay back next to me. I set the camera above his head and took in his profile as he looked at the ceiling. “Thank you for this, Wynn.”
He turned to face me and ran his hand through my hair and over my shoulder. “Thank you for asking me, Hannah.”
“Tomorrow you get to meet the bane of my existence,” I stated flatly and brought a laugh from him, but his expression softened.
“Hey, I’m going to be there with you and nothing is going to happen. I won’t let it,” he said with such surety, I believed him. He wasn’t going to let anything happen. I was an adult now and my dad couldn’t hurt me. I hadn’t lived at home since I was nineteen. The last two years I had lived with Maggie and her family, but I still felt like I was breaking a rule by being here with Wynn. It was as if the closer I got to home, the younger I felt.
“What are you thinking, Hannah?” he asked.
I looked at the wall above his shoulder, unable to meet his eyes. “I’m trying to figure out what they plan to tell me tomorrow and I’m thinking about my sister.”
He lifted his hand and with a gentle touch turned my chin to face him. “It’s going to be okay,” he reiterated. “You want to know what I have planned in the morning?” he asked with a smile.
“Yes, please do tell,” I said with my own smile. I had smiled so much today, it felt like my face would be fixed in one forever if my muscles didn't get a chance to relax.
“Well, I’m an old farmhouse, abandoned building geek, if you couldn’t tell.” He gave me a coy grin. “There has always been this one house out here on the way to this ghost town and I never stop at it. I have always wanted to, but never did. I want to go there for the first time with you.” He raised an eyebrow at me with a shy smile.
He stood from the bed and his shoulders tensed as he looked in our bag as if he was unsure of himself. “Now don’t think me crazy, please,” he said as he turned around, “but I picked this out for you to wear for photos tomorrow.” He lifted up a tank top I forgot I had. It was white with knit eyelet parts across the top and bottom of it.
I smiled at him. “Wynn Hawthorne did you go through my closet?” I laughed.
“Actually no, it was lying on the floor next to your bed. I’m sorry, I should have asked, but saw it on top of that pile and I imagined you in it and I couldn’t breathe just thinking of it, so I decided the photos were a good excuse to get you to wear it.” He looked away with a laugh. “I felt nuts when I grabbed it.”
"It’s creepy, I should call Maggie,” I said with sarcasm. I laughed and rolled over onto my back and kicked my leg up in the air as I raised myself into a seated position.
He stepped toward me and set the tank top on the bedside table. He sat on his knees in front of me and ran his hands along my thighs. His hands moved up farther and then he grabbed onto my waist. He pulled me closer towards the edge of the bed, closer to him. He kept a smile on his face as he looked up into my eyes and lifted his left hand to push my hair behind my ear. I lifted my own hands and put them on either side of his face.
I wanted nothing more than to kiss this man. We had given chaste kisses and light kisses that had so much held in them, but I wanted to taste him and know him. He lifted his hooded, sexy eyes, and I loved it because looking at me that way was natural to him. This was him and he wasn’t trying to play a game with me, he was laying himself bare for me to see. It was the most naked I had ever seen another human being.
He traced his hands up my arms then down to my hands resting against his face and kissed my knuckles before resting them in my lap. He returned his hands to my thighs and ran them up my body until he now held my face as I just had held his. He leaned in and my heart started to race in anticipation. I had sex with several men, I had kissed before and I had even had a relationship, but I never felt as I was feeling right now. I felt every thrum of my heart against my chest and it felt as if it was going to burst from my ears the room was so quiet.
He was going to kiss me and the thought of his lips touching mine was too much and I closed my eyes on a deep breath. When I let them open a smile formed across his face as he watched my reaction to him. “I love that,” he said and paused inches in front of me. “I affect you and it baffles me and I love it.” He looked at me in awe and pushed my hair back behind my ears again and left his hands resting on either ear. “I don’t understand it.”
I clenched his forearms. “Because you’re exceptionally epic,” I said. Then he dropped his hands and gave a light laugh. “What did I say?” I asked.
“No, it's not you, that’s the best compliment. It’s just funny because Blake mocked me for using the same word earlier today.” He laughed.
“Hmm, great minds think alike, I guess.” I gave him a flirtatious smile. “Now, are you going to kiss me, yet?"
He leaned back onto his knees and shook his head. “Nope.” He held a mischievous expression at the popping of the P in nope and lifted an eyebrow at me. “I have a plan for that.”
I dropped my jaw in shock. “What? Why can’t you just flipping kiss me?”
He chuckled. I watched as his expression grew serious. “I don’t want to kiss you until you know your own strength again. I don’t want you to feel guilt with me. I cherish and respect you. And I don’t want there to be a question in your mind as to whether you should be kissing me. I want you to have zero guilt about it.”
I leaned back onto my elbows on the bed and stared at him. My first instinct was to be pissed. He didn’t know what was going on inside my head. I knew he cared. How could he know what was going on in my head?
I realized he did. Above everyone else, he knew my thoughts and why I did what I did. He discovered my truth in a few weeks of knowing me. He saw me as important and valued, but I didn’t see myself that way. He wanted that for me before we moved forward with us. I had to accept myself before I could share myself with him. He didn’t want to take a portion of me, like I had allowed men before to do. He saw and understood that I had been giving myself to strangers to lose myself and he didn’t want me to be lost in him.
I did want to see myself as important— and not just for our kiss. I needed to see the value in myself for my own sanity. He was the first person to ever acknowledge that in me and it made me want to kiss him more. But he was right. If I kissed him now, tonight, it would be to escape from the fear of tomorrow. I couldn't run away, I had to face it.
I raised myself from the bed and wrapped my arms around his neck, clinging to him. “Thank you,” I said as he began to run his hands down my back.
“You are most welcome, Hannah Anderson.”
The next morning I woke to sunlight streaming in through brown curtains. I could see tears in them that I hadn’t noticed the night before and the little holes created dots of light across the stained brown carpet. I counted the drops of light as I listened to Wynn’s breathing behind me.
Wynn was the first man to sleep with me. The realization brought a comfortable smile to my face. Even when I dated my One during high school, I never slept like this. I discovered there was something eternal found in the moments of sleeping with someone.
His arm draped across my waist and I traced my fingers around his wrist as I played with the dark hairs that decorated it. I twisted the leather band as I examined it. It held engraved pictures that were Native American in design. I traced along them, enjoying the texture of the soft leather in contrast to the cut out images.
“That’s the only thing I have of my family’s other than old photos. Well, my family before my mom,” he said and I hadn’t even realized he was awake as he lifted his hand up and rolled to his back, lowering his wrist to his face as he twisted the cuff.
I rolled toward him and rested my head on his shoulder. He pulled me in clo
ser and I saw on his face that he was trying to decide how much he was willing to share. “It was my grandfather’s,” he said as he started to remove it from his wrist. “And according to my mom, it was first his grandfather’s.”
I lifted it from his hand and looked inside and saw the initials E.D.H. engraved with the date of April 6. “Wow, that’s amazing,” I said as he wore a serene expression as he kept his thoughts to himself. “Did you ever meet your grandpa?” I asked.
He pulled his lips in upon each other and shook his head. “No, he died before my time. So did my grandmother. It was a car accident when my mother was thirteen or fourteen. That was the extent of what she shared on them,” he said and his thoughts drifted off to somewhere else.
We both continued to look at the cuff as I twirled it in my hands. I thought of my own family. My dad was an ass, but we knew our history and I was thankful for the years I was able to spend with my grandparents before they died. I never knew my mother’s parents, but my father’s were always close with us throughout our younger years. “What happened to your mother after they died?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. She never told me. We didn’t talk much. Most of the time we spent together was me avoiding her and any beatings.” He took my hand and held it to his chest. “I imagine whatever happened to her wasn’t good. She'd look at pictures of my grandparents and just cry for hours. Most of it was the wine causing her to tumble into that mess, but I guess the heartache was always there. The wine just encouraged it,” he said as I took his wrist and fastened the cuff back on and intertwined our fingers again laying them across his chest. We sat there for a few moments before he said something that I wasn’t expecting. “I never talk as I do when I'm with you Hannah and it scares the shit out of me.”
I lifted my chin and rested it on his shoulder so I could meet his eyes. I put my hand to the side of his face to draw his eyes toward mine. “You took the words out of my mouth, Wynn Hawthorne and I thank you for the honor of letting me get to know you.” I mirrored his smile with one of my own. “I’m hungry as all hell, by the way.” I giggled.
He ran his hand over my arm before giving me a squeeze, he released my other hand and I hated the loss of contact. He wore a proud grin on his face and I realized I must not have hidden my expression of loss. He turned his back, and I saw his shoulders lift in a hidden chuckle. “Well let’s get something to eat then before we head out,” he said as he lifted his arms and crossed them behind his shoulders to pull his shirt off him.
I liked that he was doing it that way instead of starting it from the bottom. I was never more nervous or embarrassed in my life. I’ve been naked in front of strangers while they examined every part of me in detail. They evaluated every arch and shadow, every curve and wrinkle. But watching him take his shirt off left me embarrassed.
I had not seen even a slight raise of his shirt in the times we hung out and the anticipation of seeing him without his shirt on undid me. I started to turn away, but seeing his back, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He had a tattoo that covered his entire back.
It was an angelic, warrior, gargoyle, and it reminded me of the man who wore it. With a lowered head resting on his knees, the gargoyle held a sword in front of him. His vein covered wings were starting to wrap around him and below the image of the gargoyle were a group of ravens watching him and it looked as though they were waiting for the being to rise. Without thinking I reached out to touch him. I hesitated over his skin as I saw that the veins within the wings were scars that the ink had worked around and used in the design. I pulled my hand back as he started to turn his head over his shoulder to ask me something.
He gave me a shocked expression and I could tell he didn't realize how close I was. I pulled my lip in as he turned toward me, giving me an unobstructed view of him. “I’ve never seen you without a shirt.” I tried not to stare at him. I pulled my lip in as I looked at the other tattoos across his chest. Hemingway. Every quote and tattoo on him was inspiring. They set a wildness around him that contrasted with the words that they shared.
Noble savage. That was Wynn. In his secluded lifestyle, he focused on his own thoughts and books that he read. He observed the world through the lens of his camera, but he was incredibly pure despite the circumstances of his childhood. Yes, noble savage, that is Wynn. I was proud of my realization and a satisfaction filled me as I thought of those perfect words to describe him. I looked at him with my smile and saw a proud smile form on his face. He caught me admiring him. He pulled a clean Muse tee shirt over his smile. “I have the same shirt,” I said.
He grabbed his hoodie and pulled it on, leaving it unzipped. He stepped toward me and I realized he hadn’t said a word in response to me. He just kept smiling and traced his finger over my nose, then kissed my forehead.
“I‘ll go get us something to eat. Go ahead and shower and I’ll be right back.” He grabbed his wallet from his backpack and then turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said. I stepped toward him and wrapped my hands around his waist and rested my head on his shoulder for a hug. It was all I wanted in that moment and I swear the simple hugs from him, were the best sensations I had in my life. “Can you get me snack cakes for breakfast?” I asked with a smile as I rested my chin on his chest, looking up at him.
He laughed in response as he left the room. “I’ll be right back.”
After I climbed out of the shower and was brushing my hair, I heard Wynn return. I threw my jeans back on and grabbed the white tank top he packed. I walked out of the bathroom and found him laid back on the bed with his legs crossed and his head resting on his arms. He smiled as he took in my shirt and he lifted the bag of goodies at me. “You lucked out, they had some,” he said as he tossed the box to me. “And I got you a coffee.”
I looked toward him as I opened the box. “What did you do without honey for yours?” I asked.
He laughed. “Oh, I had that covered,” he said as he showed me a jar of local honey and my breath caught. He lifted his eyebrow. “What?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s from my family’s farm, that’s all, and it shocked me,” I said as I opened the box and began to eat.
He turned the jar toward him. “Huh, I didn’t think about that. You did say your parents raised bees.”
“Yep, they have for years.” I took the jar from him. “My great grandpa was the first to do it.” I handed the jar back and sat next to him on the bed. “My sister and I used to have fun dressing up and helping our dad with them. The suits and covering were huge on us, but it was still fun.”
“Well, the honey’s awesome,” he said as he added more to his coffee.
“So, when are we heading out?” I asked as I took the last bite of the cinnamon goodness Wynn bought me for breakfast.
“Now.” He jumped from the bed and put his hand out for me to take. I wiped the crumbs from my hands and gave him my hand in return.
Twenty minutes later we were pulling into an old abandoned farm house. There was a porch with a swing that looked like no one had sat on it in decades. The grass was four feet high around the house and from the road it made it difficult to even see it. I wondered how Wynn even knew of this place. “Do you have a map of every abandoned house in the state or something?” I asked with a laugh.
“No.” He smiled. “I just always keep my eye out for them, and I have to confess. I have this old photo and that might be the house in it,” he said as he pulled a photo out of his backpack. In the photo was a lovely house with a wraparound porch. There were three young people sitting on the front steps, a woman and two men. “I think two of them are my grandparents, but I’m not sure. But doesn’t that house look similar to the one in the photo?” he asked as he pointed to the house and I held the photo to line it up with the porch.
“You’re right. It very well could be the same house. How crazy would that be?” I asked.
I walked toward the house and stepped onto the porch, as Wynn changed
lenses on his camera. The porch swing swayed in the wind and the peacefulness of the scene drew me nearer. I stood next to it and turned to see what the former owners watched as they sat in the swing. There was a little cottage off the side of the house that was in far better shape. “Did you see that?” I asked Wynn as I pointed toward the cottage. He looked where I was pointing and the color left his face.
“No, I didn’t notice that.” He walked with hesitance toward it.
I lifted my hand to his shoulder. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’ve seen this before,” he said in a whisper, without looking at me.
19
Wynn
As soon as I saw the little adobe cottage with the windmill behind it, I knew without a doubt, this was the same place in the photo of my mother and my grandparents. The back of my mother’s photo said “Uncle J’s” and that was it. There was no date, just the three of them standing in front of this house. My grandparents were holding onto each other and looked with longing into each other’s eyes as my mother was standing between them. It was one of the few photos she owned of the three of them together and she wore a huge smile on her face in it.
“This the right place?” Hannah startled me as I forgot she was even there.
“Yes, it's the place. I have a photo of my mother and grandparents in front of that building.” I looked back at the main farm house. “With the photo there and the one in front of this, it has to be the same place.” I walked toward the little adobe cottage. I was hesitant to get nearer to it, but my body willed me toward the front door. The photo was in black and white and now seeing it in person, the door had been a deep red at one time, but the paint now peeled. The adobe cottage wasn’t in as rough shape as the main house and I wondered why.