by Serena Bell
But she didn’t see how she could have done otherwise. She wouldn’t have been able to forgive herself for it.
Her body felt it before her ears heard it or her mind registered it—Hunter’s cry from upstairs.
She wouldn’t go.
He was a grown man. He could take care of himself.
She was a grown woman. She had to take care of herself—her sanity, her pride, her heart.
The cry came again, low and tortured.
She’d go upstairs. Shake him awake. If he tried to grab her, touch her—if he tried anything—she’d put an immediate end to it.
She found herself standing beside her bed. She found herself at the door of her room. She found herself in the hallway, down the hallway, at the bottom of the stairs.
She might not have any skill for pretending with Hunter, but she knew she was pretending to herself. She was pretending that there was any chance that she could resist him. She was pretending that her plan was to stop him if he tried. She was pretending that pride had the slightest chance of winning out over what she felt in his arms.
She found herself outside his bedroom.
She found herself inside the door, at the side of his bed.
She didn’t wait for him to grab her or touch her or kiss her. She lay down beside him and kissed him. For the worst of all reasons. Because she wanted it more than she cared about anything else.
She kissed him and kissed him, loving the way he roused under her and groaned, the way he reached for her without hesitation. His tongue slick and alive, his fingers gripping her arms, sliding down to grasp her backside, pulling her close.
She wanted him to stay asleep so she could go with him into whatever he was dreaming, to that place where he remembered and wanted, where they shared a history.
But, of course, this time he woke up.
“I didn’t dream it the other night.” His voice was rough and fuzzy with sleep.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t a dream.”
She couldn’t see him well in the dark, but she could tell that his eyes were on her face. He’d loosened his grip on her, but he hadn’t pushed her away or tried to extricate himself. She could feel the length of his erection wedged between them, and she had to exert conscious effort not to wriggle against it. Not to rock her hips. She wondered what would happen if she did. If he would press back or stop her. Would it be night rules, or day rules?
“Did you really think it was a dream?”
“No.”
“But you pretended you did.”
“I didn’t really know. I suspected it wasn’t. But there’s no really good way to ask a woman if you actually—”
There was a smile in his voice now.
“Guess not,” she admitted.
There was something she wanted to know. And if she asked it, everything would change, one way or another. One of the dreams she’d held onto for too long would fall away, and she would be wide awake.
She asked it anyway, because it was night. Because she could feel him trying not to move against her the same way she was trying not to move against him, could feel what it cost him in held breath and taut muscle. Because it might be her last chance to talk to this half-awake part of him that remembered her.
“Did you want it to be a dream?”
He got very still under her, so still she could feel the slight throb of blood in the thick vein that ran the length of him, the slight involuntary clench of internal muscle—his body trying to assert itself against his better judgment.
She’d almost despaired of an answer by the time he spoke. She’d readied herself to stand, to pull away, to lose the heat and familiarity of him.
To say goodbye to the dream where they could still meet.
And then he said it.
“No.”
—
He’d woken up with her tongue in his mouth and he’d thought, Hell, yeah, and then, Oh, wow, this is going to keep happening, isn’t it? And it had felt as good as a dream, the softness and strength of her body on his, how her kiss begged him, those almost-noises she made in the back of her throat.
He could have stopped, then, but he couldn’t have, either.
This is bigger than my mind.
He followed the dream of her where it took him.
My body remembers.
She’d gotten him so hard. And not just that. She’d roused all of him, body and lost shards of memory, something as deep as soul, and he was still vibrating at that fever pitch, like the slightest touch, or even a command from her, could take him over the edge. And he wanted it, the flesh weak at this vulnerable hour. He wanted to throw caution and good sense and his protectiveness of her feelings to the fucking wind and finish what she’d started.
He could smell her, rich and salty.
He wanted her, a craving so sharp and bad it was in his bones and fingernails.
Fuck.
Did you want it to be a dream? she’d asked.
And he’d told her the absolute, complete, unequivocal truth.
No.
She sighed after his revelation, and for a moment—a ridiculously hopeful moment—he thought she was about to kiss him again. But then she slipped off him and sat beside him on the bed. She reached for the light and left them blinking, like vulnerable night creatures exposed to day.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t wake up again tomorrow morning and pretend nothing happened. It—it hurts. And I know it’s not your fault. It’s my fault. But I—I can’t. So I’m sorry. For being confusing and sending mixed messages, but I have to go.”
She stood up, but without thinking at all about it, he reached for her hand, held her fast.
“Wait.”
Her eyes were big, with bruised shadows beneath. Her mouth soft and red and kissed. She looked scared and uncertain. She looked like he felt.
He could keep this safe for both of them. He could let her walk out of here without ever asking her all the questions that crowded his mind.
He knew that was what he should do. He should leave it alone. But he couldn’t, any more than she’d been able to when she’d asked him her question. Something had shifted today. When they’d played and teased in the water. When she’d reached for his scar. When she’d looked at him so tenderly and told him there was no ugliness in him.
“Was it always—like this?” he asked.
It was a relief to speak the words aloud. As if he’d been holding the question back ever since that first time he’d woken to her.
“Like this?”
“This good.”
She tried not to smile at that, but he saw the hint of it. “Yes.”
“So we did have sex. Before.”
“Oh, yes.”
Now she looked at him. Now she let him see the heat and longing. “And you tried resisting it last time, too.”
He nodded. That made perfect sense to him. That he would be consistent across the gulf of his lost self.
“But you wanted it to happen?”
Her face was still mostly hidden, the half-light adding a veil. “No. Not at first. Because of the girls. Because if they’d found out, and then things hadn’t worked out, it would have been hard for them, and I didn’t think it was worth risking that. And because of Dee.”
It was the first time she’d said Dee’s name, at least in his available memory.
“Because it felt like taking something that was hers.”
She and Dee had connected because of the girls, but over time, waves and smiles at pickup and drop-off had morphed into coffee and confessions. For Dee, at least, he knew it had been a significant friendship. He could imagine how crossing that line, even after death, might feel very wrong.
“But we—we did. We did it anyway.”
She nodded.
“And it was—good?”
Some memory lit behind her face, a half-smile, and she was twice as beautiful. “It was amazing. And we both said—we both said it wasn’t like anything else. I kept tr
ying to make analogies with food. Like if you’d only ever had orange juice from concentrate and then someone squeezes you a glass at the table. And you were like, That other thing? That wasn’t even orange juice. Or chocolate. We actually had sort of a fight about chocolate, because I said it was like if you’d been eating only grocery-store milk chocolate and then you discovered, I don’t know, Ghirardelli dark chocolate or something, you’d be like, That thing? Wasn’t even chocolate. But you said that for s’mores, the grocery-store stuff was actually better because it tasted like childhood. And we argued about it. Not really arguing. Kidding around. I said if you still thought you wanted that grocery-store stuff after you’d had real chocolate, maybe you hadn’t just come as hard as I had—”
She was smiling. Grinning, absolutely beautiful with her eyes all alight and the joy shining under her skin. Lost in the story she was remembering, and God, he wanted to be there with her, so bad. Where she’d gone, into their history, what she was seeing, what she was feeling—he wanted it. And he felt so howlingly lonely all of a sudden, a breaking in two that he couldn’t bear for a second.
She suddenly seemed to recall herself. Stiffened, her expression closing down. “I’m sorry.” She turned away. “I don’t think this is a good idea. It’s not just your history. It’s mine, too. And I—can’t do it. Tell it to you like it’s just some story. Someone else’s story.”
But it wasn’t like that. Not something at a distance from him. True, he couldn’t remember. But—
It felt like his story, too. And for the first time, he wanted it to be his story.
The realization terrified him. He had no right. No right to raise her hopes.
“I don’t blame you for that,” he said. “Not at all. You’ve gotten jerked around enough.”
She started to get up from the bed. But then she hesitated. “Why did you ask that question?”
He knew she was referring to when he’d asked if it had been good between them.
“To satisfy curiosity? To help you get your memory back?”
He understood what she was asking. And how all of these questions had been leading them, even in the dark, toward an answer. Toward the only possible answer.
“No,” he said. “No. I need—I want to know what happened. I want to know what I felt, because—”
Her gaze scraped over his face, left him raw, like she’d looked and seen everything there was to see and taken away the last of his protective shell. But the converse, too. Like he’d taken away the last of hers. The two of them utterly naked, all pale, thin skin.
“I think I might be starting to feel that way again.”
Chapter 15
It was so little, and so late. Today was Wednesday and she was leaving Saturday, and there was no way—no way—she would change her plans—and Phoebe’s—because of a scrap, a wisp, not even a declaration.
It was so little. So very little. Not a promise at all.
“I’m leaving. Saturday.”
He nodded. “I have no right to ask anything of you.”
“I can’t change my plans. Phoebe—”
She couldn’t even finish the sentence. She wouldn’t put Phoebe through another upheaval, not for anything.
“I know.”
In some ways, it was the fact that he was asking nothing and promising nothing that shifted things for her. Because plans and promises—
Well, she’d had about enough of them.
But she recognized the truth in his voice. He wanted to try.
And she wanted to let him.
As bruised as she felt, as battered, there was still a tight knot of hope somewhere deep down inside her.
Memory was a bitch in this case. Because she remembered that last year, it had been a little like this. He’d been scheduled to leave and they’d been sliding down a slope together, the descent gathering speed, pebbles tumbling, rocks gathering the ground up with them as they rolled, and she’d had a feeling that the mountain couldn’t hold, that there was a landslide under them. And then that very last night, a night that might have turned out to be nothing more than goodbye, had turned out to be new firm ground.
Memory wouldn’t let her give up hope that that could happen again. Treacherous, tempting memory.
To tell him more about what had happened between them, she would have to relive moment after moment the sense of suspension, weightlessness, falling.
All the firsts, not just with him, but in her life.
She’d have to make herself completely vulnerable yet again, unfurl her longings, dark as the middle of the night, and hope that his would grow to match hers.
And yet: if there was a chance that remembering for him could help him get there, didn’t she need to give him that?
Even more: if there was a chance she could have him back, didn’t she have to take it? Because under all the fear was how much she missed him. Missed them.
There really was no choice here for her. There was only what had to be done, and whatever she could do to protect herself from it.
She took a deep breath. “It started when Clara told Phoebe what was going on with your mom and Ray. That your mom was going to move to California and couldn’t take Clara with her.”
The gratitude she saw on his face—it shamed her. That she’d considered holding this back from him, when it was his. Not hers to keep.
“Did I get mad at my mom when she did that?”
Trina hesitated a moment, wondering if she had any responsibility to try to keep this recounting from going down like Groundhog Day. “Do you want me to tell you what you did? Or what I think you wish you did?”
He laughed, so many white teeth in his naturally tan face. “Good point. Okay. So, I flipped out, huh?”
“Well, understandably—you were three months from deployment and she was completely upending your childcare plans. Or so you told me afterward. I wasn’t actually around for the mushroom cloud. You showed up to grab Clara from a playdate with Phoebs and you looked like you were going to vibrate out of your skin, so I asked what was wrong, and you told me.”
“And you just, what—just offered to take her?”
“No. My first thought was actually, holy shit, I hope he’s not hinting that I should take her. But you weren’t. At least I don’t think you were. You were just venting. And it was kind of nice—it was the first time we’d ever really had much of a conversation. You’d always seemed very—remote—”
“Oh, that’s flattering.” He made a face at her, and she felt herself smiling, almost against her will.
“I don’t mean it in a bad way. Soldierly. Self-possessed, self-contained—”
“I’m still not getting the warm fuzzies.”
She smirked. “Well, sorry. But you’re not the easiest guy to get to know. I’m not going to lie about that. After that day, we were kind of friends. But it was actually Clara who hinted that I should take her.”
“She what?”
“Yeah, you were mad at her the first time, too.” She laughed. “At least you’re consistent.”
“So, what, she invited herself?”
The expression on his face matched exactly the one he’d worn the last time he’d uttered those words to her. A weird, not unpleasant, sense of déjà vu settled over her.
“She was nervous. You were considering sending her to stay with her aunt and uncle and cousin Peter. And apparently cousin Peter is sort of like cousin Dudley in the Harry Potter books? But maybe with some strange adolescent lusting thrown in for good measure?”
He looked like he’d been struck. “I didn’t—”
“You didn’t know until Clara told me. And then I told you. Which put a temporary end to our conversation because you had to go have a heart-to-heart with your sister and brother-in-law.”
“Well, thank you for saving me from doing that all over again,” he said.
This time, they smiled at each other at the same moment, then looked away.
“The next time I saw you, I said, ‘You know,
it wouldn’t be such a big deal for Clara to stay with us. The girls go to the same school; they’re in most of the same activities; and Clara’s not exactly high maintenance. Dee’s left her with me for a week at a time, and Linda for several days at a time, so Clara will be comfortable, and you can trust that I know what I’m doing.’ ”
“And I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, I can’t ask you to do that.’ ”
“You used literally those exact words.”
“And you said—” He screwed up his face as if trying to remember. “ ‘No, really, it’s not a big deal. I think it would be fun.’ ”
She had. Almost to the word. “Do you re—”
“No. Or, not consciously. I just, I don’t know, kind of let my mind go blank, and based on what I know of you, thought about what I imagined you’d say.”
“That’s a little—freaky.”
“Not as freaky as—” He hesitated. “In the dark—”
Her body was shot through with anticipatory tingles.
“—I know you.”
His words—the way they rippled under her skin—forced a low, small sound from her, and his eyes darkened.
“It’s like a dream or something. Like returning to a dream I’ve had before, and starting up in the same place again. But if I wake up all the way…”
He wouldn’t quite meet her eyes, and disappointment settled on her like a cloak. This—this was what she’d feared. “You wake up and wish you hadn’t done it.”
He looked up at her, startled.
“I didn’t say that, did I?” he asked.
“No.”
“Because I don’t. Wish I hadn’t done it, I mean.”
He watched her, quietly for a moment, and she could almost feel the weight of his gaze on her skin. And then he said, “Come here.”
—
In the lamplight she was even more beautiful than she’d been by day, and he drew her close slowly, not wanting to rush the moment. For a long time he just hovered his mouth over hers, feeling her breath, smelling her skin, glorying in the way she reached for him without even moving. He kissed her lower lip first, then the upper, then her whole mouth, but gently, not asking her to open yet, even though he’d just had so much more. Because this was different—the lights were on, he was wide awake, and the rules he’d been following moments earlier no longer held.