Hard Time

by McKenna, Cara

  “This is nothing like what I miss,” he reiterated softly, in a tone as black as grief.

  “I’m sure.”

  “This is like visiting your grandmother’s grave and pretending it’s the same as seeing her again.” I saw him swallow, saw him blink. His face was white and jet and silver, a daguerreotype.

  “Why are we here?” he asked, so quietly it could’ve been my imagination, if not for the puff of his misty breath.

  “I need to see you. Here. Away from Darren or Cousins or any other place full of bricks and barbed wire and all that depressing stuff.”

  “Snow depresses me.”

  “Not me.” I reached for his gloved hand with mine. We rested them on the seat between us. The most we’d ever touched, and even through all the layers, I felt him.

  “I love the snow,” I said. “The fluffy kind, anyhow, not the brown slush. We never had any real snowstorms where I’m from, not except for Hurricane Hugo, and I was real tiny for that. But I remember it. It was the most magical thing I’d ever seen.” I squeezed his hand. “It was like the world had been covered in sugar.” Sugar, like he’d imagined tasting, if we ever kissed.

  “I hate blizzards,” he said. “Meant I couldn’t escape the fucking trailer I grew up in. Not the way I could in the summer.” He sounded bitter. Bitter now, about this. Never about his sentence, or about the years he’d lost, about any promises he’d read into my letters, ones I’d broken when I turned him away.

  I stared at the moon’s reflection, smudged across the ice. “Try to see it through me. The way your letters made me see sex through you. In ways I hadn’t felt in ages.”

  I turned and caught his features soften at that, watched black lashes lower against white skin. When his eyes opened, those brown irises were obsidian-dark and shiny.

  “It’s not all bad,” he conceded, staring at the lake. “It’s clean, anyhow. And quiet. And . . . open. And it’s good to see so many stars again.”

  “It’s so still.”

  He nodded, then whispered, “And you’re here.”

  I shivered, the sensation strangely warm in the icy coldness. “I’m here.” In an isolated place, with a dangerous man, without informing anyone where I’d gone. Yet I felt nothing resembling fear.

  “I took you somewhere,” he added, even more softly. “Someplace you wanted to be.”

  I shifted, collapsing the cup holder tray into the dash so I could turn and rest my bent legs on the bench seat. “You took me all kinds of places, in our letters. Places I worried I might never want to go, ever again.”

  He turned, too. “I really did that?”

  “You really did. Whatever my letters meant to you, stuck inside those walls, I swear yours meant just as much to me. Stuck in my own little lonely box.”

  “Not possible.”

  I smiled at him. “You’d be surprised.”

  For a long moment we watched each other’s faces, two pairs of eyes studying, recording. Then his gaze dropped to our hands, resting on the seat. He slid off one glove, and I did the same. Grazing my fingertips along his palm, I felt his warmth for a slim second before the air stole it. Like a child, I fanned my fingers to measure my hand against his, then he zippered us together, squeezing softly. We held tight until body heat came out of hiding to curl up between our palms. His next breath flared, giving away the fire burning behind that cautious expression.

  “Tell me what you’re after,” he whispered.

  “I’m not after anything. Only this.”

  “Tell me where we stand. Are we those two people from the donut shop, or those two people who wrote those letters to each other?”

  Good question. “We’re someplace in between, I think.”

  His brows drew together—only the subtlest little movement, but it told me everything. It wrote all his hope and regret and need across his face, clear as black ink on a white page.

  “I haven’t been with anybody since I got out,” he murmured.

  “You said.” Yet the hot little spark those words gave me was strong as when he’d first told me.

  “And you don’t think I’ve changed, from who I was when I got put away, but I have. I don’t want to go back to being who I was before I went in. Who I was at twenty-six. Who I was back in my shitty hometown. I want to be somebody who deserves to be with somebody like you.” He flexed his fingers between mine. “And not because you’re sweet and pretty and seem like, I dunno. Like some good girl or something, all clean and shiny. Like you’ll fix what’s wrong with me, with your purity or some shit like that.”

  “Good.” Very good. “But why, then?”

  He watched our hands, thinking. “Because you’re somebody who makes me feel what you do.” He frowned. “Because of how you make me feel, not because of how you seem like you’d make a man feel. Fuck, I’m not saying this right at all.”

  Yet it was poetry to me, dizzying in its beauty. I squeezed his fingers and whispered, “Go on.”

  “I don’t want you to think that I see you as this perfect white handkerchief that I think I can use to like, clean away the badness from myself. Because that’s how so many guys like me would see you. As some angel that’ll fix their sins. That’s not how I see you at all. That’s not why I want you, or want to feel like I’m worthy of you. I just want to be the kind of man who deserves to feel what you make me feel, instead of just settling for whatever’s available, the way people do back home. Did that make any sense?”

  It made so much sense, I felt tears searing my cheeks. Eric raised his eyes.

  “Oh, shit.”

  I squeezed his hand and wiped my face with my gloved one. “They’re good tears.”

  “How come?”

  I shrugged. “Because that’s exactly how I’ve felt before, with guys. Back home. Like I’m not allowed to have any dimensions past whatever fits the mold of sweet, wholesome Southern good girl. Like I shouldn’t swear or talk back or say mean things or lose my temper, ever. It’s like being on probation, almost.”

  The corner of his lips hitched. “I read your letters. I know you’re not that girl.”

  I smiled. “And it was nice to be seen that way by somebody. And valued for it.”

  His gaze fled again, dropping just to my scarf or chin. “Do you think . . .” He trailed off, but I knew what he was asking.

  “I think maybe.” He’d done everything he could to fix the mistake he’d made, omitting the news of his release, and to explain why he’d beat another human being half to death. Even more importantly, I believed him when he’d said he was planning to move on. And that was what I’d really needed, to trust that what he felt for me was affection, not fixation.

  His next words were barely a whisper. “Tell me what to do, to stand a chance of us ever getting there.”

  I didn’t think. Only spoke. “Kiss me.”

  “Now?”

  “We need to know if what we feel goes beyond those letters. If it doesn’t, there’s no use in us both pining for it.”

  “You been pining for me?” he asked, and his eyes narrowed in the most charmingly cocky way.

  “Course I have. For that man I met on those pages. Show me he’s here with me now.” I wasn’t entirely sure who this woman was, saying these words. But maybe I ought to let her speak up more often.

  He held my stare, and that look had me back in a hard chair, in a bleak room, in a mean world. Those hot, dark eyes, the ones that pinned me like a butterfly in a place where I never should’ve mislaid of my flight instinct. He edged closer. I did the same, bringing my bent leg up, resting my knee between us. My seat belt bound me, and I let his hand go so we could wrestle out of them.

  My knee on his thigh, heat soldering us together. His other glove stripped, then two bare, cold hands on my jaw, and those lips suddenly so close. His fingertips stroked my cheeks, brows, nose, skirted my lip
s. No man had ever made me feel so fascinating. He touched me like I was something precious and beguiling. I touched him in return. The contours of his face, the stubble I’d imagined rubbing my skin—so much softer than I’d guessed. I’d memorized the shapes of him, across the dayroom, across a classroom, across a tabletop, but it was nothing like stroking them for real. Feeling his heat, smelling his skin.

  A man, touching a woman for the first time since his freedom had been taken away.

  A woman, touching a man for the first time since she’d been robbed of her desire.

  In a truck no less, like two eager, clueless virgins, parked at the edge of something big.

  He seemed like he could do this for hours—just hold my face and nothing more. This man who had to be dying for his feast, yet he was enthralled by the candles or the soft cotton napkin, content to delay that first coveted taste a little while longer. He was steeped in awe, and I in impatience. His lips were so near, and I needed to experience them. I needed his mouth to make promises . . . to give me clues to how the rest of his body would feel.

  I rubbed our noses together, but his hands firmed, keeping me from coming any closer.

  “Kiss me,” I murmured, the words thin with desperation.

  “I only get to do it once, for the first time.”

  “I’m going to die if you don’t.”

  His lips twitched and his eyes narrowed, crinkling. “Remind me which of us has been locked up for five years.”

  “Both of us,” I whispered, and it changed him. I watched as he realized it was the truth. I watched as he came to understand, I needed this as badly as he did. That he’d been going hungry for a woman’s body all this time . . . but I’d gone without the very hunger itself.

  His palms cradled my jaw, thumbs on my cheeks. He tipped my face gently to his, like a chalice to obliterate a long, cruel abstinence.

  And we met, skin to skin.

  I’d thought I’d had the best first kiss a girl could ask for at fifteen—barefoot on a dock in the sunshine, peppermint ice cream on the boy’s lips. But as Eric’s mouth sought mine in the cold dark of this old truck, it felt more right than anything I’d ever known.

  He wasn’t cautious, not the way a man gets when he’s trying to give a good girl what he assumes she wants. He kissed like he was tasting chocolate, a slow, rich, curious exploration suspended between innocent and dirty. A tease of tongue, another, then deep sweeps, ones that cocked his jaw and curled his fingers in my hair. Everything I’d imagined. Hot. Needy. His low moan made the cab go hazy, and that mouth shifted—curious to ravenous in a beat.

  I surrendered to his eager, bossy tongue, dying to feel this again without fear—a man’s aggression. And his was so sweet, marinated in so much longing and waiting and mourning. When I’d tasted my fill of his hunger, I stroked him back. I told him with my mouth that if—that when—we found ourselves in a bed, I’d be so much more than receptive. That he’d leave those sheets with nail scratches up and down his back, maybe bite marks on his neck. When I nipped his lip, his entire body tightened, pushing a groan from his throat. He wore a hoodie under his coat and I found its drawstrings, clasping them.

  He spoke my name into my mouth. “Annie.”

  “Eric.” I stroked his neck, then bit him again, a little harder. Another tightening, another plaintive groan. The roughest man I’d ever gotten close to, yet here he was, so utterly at my mercy.

  The me from those letters was back, that girl who’d played with fire and liked the burn. I felt a boldness in my blood I’d never experienced before, ever. I sucked his lip, kissed his chin, his ear, breathed in the frosty, faint scent of his stubbly skin.

  “Touch me,” I whispered.

  “How?”

  “Anywhere. My face or hands or neck. Anywhere.”

  He slid his fingertips from my hair and held my jaw, tasting me deeply with rhythmic sweeps, the motions echoed all through his body. He came closer, seeming above me, somehow. So big. So familiar again, this man I’d thought I’d lost. His hips shifted in time with his kiss. I waited for the pressure, for his hands pushing me back, for his weight on me, his heat. I waited, and waited. I fisted his collar and hood, all but hauling him onto me.

  “You hard for me?” I asked against his cheek.

  “Course I am.”

  “Are you big?”

  The softest, most frustrated laugh vibrated against my lips, then he pulled away enough for our noses to touch. His lips brushed mine as he spoke. “You’ll have to find that out for yourself sometime.” He nipped.

  I let my palm roam down the front of his jacket, but he caught it at his ribs, his own hand trembling. “Not here. Not like this.”

  “We’re at your lake.”

  “Not like this,” he said again, pressing my hand firmly to his shoulder. “Not all rushed like this. Not after how long I’ve waited.”

  “How, then?”

  “In your room. In your sheets that smell like you, where it’s warm. In a big, soft bed. With candles and music maybe, all that girly stuff that’s nothing like how my world’s looked for the past five years. Not in the truck I’ve driven since I was in high school. Not getting watched by all this fucking snow.”

  “Tonight?”

  “If that’s what you want, then fuck yes.”

  I laughed, rubbing the tips of our noses together. “As soon as we possibly can.”

  His smile was as dry as it was warm. Dry and warm as those sheets he craved. “I’d speed if I weren’t on parole.”

  “We need condoms.”

  “And gas.” Turning, he redid his seat belt and started the engine, headlights bleaching the pines, scaring away the stars. “Get ready for the longest twenty-five miles of your life.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The ride back to Darren was a blur. Black asphalt, bright white service station lights. The same old decay rolling past, but a shiny little cardboard box now hiding in my purse. Eric was as impatient as I was, catching himself speeding every half mile or so, slowing down with a tight sigh.

  “Where’s your place?” he asked as we exited at the city’s edge.

  “That bar.”

  “Same street?”

  “Same building. Third floor.”

  He laughed. “You weren’t kidding when you said you lived close.”

  We were there inside five minutes, and he found a space right in front of the side entrance.

  My hands were shaking as I fished out my keys and unlocked the foyer’s two doors. I heard his steps behind me, up two flights. Felt them. Felt him, the weight and nearness of his body.

  I flipped on the living room lights. “You can just toss your stuff wherever.” I waved to the rocking chair by the window.

  My coat, then his draped on top. Gloves, his hoodie and hat, my scarf—a big rumpled heap of the two of us. Two pairs of boots leaning into one another like weary travelers.

  “It’s nice,” he said, looking around.

  “Can I get you anything? Tea or coffee? Or I might have some wine.”

  He shook his head, the movement tight. His eyes told me there were things he wanted to taste, but none of them came in a glass.

  “I’ll give you the tour. Living room,” I said with a cheesy sweep of my arm, then a peek at the kitchenette. “Bathroom through there, and my bedroom.”

  I led him inside and switched on the weak bulb of my reading lamp. I saw it all through his eyes. A full-sized bed, made up in fluffy down and soft sateen, the quilt my grandma had given me when I’d started college folded at the foot of the mattress. Curtains on the big window, blocking streetlight and brick. Perfume bottles and a jewelry box on the old dresser, a silk scarf draped from its mirror. I detected scents I took for granted. My clover deodorant, the facsimile summer of my laundry detergent. Me, in my bedclothes. Me everywhere. I watched his face as he studied
my room.

  “Is it what you pictured?” I asked. What he’d pictured when he’d fantasized about me. About us, in a place this soft and feminine.

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Have a seat.” I gestured to the bed, then excused myself to use the bathroom. Smoothed my hair, ran a fingertip over my deodorant stick and dabbed it behind my ears. I miss how you smell, like spring and grass.

  I fetched the condom box from my purse in the living room and gathered the votive and matches from the coffee table, shutting off the lights until it was just that single bulb, illuminating the man sitting at the edge of my mattress. His eyes went to the box, and I set it and the candle on the side table, feeling awkward. Feeling blatant.

  “Be right back,” he said, and we swapped places, me sitting nervously on the bed as he used the bathroom. I lit the candle and turned off the lamp. I considered whipping off my clothes and waiting for him, posed seductively in my underwear, but maybe—

  He returned, tossing his sweater on the floor.

  “Do you want to undress me?” I asked. “Or watch me undress for you . . . ?”

  “I want to kiss you, and we’ll see what happens from there.”

  I smiled, loving that. Loving that even though we’d each scripted this encounter down to every last inch of exposed skin and stitch of shed clothing, we hadn’t come here to act out those scenes. We were here to explore. To discover.

  I patted the covers. His weight again. Then his heat. His lips.

  That mouth was hungry. His hands held back, resting unassumingly at my shoulders, but I felt excitement in the way he kissed me—starved, greedy tastes, as though I were a drink he couldn’t wait to get wasted on. I held his arms, that bare skin under his short sleeves, all that hard muscle. One warm hand rose to hold my face, thumb stroking my jaw. The other went to my collarbone, fingertips light as a butterfly, making me shiver. The need was spreading through his body, from his mouth, now his fingers, read in his torso from the way he tensed, anticipating. The hand above my breasts grew heavy. I felt a fever breaking out, felt hot in my skin and seared by his excitement. The way he kissed was as raw and dirty as any sex I’d ever had, and I ached to feel his mouth all over my body. Between my legs, like his letters had promised.