Pretty Instinct

by S. E. Hall

  And our current location is another contender heavy on my mind. Ohio is sneaking closer and closer; home, a break. And what state’s right before Ohio in our path? Indiana. Cannon made one grand sweep, had a good time, met some new people…but surely he’ll want dropped off at his own home, back to stable ground.

  Those storybooks all end in the same way…The End.

  But while he’s here, and delusional, I’m gonna eat it up with a spoon. I’d rather let go at least once and burn into my memory all I can—every word, every touch, each kiss and caress, his look, smell, sounds—to remember, to comfort me, once he’s gone.

  ***

  “Your phone’s going nuts, it’s Rhett. Want me to grab it?” Cannon calls through the bathroom door, slicing through the serenity of my bubble bath.

  “Sure, don’t want them worried and Bruce is probably asleep. My code’s 1212,” I answer, closing my eyes again and settling further down in the water, luxuriating in the satiny feel of my skin and ease in my muscles.

  Luckily, it’s but minutes before he knocks again, startling me awake seconds from my sleepy head dipping under water. Guess that probably would’ve woke me up too—but a “Cannon call” is better. “Had them bring up warm towels. I’m gonna set one with your pajamas on the counter, close your eyes.”

  Kudos on the nice try, but how out of it does he think I am? “Don’t you mean, you’ll close your eyes?” I giggle.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Uh huh,” I cover my chest with slick hands and cross my legs, turning to my side. “Okay, come in!” I call.

  The door gradually opens and his head emerges around it—eyes closed. He puts out a hand, fumbling around seeking the countertop. “Left, up, getting warmer,” I guide his blind venture through laughter. “Hotter, oh you’re red hot, got it!” I clap when he lands the pile by the sink, a triumphant grin on his face.

  “Thank you, Cannon,” I purr…amply aware that clapping leaves my breasts exposed, swelling with longing from his close proximity. Even though he’s being a gentleman and not looking, I feel wanton and electrified, the boldest opposite sex dealings I’ve ever had. No, there was nothing bold with Rhett and me, merely two broken souls clumsily (and very quickly) consoling each other.

  “My pleasure,” he hums, a raspy, tortured sound, revealing his battle with temptation as burdensome as my own. “You need help getting out?” His mouths quirks. He’s adorable, standing there trying to be all suave tempter…with his eyes closed.

  All he wears is gym shorts and a smirk. He sure is pretty…so I add the instinct. Go for it. “Yes, that’d be awfully sweet of you.”

  He jerks with his sharp inhale, igniting all my senses too. I can hear each deep, labored breath he takes as if they were my own, and the shifted, magnetic current in this small space zings along each nerve in my body. I watch his bared, hairless chest rise and fall once, twice, before he lets his eyes lazily open.

  Accepting and emulating the siren he seems to think I am, I rise from the water with slow, deliberate taunting, and present myself to his now lust-filled, probing eyes. Never breaking our gaze, he licks his bottom lip and reaches back his hand to search out the towel. His greedy eyes devour every displayed inch of me, first down with long, leisurely strides of his eyes, then back up, even more intricately. “Do you want to hear the sweet thoughts or the ‘me man, you…you version’?” he asks in a growl.

  “Both,” I whisper, bravely keeping my arms at my sides.

  “I will never be able to pick a favorite part of you, each more flawless and beautiful than the last. You’re absolutely perfect, Lizzie. Without a doubt, the most exquisite woman in the world, inside and out.”

  Dizzy, I teeter under the onslaught of those magical words. He’s instantly there, holding me up, his large, strong, caring hands burning my skin where they touch. “Easy, I got you. I’ve always got you,” he croons in assurance, wrapping the towel around me from back to front. “Hold on,” he softly warns only seconds before scooping me up in his arms and carrying me toward the bedroom.

  No, no, no…I was, I was practicing foreplay, getting used to…I’m not ready for this yet.

  “You wish.” He dips his head to me and winks. “Emotionally exhausted and worried sick isn’t really a turn on for me, babe. Just gonna set you down so you can get dressed.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” I reply, but my voice is frail and pathetic, a poor attempt at denial.

  “Didn’t have to.” He places me down on the bed softly and takes a step back. “But one day, you will. You’ll have to beg me to stop because your body can’t take another second of pleasure. Until then,” he bends, chastely kissing the end of my nose, “get ready for bed. I’m gonna grab our phones in case they need us. I’ll be right back to wrap my body around yours and hold you all night long.”

  He starts to leave, halfway through the door when I manage up the trepid words. “What was the other version you were gonna say?”

  Turning, his eyes gleam and that smirk I’ve come to adore—that’s a lie, I liked it the first time I saw it—is already in full effect. He stalks back to me and bends over me, hands caging me in at my sides and whispers smooth as silk in my ear. “I promise, I’ll tell you the minute I slide inside you for the first time.”

  And with that—he’s gone.

  And so am I—totally, hopelessly gone over Cannon Powell Blackwell.

  Know what else just dawned on me? Lots of those storybooks don’t end with “The End”…they often close with the mystical, perhaps not unattainable words, “Happily Ever After.”

  Chapter 17

  Lying in bed, still awake despite the fact we have an early morning and monumental day ahead, Cannon almost makes me forget anything else exists. He’s captivated me with tales of his childhood for hours, giving me reprieve from all but his soothing voice, taut arms around me, and hilarious retellings.

  “So did you get expelled?” I ask in amusement. “Surely streaking across the field at a high school football game carries a pretty hefty punishment.”

  “Suspended two days from school and benched for four games. But it was the last game and I was a senior, so…yeah, they didn’t think that one out too well.”

  “Did your parents make the two days at home miserable?” My father would have put Conner through hell for embarrassing him like that.

  He chuckles so hard his eyes tear up. “Um, not exactly. They went to work and Lacy skipped school to keep me company,” he wiggles his eyebrows.

  “Lacy was your girlfriend?” He nods. “And she skipped school to come have sex with you while you were on punishment?”

  He’s laughing as he turns his head toward mine. “Isn’t that what high school couples do? You sound shocked.”

  “I am.”

  “Why? You and your boyfriends never snuck out, figuring out secret trysts?”

  “Had I ever had a boyfriend, no, I would never do anything like that.”

  His jaw drops, eyes bulging. “You’ve never had a boyfriend?”

  Shaking my head, I don’t trip up like I normally would, unafraid now of revealing too much. Cannon’s had glimpses into my past, my family—dysfunction in all its glory. And more every day, I don’t mind him involved, in my past or present…and maybe, just maybe, if I don’t screw it up…my future. “First of all, any guy would’ve had to get past Conner, the most over-protective big brother ever. He’s extremely large, as you know, and he played football then; he would’ve made the younger boys in my school piss themselves with just a snarl. And even if they managed that feat, there’s no way I’d bring them around my parents or the house of gloom and doom. So, I hung out with Rhett and Jarrett, my angels placed right across the street.”

  “Conner played football?”

  “Did he ever! He was awesome. So quick on the snap, he’d tackle three guys at once right off the line.”

  I see his confusion, creases around his eyes, mouth tightly drawn. I’ve never quite laid it out for him
, nor will I now. If he wants to ask, let him, and how he asks will be a make or break moment.

  “When did he stop playing?”

  “After high school.”

  I give nothing more. His first question was fine, but he’s got the rope now. I’m praying he doesn’t hang himself. Not only would I be flabbergasted, completely misjudging him, but I’d be heartbroken, and my faith damaged irreversibly. I believe in Cannon’s character, more, dare I say, than I do almost anything else in the world. I won’t “guide” him through this; either he confirms my suspicions and takes the honorable path (I will be waiting at the end with open arms) or he doesn’t.

  He rolls to his side, facing me, lazily drooping his right arm over my waist. “Lizzie, please don’t try to entrap me. You know what I’m asking, and you know I love Conner. There’s no way I’d disrespect him, or you, with a badly-worded question. But you’ve never been on this side, and it’s difficult to express it precisely how I want to and how you want me to, but still actually ask the questions. I know you’re ready to bite my head off if I misstep, but I wish you’d trust me enough to meet me halfway. Please don’t wait for me to screw up. Come to me and lead me away from the wrong words, and I promise to always do the same for you.”

  All this time, I’ve held the proverbial “right way, wrong way” lists in my head…and they were defensive piles of shit, because Cannon just taught me the unequivocal right answer. Humbling myself with a long, calming inhale, “now out for me,” he whispers, I do exactly that and begin, chastened and amazed at his sincerity and open honesty.

  “Conner suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Basically, he took a blow to the head in his frontal lobe that was bleeding out. It happened the summer I went to riding camp. I was fifteen when I left and sixteen when I got home, because my birthday’s in July, and Conner was only just nineteen. When I left, that Conner was an honor roll student, double sport athlete, in a band and well liked all through school. He was still living at home then, and about to start college nearby. He chose to stay close by rather than run as far and fast as he could because he was worried about Mom. She was…” Even before they’re spoken, the words taste guilty, but if I’m gonna tell him, I’m gonna tell him the unabridged truth. “She was an alcoholic, and popped blue and yellow pills to go up, light pink and white to come down. She stayed in an unfaithful marriage and pretty much her bedroom, unless my father needed her to stand beside him and smile at a charity event. Some days she didn’t even bathe, just took the bottle to her bedroom with her. Other days, she painted up her face and hosted brunches. You just never knew with her; it was a constant crap shoot.”

  His arm across me tightens and he pulls me in against his body, stroking my back, encouraging me to continue. “Anyway, like I said, when I left, he was fine. Then there was an emergency and I got picked up from camp early by the family driver and taken straight to the hospital. Conner was hooked up to every machine I think they could find. Doctors had gone in and stopped the bleeding and were keeping him in a coma until the fluid and swelling on his brain went down.”

  I have no idea why I sound like I’m reading from a script, monotone, when I’ve never once spoken these details aloud.

  “He survived. He woke up, obviously, but he was never the same. He doesn’t remember what happened, or blocked it, or won’t say, who knows. What he said tonight…it’s the most I’ve ever heard, either.”

  The story and silence settles over us as we stare at each other, unmoving or speaking for what feels like forever. Finally, amidst our private little pocket of safety, where it’s only us, Cannon clears his throat and lifts my hand, placing a soft kiss upon it. “Thank you for telling me, trusting me with your pain. Can I ask some questions now?”

  I bob my head yes and he proceeds.

  “So, when Conner said your mom went to heaven, was he already injured? Was he in the hospital or back home? Where was he when she actually passed?”

  “Home,” I mutter, “from the hospital. It’d been a while.”

  “Maybe he’s lost that chunk of time in between his injury and her death and…having trouble remembering.” He chooses his words carefully, respectfully, and I snuggle closer against him for it. “Did he suffer the head injury on the day of the fight he was describing? And not to sound trite, but who could possibly take Conner out, especially from the front? I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t know anything for sure. Dead people don’t talk, Conner doesn’t know, and my father…” I toss my head with an evil chuckle. “Don’t even get me started on him. All I know is I wasn’t there for a big fight like that, but it could’ve happened any time. But if that’s Conner’s last memory between her alive and dead, it’s pretty likely it was when I was away. Other than camp and school, I was around, and more than Bubs. And after he got hurt, honestly, Mom practically was dead, a complete zombie, so I doubt she was up for a battle.”

  “And your father never told you what happened? Surely he at least made something up. He didn’t think people would forget to ask, did he? What about Child Protective Services or your family?” He’s talking fast, huffing…

  I get it, Cannon, been there, felt the same frustration.

  “Oh, there was an investigation. Not by Protective Services, since he was over eighteen,” I give him a pointed look, “but definitely some questions. Bruce is all that’s left of my mother’s family, and he was taking care of my aunt. My father’s parents? They’re as goddamn naïve as everyone else who meets the motherfucker. So, that leaves…my mother, literally catatonic and unable to speak coherently, and my father, saying he wasn’t there. No one could prove otherwise, and the sheep in Sutton backed my father and his political social status. It simply got swept under the rug, the unsolvable mystery that people simply turned a blind eye to. It wasn’t even a few months later that my mother went to sleep and never woke up. Her death was ruled an overdose, a blood test confirmed that. She took the easy way out when she was alive and in death. She was weak, a coward, and left her children to fend for themselves in the mess she built. Oh, she padded us financially,” I bark a laugh, which sounds even more sadistic than the last one, “but by that time, Conner couldn’t even count money—the wrong kind of help and way too late. Huh,” I wonder aloud, reaching a tentative hand up to check—yes, I’m crying. “I didn’t realize until this very second how angry I am at my mother. I always thought of her as my angel.”

  She’s gone, been gone, but the wound feels reopened, a fresh cut, like I just lost her all over again.

  “Hey,” he tilts up my head, “she is your angel. Lizzie, your mom loved you. Weak doesn’t mean evil. Again, merely an outsider looking in, but it sounds like she got lost in her unhappiness and couldn’t find her way out. She has my sympathy much more so than my anger.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” I close my eyes, my head still in his hands. “I’m ready to go to sleep now.”

  He slides down on his back and lowers me gently with him, guiding my head to the crook of his arm, easing it under my neck and unfailing kissing my hair again and again; it’s the last thing I remember.

  ***

  Only a few hours later, Cannon wakes me with soft coos in my ear and kisses on my face. Once he’s convinced I’m really awake to stay, he grabs a shower while I call my attorney, Will Morrison. He’s been with me since I turned eighteen and fought for custody of Conner, helping me win. Thankfully, his father had worked for my grandfather, on my mother’s side, of course, so he was willing to go against my father’s clout.

  I give him the rundown of my father’s plans as well as Conner’s story, but his response is grim. He’s gonna call me back after he makes some calls of his own and does some digging, but believes that as long as my father discloses their location and agrees to be receptive to communication while they’re gone, he’s within the legal guidelines of our agreement to take Conner. As for the memory, Conner will definitely have to be evaluated by an agreed upon mental health professional and recount everything to the
m in person.

  Is he fucking joking? You can’t just snap your fingers and expect Conner to recite on demand! Therefore, Conner’s recollection is basically unusable.

  Beyond discouraged, I get dressed and ready to head out, barging into the bathroom to tend my hair and teeth with no consideration whatsoever for Cannon’s privacy. He’s already out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist, droplets of water glistening on his chest, but a half-hearted once over is all I can muster.

  “Bad news?” He steps behind me, squeezing both my shoulders and finding my gaze in the mirror.

  “Conner’s story won’t matter, he’d have to retell it on command during a psych eval. Never gonna happen, and I don’t even wanna put him through trying. They oughta eval the dumbass who thinks that’s a reasonable idea.”

  “What about the trip with his dad?”

  “That probably will happen. Justice system at its finest. So can you hurry?” I shrug his hands off my shoulders and walk out.

  Why? Because I’m a bitch, my scars crusted over with skin so thick even someone as extraordinary as Cannon Blackwell can’t permeate through. Once again—bam!—a rock fell right at the end of the tunnel, blocking any light.

  “You ready, precious?” He strides to me, taking my hand in his.

  I flinch, trying to pull away, but he only squeezes tighter. “Trust me with your pain, Lizzie, please. Trust me with your anger, confusion, resentment, fear, and all those feelings of powerlessness. Give it all to me. I will carry it, you, and us to the other side.”

  “Spare me,” I mumble, relaxing my hand in his since it’s futile to struggle; he’s not letting go. “Have you seen your own resume? You skipped a huge level in between me and What’s-Her-Grandma-Name. In the middle somewhere is a surplus of women who aren’t clueless, heartless morons with an agenda, nor are they moody, baggage-laden, distrusting, wishy-washy misfits such as myself. You could have your pick, you know? You’re that remarkable. I wouldn’t mention the part about thinking you liked me, though, that may reflect badly on your sanity and taste.”