Since You've Been Gone

by Anouska Knight

  “You choose to live like your father!” I tried, but I already felt lost in the argument. “You’ll probably end up just as...as...feral as he is!”

  Ciaran seized my wrist, knocking the brush and rose from my hand.

  He pulled me into him.

  “Yes, I want to be like my father. To be driven insane by a woman because of how much I love her and how much she loves me. My father loved my mother since the day he first saw her playing in the street when he was eight years old, and every day since.”

  He leaned in, just a breath away from my mouth. I watched his lips as he spoke.

  “I want to feel that, too, Holly, to be maddened by it. For it to be real.”

  A heartbeat after his words, and Ciaran’s lips were on mine.

  There was an urgency I hadn’t tasted when he’d kissed me in the forest rain; it was enough to flavour this kiss unlike anything else. I was sinking into it, free-falling as he kissed me deeper still.

  A yearning, gone neglected for so long now, raised its head.

  I wanted him. I did. And as soon as I thought it, the levee broke, leaving me to drown in the crushing force of my need for him.

  His lips parted and the tip of his tongue gently teased over mine. I tasted him and the force of the deluge around me exploded. His mouth moved adeptly over mine, moving hungrily along my jaw before lavishing gentler kisses at my ear. It made the hairs all along my body stand for him. I leaned away to give him access to it all, allowing his mouth to trail a line of caresses down to my collarbone.

  My hands had remembered what to do. I grabbed at the waist of his jeans where the warmth of his skin found my own. His stomach was so soft under my fingers, the lines inside his hips calling me to follow them. I swallowed, watching dry-mouthed as Ciaran tore himself free of everything from the waist up.

  He stood there for a moment, hair ruffed and half-naked while I concentrated on breathing. I saw him swallow, too, movement in the faint shadow of his neatly stubbled neck. I wanted to look at him, at his chest and the rippled torso my fingers had just stroked, but I couldn’t break from the hunger in his eyes.

  He moved closer, finding the hem of my shirt. His eyes held me while his fingers released the bottom button from its hole. Then the next. Then another. We said nothing as he unbuttoned me, sliding the shirt from my shoulders.

  I knew, when he touched his lips to mine again, it was all over.

  I was right.

  As soon as we touched, my body reacted. I felt myself raise for him, offering myself to him.

  It had been so long.

  Ciaran unclasped my bra, and the stiffness of my nipples betrayed the eagerness of my breasts to feel him against them. He cupped me, holding me firm in his hand before leaning over to take me in his mouth, gently kissing and pulling, first one and then the other. My breasts were on fire against his tongue, his saliva quickly chilling against the first. It made me want him to return there, to suck softly against me, to pull me into his mouth. He obliged and my need spiked.

  I reached beneath him, to feel those lines, those delectable lines that would lead my hands to the hardness I’d already felt pressing on me. I pulled at his belt and it gave as easily as my bra had. He began to kick his boots away while I yanked at his fly.

  He shrugged from his clothes then lifted me by my thighs onto the counter behind. My jeans tugged free, then his tongue buried into my mouth again.

  He broke from me, and, at last, a sight that was enough to stop me dead.

  Ciaran stood before me, hard and smooth and substantial. A thrill rushed through me to see his body, naked, perfect, ready. I looked at him, and swallowed again. He looked back at me, the wolf watching the doe, and all I felt was the need to be hunted.

  He slipped my cotton panties from my hips, teasing them down my thighs and off my legs, one foot at a time. He stood and moved into me, pressing at that warm hardness gently against me. He pushed aside the tendrils of hair that had fallen in front of my face, and whispered against my lips.

  “You’re so beautiful, Holly. Is this what you want?” he asked.

  I swallowed again, and nodded. It was. So much I didn’t have the words. He laid me back against the cold steel counter, and my legs parted for him. He leaned down, the slightest touch and then he kissed me there, as he had my mouth, gently, slowly, deeply.

  My body jerked with the instant pleasure of it. I held on until he lifted himself again. Our eyes met as he pressed his hardness against me, just touching me there. And then he pushed, hard and hot and sure....

  A short sear of pain made the pleasure all the sweeter. He was home.

  Cold steel felt good beneath me as he thrust himself again and again. I pulled myself up so I could hold his chest against mine, to taste his lips again while he made love to me. I slid when I lay back again, in the stickiness beside me.

  “I’ve knocked something over,” he groaned.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I whispered. “Just, please...don’t stop....”

  Ciaran slipped his arms under me and, without withdrawing himself, moved us to the other worktop. I felt Jesse’s roses squash under me.

  “Shit!” he said, realising.

  “It doesn’t matter. Just—” Too late, we were on the move again.

  He thrust me too hard against the metal racking and cornflour—I think—tumbled past us. A plume of white powder rose into the air and he started laughing then.

  “Sorry. I’ll clean up.”

  His smile was soft under my fingers, slickened by the purple goop I’d just smeared over him. I kissed the grin I’d watched so many times, hanging from his neck as I did, plunging my tongue into his mouth as he plunged himself right back into me.

  The sex grew to furious proportions, hot and sweaty and glorious, until at last, the dormant volcano in me erupted with Ciaran’s. I felt his warmth spill into me, and held my thighs around him as he rode out his final twitches of release.

  He held me there, trembling like a wild animal, held firm by the hunter—the rhythm of one heart thudding from one chest into the other.

  The bakery was in chaos.

  All of Jess’s work, gone. Piles of colour where we’d knocked blossom tints flying, flour everywhere, a fortune in colourants seeping across the worktop.

  Ciaran turned his head to kiss me again, and all thoughts of the mess fell away.

  “Is that your phone?” he whispered against my mouth.

  “Hmm?” I hadn’t heard anything.

  Through the rapture, a buzzing of jeans against the tiled floor, heralding the first stirrings of embarrassment.

  Only Charlie had ever taken me like that.

  I caught my breath, as his name sobered me. What had I just done?

  I’d let lust take me over. Now the memory of it circled like a vulture over the bones of my fidelity.

  Ciaran moved to pass me my phone but I took the jeans instead, quickly pulling them on. He waited while I turned away from him to fix my bra, sliding my shirt back on over sticky arms.

  I took the phone from him, and the alarm of voicemail trilled in my hand. I hit the dial button.

  “Holly, Holly, please get this! I can’t get hold of Rob, and—” I listened to Martha panting into the phone. “This isn’t a false alarm, Hol! I’m scared. Please call me!”

  I speed-dialed her number, pleading for her to answer. The tone rang once, twice....

  “Hello?”

  “Martha, it’s me!”

  “Oh, Holly,” she whimpered, “the baby’s coming. Right now! And—” I heard a sharp intake of breath.

  “I’m coming, Martha. I’ll be right there.... Where are you?” I asked.

  “I’m in the ambulance, going to Hunterstone General... Please hurry. I’m scared.”

  Ciaran was alread
y pulling his clothes on.

  “We’ll take my car. It’s faster,” he said, passing me my boots.

  “Martha, we’re close. We’ll be right there, honey. Just stay calm!”

  chapter 27

  I’d tried to get over my aversion to hospitals, and mostly I had, but it was impossible here. It hadn’t changed much—the information desk was now a different pastel shade, perhaps—but the thick choking smell of disinfectant hanging heavy in the too-warm air was as stifling as ever.

  Ciaran had dropped me out front while he went to park. It was his idea. We’d made it in fifteen minutes, plenty long enough for the remaining food colouring on our clothes to ruin his leather interior. It was all over my jeans where he’d picked them up, and everything else his hands had touched.

  At least the film of flour in my nose was helping to stave off the stench of antiseptic and illness, which was probably what was getting up the receptionist’s nose. She looked sternly at me over purple-rimmed glasses.

  “My sister, Martha Buckley—she’s just been admitted by ambulance. In labour.”

  “Maternity is ward eleven. Follow the green arrows,” she said, scrutinizing my appearance. My hair seemed to be of particular interest, and I reached to feel what was there and a puff of cornflour fell about me. Great.

  “Green arrows?” I asked.

  The woman nodded at the wall, not wasting another word on me.

  Right. I’d forgotten about the rainbow-of-arrows system, chasing around the maze of corridors. So green was for new life, whereas no life had been a misleading white. This system would really suck for my dad. He was colour-blind.

  Two rights, and an absurdly long corridor later found me buzzing into a security intercom.

  “Ward eleven?”

  “Hi, yes. My sister, Martha Buckley—she’s just been admitted.”

  “Is she expecting you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, the door’s open.”

  I took a squirt of hand foam on my way in. It lathered purple where it lifted the food colouring. Into the ward, the smell was different—more talcum than bleach, where the soft bleating cries of tiny babies chased away my feelings of disquiet.

  Martha is about to become a mother.

  Another desk where two pretty nurses—one portly with a long blonde ponytail, the other a brunette choppy bob—sat staring into monitors.

  “Hi,” the brunette said, before her smile faltered. The blonde looked up and raised eyebrows in surprise. I resisted disturbing my hair again.

  “I’m looking for Martha Buckley? She’s...having a baby.”

  “You’ve come to the right place.” The brunette smiled, already forgiving my appearance. She glanced at the wall chart behind her. “She’s in delivery room three, just through the doors there.”

  “I’ll take you,” said the blonde, leaving her chair. “I’ll show you where the bathroom is.”

  “Okay...thanks?” I think I needed a mirror.

  “So, last-minute nursery decorating?” she asked, leading me past rooms of mothers beaming into clear plastic cribs.

  “Yeah,” I lied, as she showed me into the private room where Martha was on all fours on the bed, purple-faced and caked in sweat.

  “Martha! Are you okay?”

  “What the hell happened to y—? Aghh!”

  “Just relax, Martha. Breathe, just breathe!”

  Martha began panting like the Orient Express.

  “The bathroom’s across the hall,” the blonde said, smiling, then she closed the door behind her.

  “Relax? Relax? There’s a person trying to squeeze through my vagina, Holly! You relax!” she snarled, groaning into the pillows in front of her.

  Gingerly I began to rub her back.

  “Not there!” she roared at me. “Lower. Rub lower!”

  I made circles—quickly—over the back of her hips where I could feel something strapped around her middle.

  “Shouldn’t Rob be doing this?” I laughed softly, trying to hide the concern in my voice. It was probably more concern for my safety than hers.

  “Rob’s on his way back from London. He’s stuck at Beckersley Station—the connecting train was cancelled. The next one’s not for another hoouurrr....” Martha groaned again before more panting. On the back of her nightshirt, purple and orange stains had rubbed free from my palms. I needed to get cleaned up, properly.

  “You need to get him here, Holly. He hasn’t got any cash on him, the stupid sod. He can’t get a cab!”

  The door clicked open and the brunette slipped into the room.

  “How are we doing, Martha?” she asked, looking over the printouts on the machine next to my sister. “Baby’s heartbeat looks nice and steady.” She smiled.

  I smiled, too. Martha did not.

  “We’ve examined her,” the nurse said, turning to me. “She’s eight centimetres dilated. She’s moving along nicely. Martha, would you like any pain relief? How about we get you set up with the gas and air?”

  Go for the gas and air, Martha, I willed her.

  Martha nodded into her pillows.

  “Nurse, her husband’s at least two hours away,” I said under my breath, following her to the door. “Will he be here in time?”

  “He might be. But she’s moving along quickly. You might want to hurry him up.” She nodded, then abandoned us.

  Martha began wailing.

  “What can I do, Martha? Tell me what to do, honey.”

  Martha grabbed my hand and started to cry into the pillows. “Get Rob. I need him.”

  I left the room to try to call Rob when the nurses returned with Martha’s relief. Outside in the corridor, I fed the payphone with twenties and punched out Rob’s number.

  “Rob?”

  “Holly, are you with her?”

  “Yes, we’re at the hospital, Rob. She’s good. She’s doing well.”

  “Stay with her, Holly. Don’t leave her!”

  “I won’t leave her, Rob. But you need to get here, fast.”

  “Holly, it’s chaos here. The cashpoint’s empty. I can’t get a cab!”

  “Right. Just stay where you are. I’ll think of something. Just wait by the entrance to Beckersley Station, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay, Holly. Thank you.”

  “You won’t be able to get hold of me, Rob, so make sure you’re there, okay?”

  “I’ll be here. Holly...tell her I love her.”

  There was something in Rob’s voice that put a lump in my throat.

  “I’ll tell her. Don’t worry. ’Bye”

  I put the phone down and loaded more coins into the slot. Jesse had a habit of not answering withheld phone numbers and I was guessing this one wouldn’t show.

  Damn it.

  Martha screamed from inside the room and I forgot the phone. The midwife had her legs apart under the sheet and was peering up there when I walked in. Martha had the gas tube clamped fast between her teeth.

  “It’s all right, Martha. Just keep doing what you’re doing and Baby will be here soon.” The midwife lowered Martha’s legs again and smiled serenely at me. A rap on the door and the blonde popped her head around.

  “I’ve just found him wandering the corridors. I knew you belonged together as soon as I saw him.” She smiled, stepping aside for Ciaran.

  It suddenly hit me just how much of a mess we’d made in the bakery. He had an angry purple smear across his mouth and cheek, and another much more dramatic deep orange stain reaching from his cheek beneath his T-shirt, which was also stained. His hair looked like he’d been talcum-powdered by an overzealous mum on his way through the ward.

  He looked at me, and I knew he was unsure.

  Behind me, Martha had stopped sucking fo
r dear life on the plastic nozzle, and had propped herself up on her elbows. Finally, the gas was working.... In fact, she was grinning.

  “Hi!” she rasped. “Come on in.”

  Martha and the two nurses all threw Ciaran warm eyes as he edged into the room.

  “They’ve been decorating the nursery.” The blonde nurse giggled. Ciaran looked at me with his hands in his back pockets. I looked at Martha, who was burning a smile back our way.

  “Did you manage to get any paint on the walls?” the midwife asked.

  “You could do with a change of clothes!” the blonde said, making cow eyes at him.

  “You can borrow one of Rob’s shirts, in the bag over there,” Martha managed to say, before puffing on her fix.

  “Oh, no. That’s okay,” he said.

  Martha’s grin widened. She loved an accent. So did the other two, it seemed.

  “No, I insist. I packed extras for Robert in case he spilt anything down himself in the canteen. Hol, dig Ciaran a T-shirt out of the top of that bag.”

  Ciaran shrugged and I moved over to Martha’s travel case.

  “This one?” I asked, holding a plain yellow polo shirt up.

  Martha nodded.

  Ciaran took the shirt. “I’ll just go and, er...”

  “Oh, you can’t use the toilet. It’s in use. And the bathroom’s for women only. Ward policy.” Blondie shrugged.

  “I’ll just...here, then?” Ciaran said, waving his finger at the floor.

  They all watched him shamelessly as he wriggled out of his T-shirt. Martha’s eyes widened at his torso, feasting them on him. For someone about to pay the waiter, she sure hadn’t been put off admiring the menu.

  Then three things happened at once.

  Ciaran turned for the shirt. Martha sucked on her tube. The nurses and I gasped like hooked fish.

  Ciaran’s back was covered in handprints—some perfect, most smeared, all in shades of fuchsia, yellow and clementine. The three women turned and looked at my hands.

  But even that was a small humiliation in comparison to the gut-wrenching reminder I’d just had. I’d forgotten the woman with the flaxen hair, inked forevermore into his back. The woman who had ruined him, Fergal had said.