by Selena Kitt
"Ellie," he whispered, cradling my face and kissing me back, pushing his tongue into my mouth and running one of his big hands down the curve of my waist. Every nerve-ending in my body buzzed with warm, open need under his touch and I had to fight to hold myself together. Thankfully, he pulled away before I lost it.
"Are you tired? I want to show you something."
"No, I'm not tired. What do you want to show me?"
"You'll see."
He said something to the driver, quietly so I couldn't hear what it was and we climbed into the backseat together. Forty-five minutes later we pulled into a deserted parking lot and I opened the door to the sound of roaring surf.
"Where are we?"
Cade took my hand and started leading me along a narrow, sandy path.
"The beach. I come here to go running sometimes and get away from everything."
When we got to the beach itself, Cade told me to take my shoes off. Then we walked down to the water's edge where the waves were breaking and I gasped as the surprisingly cold seawater rushed over my bare feet.
"There," Cade said, leaning over and kissing the top of my head, "now you've had your feet in the Pacific."
I smiled to myself as the warm evening breeze skimmed over my bare shoulders. "Is that why you brought me here?"
"Yeah. I wanted to be with you the first time you experienced the ocean."
I couldn't contain myself. He was trying so hard to make things right with me. He heard me start crying and suddenly scooped me up into his arms, kissing my face.
"Ellie, don't cry. Please. I know we haven't really talked about anything yet. I know you probably have...things going on in your life. But we can have this evening, can't we? I'm just so happy to be with you, right now, here."
I buried my face against his chest and let him carry me back to the top of the beach where we sat down on a huge driftwood log.
"Ellie. Talk to me. Are you OK?"
I looked up at him, barely able to make out his profile in the fading light.
"No, Cade, I'm not OK."
He wanted to put his arm around me. I could feel it. But he didn't. He was holding back, keeping a distance he mistakenly thought I wanted.
"Why, Ellie? Are you with someone? Are you...married? It's alright if you are, I'm not going to get angry or act like an asshole like I did last time. I understand you have a life of your own and that it's none of my business."
I could feel Cade trying to keep his voice level and normal-sounding. The word 'married' had almost caught in his throat.
"No, I'm not married. I'm not with anyone either. It's weird. I was mad at you for so long, but I never met anyone else like you. It wouldn't be fair to get into a relationship with someone else. It would be a lie."
He was quiet for a minute, absorbing the news that I wasn't married or coupled up, which had clearly been what he'd been worried about.
"You're not with anyone else?"
I could hear the surprise and relief in his voice as I shook my head. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed my arm, hard.
"You're not - Ellie, you're not sick are you? Is one of the boys sick? I can help if-"
"No, Cade, I'm not sick. No one is sick."
"Then what? Ever since you got here there's been this weird dark cloud over you, like there's some horrible thing you need to tell me."
"It's not horrible. Well, you might think part of it is horrible, but no..." I trailed off. There wasn't going to be a convenient time to give him this news. It had to come out. I had to tell him. I took a deep breath and steeled myself.
"Ellie, you're freaking me out! What's going on?"
"Oh, Cade," I whispered, starting to cry again, pressing my face into my hands. "I have - I have to tell you something. I kept something from you. Something big."
Cade looked at me closely.
"Ellie-"
"You have a son, Cade. We have a son."
He stayed exactly where he was, staring at me for a long time before speaking.
"I - what? Ellie, what?"
I repeated myself slowly and quietly, not quite believing that it was happening, that I was finally telling him. "You have a son. I got pregnant that last time, when you came to North Falls. His name is-"
Cade suddenly pushed both his hands into his hair and leaned back as the news sunk in. I just sat beside him, watching, my body tight with stress and anticipation.
"Oh my God, Ellie. Oh my God. I have a son? I - I can't believe this."
He turned to me suddenly and I actually flinched, anticipating a negative reaction.
"Is this a joke? Are you joking?"
I shook my head, even though it was already obvious I wasn't joking.
"I'm so sorry, Cade. I'm so sorry I didn't tell you. It never - it never seemed like the right time. I didn't want to make things worse for you, I kept reading about you online and I didn't want to be a burden or, or, to make you think I wanted something from you so I just thought, well, and I was so scared your parents would find out and try to do something, I don't know what but your mom, she didn't want me to be with you and..."
I sat there babbling until Cade took one of my hands and squeezed it hard enough to snap me out of it.
"Ellie!"
When I looked up at him, he had a huge grin on his face.
"What?"
"I have a son!"
I was confused.
"Yes, Cade, you have a son. He's five years old. He's-"
"I have a five year old son!" He shouted, slamming his hands down on the log hard enough to make me jump.
"Cade? I - you're scaring me, I can't tell if you're angry or happy."
He visibly relaxed his body when I said that and we sat in silence for a little while. Then he turned to me and put one finger under my chin, turning my face towards his.
"I love you, Ellie. I can't - I can't explain everything I'm feeling right now, but I love you. I'm in shock. Are you afraid of me? Were you afraid I was going to be angry?"
I squeezed my eyes shut and felt two fat tears roll down my cheeks as I nodded. "Yes."
"Well I'm not. I don't feel angry. I feel...I don't know. I feel like I just won the lottery. Or the Stanley Cup. No. This is better than the Stanley Cup. I feel fucking amazing! You - Ellie, you had a baby? My baby? I can't believe this. I seriously can't."
I slipped my phone out of my bag and pulled a photo of Christopher up before handing the phone to Cade. As soon as he looked down and saw Christopher's face, he started crying, too.
"Oh, Ellie. Oh, he looks like me. He looks just like me."
There was something on Cade's face as he looked down at the photo of Christopher. It was pride. Glowing, bursting pride. As soon as I saw that look I felt suddenly consumed with love. For my son, for Cade.
"I want to see him."
"You can."
"Is he here?"
"No, he's in North Falls with Jacob and the boys - Jacob is seventeen now and Christopher is in school so-"
"Christopher? Is that his name?"
Cade was staring alternately at me and at the image of Christopher on my phone.
"Yes. Christopher Caden Hesketh."
Cade managed to hand me back my phone before hunching over, shaking with emotion.
"I'm so sorry, Ellie. I'm so sorry. For everything I did. For the way I treated you. For leaving you when you needed me. I'm so fucking sorry."
Overcome, I leaned over and put my arms around Cade, holding him tightly while he wept and apologized over and over. When he calmed down a little, he looked up at me.
"I know you think I'm just in shock right now, Ellie. But I mean everything. I meant everything I said to you today. I'm never going to let you down again."
He did mean it. I don't know how I knew it, but I did. Completely. We sat there, eyes locked, as all of the tension and worry of the past few weeks melded with the ache of what Cade and I had lost, the years we were never going to get back and transformed inside me into a sudden despera
te heat.
"Cade-" I breathed. "Cade."
"Ellie."
"Let's go home."
Cade
I'll never forget that drive home with Ellie and the way it felt like something in the universe had fundamentally shifted into place. It seemed to last for hours as the highway unwound itself in front of the SUV and Ellie sat beside me like a hot ember, burning with a need so intense I could feel it.
I was elated, almost high, so full of love it felt like it was going to spill over. When I reached across and put one hand on her soft, bare thigh she sighed and I nearly lost it at the sound of her. My cock was so hard it ached. I needed to be with her. Before anything else, thought or action, I needed to be with Ellie. I needed to be inside her. As soon as the front door was closed behind us I pushed her delicious little body up against a wall, a little harder than I had meant to, but she just softened herself against me, reaching for me, wrapping her arms and legs around me and opening her sweet mouth for my tongue.
"Fuck, Ellie," I whispered as I kissed her neck and pressed her into the wall with my body.
No other woman has ever been able to effortlessly turn me into a lust-crazed animal the way Ellie does. I'm almost afraid of how powerful the reactions she pulls out of me with her needy little kisses are. That's how it was that night. Like years of unreleased tension was boiling up inside me, threatening to overtake. I had to be careful not to get too rough, to maintain some level of control with her. She was so small in my arms, a little bundle of femininity so intoxicating I could hardly breathe for wanting her. When she slid her hand down my chest and ran her fingertips over my cock, I groaned and pushed my hips forward.
She breathed my name into my neck and I picked her up off the floor and carried her, wrapped around me, into the bedroom. When I lay her on the bed she looked me in the eyes, her mouth half-open, and whispered my name again as I stood there in front of her yanking my shirt off and unzipping my pants.
I pulled my cock out and she arched back onto the bed as if pushed, spreading her legs and pushing her hand down between her thighs, touching herself.
"Ellie," I said, my voice thick and slow, "take your clothes off."
She did it and I saw that she wasn't being deliberately slow, it was that her hands and fingers were shaking a little, clumsy with need for me.
"Ellie, please. I can't - baby, I can't wait..."
I watched her, still standing, as she got down to her panties and held her legs together as she slid them down, all the way down to her ankles and then threw them onto the floor. Then she lay back, opening her body for me as her long, dark hair spread around her head on the pillow and my cock twitched with impatience.
"Cade..."
Fuck, the way she sounds when she needs me. I swear I could come just listening to her like that. I crawled onto her, using my body to open her legs even wider and smiling as she bit her lip and let out a tiny, hungry little cry when she felt the wet head of my cock against her thigh. I leaned down and kissed her breasts, working my way up to an impossibly soft earlobe.
"What do you want, Ellie?"
She squirmed underneath me, rocking her hips up, begging without words. I could feel the lips of her sex, swollen and slick, against me but I wanted to hear her ask me for it, to drag out the moment before I was inside her until neither of us could breathe or think any longer.
"Cade, please. Please."
"I love you," I whispered into her ear, "I love the way you ask for me, Ellie."
There was nothing in her eyes but hunger. She didn't want anything else except me. I pulled back a little and wrapped one hand around my cock, nudging the tip of it into her folds as she pushed her hips up off the bed. I wanted to go slowly, to make her beg and plead and dig her fingernails into my shoulder, but as soon as I felt her body ease itself down over me I couldn't do anything else to hold back.
She gasped when I thrust into her pussy and felt the tight, sweet resistance of her slippery sex enveloping my cock. The second I was inside her I stopped breathing, suddenly aware of how dangerously close I was to exploding.
"Oh Jesus, Ellie. Oh, fuck. You feel so good, mmm, you feel so fucking good."
She pulled me down to her mouth and kissed me, darting her tongue between my lips and smiling up at me.
"Do you like that, Cade? Do you like how I feel?"
I almost came instantly and had to slow down until I was barely moving. If she was going to talk to me like that, there was no chance of lasting for much longer.
"Mm-hm, yeah," I murmured, settling my body down against her so her breasts and her tight little nipples crushed against my chest.
"Cade?"
"Mm?"
"Cade, faster. Please, I need-"
"Ellie, I'm going to come if I go any faster than this. I'm barely holding off, baby. Just give me a-"
Instead of backing off and letting me cool down, Ellie smiled up at me lifted her hips up a little, sliding her pussy further down my cock and then rocking herself against me in quick little thrusts that sent my eyes rolling back into my head. I pulled out at the last second and she giggled.
"Cade, I want you to come, though. I want you to come inside me."
"Don't say that, Ellie, please."
"Why?"
"Because I'm going to blow my fucking load on your leg if you keep saying that."
She smiled coyly up at me, her breath coming quick and shallow. "No, Cade. I want it inside me. Please don't stop, I'm close..."
I sank back into her. She moaned and the last thin vestiges of my control slipped away as my thrusts got faster and more powerful.
"Yeah, Cade. Yeah. Please. Fuck me."
I watched her as she worked herself up to orgasm and her eyes started to flutter shut.
"No, Ellie. Look at me."
She refocused on me, smiling and digging her fingers into my back as the first little clenches of her sex gripped my cock and I slammed myself into her, hard.
"Cade, oh my God. Cade!"
"That's right, baby. Ellie, come all over my cock. I-"
My breath caught in my throat as she came, her pussy tightening around me until I was on the very edge, groaning and burying myself all the way inside her.
"Fuck, Ellie. Fuck, oh FUCK."
I pinned her down underneath me as my balls tightened and I started spilling myself into her, filling her, growling into her neck. The pleasure was so intense I almost thought I was going to pass out. She took me, even though I could see from the way her brows knit that I was hurting her a little.
"I'm sorry, baby, Ellie, I'm-"
"No, Cade. I want it. Please, Cade..."
I held myself inside her until my balls were empty and she'd taken every last drop as sweetly and perfectly as I knew she would.
When I pulled out she chuckled at the feeling of my cum running down her thigh and I smiled.
"Sorry. Look what a mess you made me make."
"Cade," she smiled as I collapsed onto the bed beside her, "I love your mess."
"And I love you," I said, catching my breath as the warm, full-body buzz of post-orgasmic relaxation worked its way through me.
We fell asleep like that, on top of the bed, completely naked and without showering. When I woke up it was dawn and Ellie was beside me, her body limp with slumber. I leaned over, slowly so as not to wake her, and kissed her cheek. Then I found her bag and took out her cell phone so I could look at Christopher again.
Christopher. Even on second glance and without the shock that had been pervading my brain last night, he still looked exactly, eerily like me. My son. I rolled the words "my son" around in my brain until they started to feel a little less odd. He was five years old. I'd never really been around babies or little kids, but I wanted to know everything about the smiling, blue-eyed boy in that photo. I lay in bed beside my sleeping girl and stared at the photo as childhood memories flooded my brain and I switched myself out of the child's role and into the father's, to see if it fit. There were a lot of
lakes around North Falls, I could take him fishing. I wondered if Ellie had bought him skates yet but assumed she probably hadn't, not unless she'd been able to find a second-hand pair at Goodwill.
My son looked strong. Not skinny like some little kids are, but solid, robust. His smile was one of genuine happiness. It occurred to me that I was going to have to tell my parents about him, but I couldn't find it in me to feel any stress. They were just going to have to deal with it. Ellie never had a lot of money, but she had more love than anyone I had ever met in my life and she had brought up three little boys as well - better, actually - than any the BMW-driving soccer moms I had ever known. I looked over at her as she stirred in her sleep and felt another wave of love crash over me. I had to see him. Christopher. My son. But in the meantime, my girl was going to wake up and need breakfast, so I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and padded barefoot into the kitchen to make pancakes.