by Kahlen Aymes
“There’s an extra one in the right hand drawer. I have a pair of your sweats and one of your T-shirts. Do you want them?”
I looked at her, finally taking in everything about her. She was thinner than I remembered, her cheeks slightly hollow, and dark shadows lurked under her eyes. The long sleeved thermal shirt she wore hung on her and her legs were bare beneath it, save for a pair of pink fuzzy socks. My mind briefly registered they were a stocking stuffer from a few Christmases back. I wanted to hold her and take away all the bullshit, but I couldn’t let go of the fact she didn’t trust me or that I’d found her in another man’s arms thirty minutes before. Did she keep that toothbrush for him? My jaw tightened, but I mentally shook myself. She’d said no one touched her, but if she didn’t trust me, could I believe her?
“Yeah, okay,” I murmured softly. “Just the sweats.”
“Obviously toiletries are provided here. That’s where the extra tooth brush came from.” She read my thoughts, and I flushed guiltily.
She walked forward and took some navy blue sweatpants from the open suitcase that rested on the only chair in the room, and laid them on the foot of the bed near me. I didn’t ask her how or why they were with her in Paris. I didn’t ask her why her suitcases were packed. Tonight was soon enough for questions and answers I might not be able to live with. In my haste, the sleeping pills were still in the pocket of my dirty scrubs laying in a pile on our bathroom floor in New York. Oh, well. Maybe with Julia finally in the same room, I’d be capable of sleep.
“Thanks. Where should I sleep?”
Julia’s brow creased and pain registered on her beautiful features before she quickly masked it, and turned away. I knew her so well, yet the past six weeks made me feel like a stranger. I tried to shake it off, telling myself this was us and we’d always be us, but I didn’t know where to begin. It hurt like hell. So much, it made me sick to my stomach.
“I thought…” she hesitated. “In the bed. Unless… you’re not comfortable with that.”
“No. I mean, it’s fine,” I said shortly, loudly clearing my throat, before heading into the bathroom and closing the door behind me.
When I’d finished, I turned out the light and made my way back to the bedroom. The bed was turned down and Julia lay on her side with her back to me. I could hear her breathing in the darkness. It was like a scene from a movie where the sounds are amplified obnoxiously, like the heartbeat from A Tell Tale Heart pounding harder and faster with each passing second. At least Julia was sleeping. I wondered if she’d recovered from her flu.
I hesitated a few seconds before dropping the sweats and crawling naked into bed. I was too exhausted not to get a good night’s sleep, and the sweats would make me hot. Sleep. I drew the covers up to my waist, flung a bare arm over my eyes, and I willed the welcome oblivion to come quickly. I tried to ignore the delicious scent of my wife, now within arm’s reach. She was close enough I could feel the heat radiating between our bodies; I could hear her soft intake of breath. I tried to ignore the emptiness in my arms and the soreness of my heart, and I wished to hell I’d remembered those fucking sleeping pills. You’d think that not sleeping for almost 24 hours, would have been enough.
Julia~
Ryan tossed and turned next to me, and I started violently out of my fitful half-sleep when his hand flung heavily on my chest. My heart ached, and I longed to touch him. The wall between us was killing me. When he’d held me to him on the sidewalk, the big vacuum in my chest started to ease. But then, when he pushed me away and didn’t hold me in the cab, it returned, more sickeningly than before.
Even with my husband beside me, I felt isolated; cut off from the one person I needed most in the world. I still didn’t have him back. My best friend wasn’t with me. I struggled with it, because, why was he here if he hadn’t set things straight with Jane and finally understood how she made me feel? Would he fly all the way to Paris, just to fight with me? Was he here to end it? A bitter laugh bubbled up, and I held it in. Wouldn’t that be unbelievable? After I’d decided I could put up with Jane as long as I knew Ryan was mine, maybe he didn’t want me anymore. Maybe I’d pushed him too far. If I could, I’d rewind the world five plus years and just be his friend rather than not have him at all.
Tears stung at my eyes and bitterness threatened to choke me. I turned toward him in time to see him flop onto his stomach and push his pillow roughly to the floor. I put a trembling hand to my mouth to stop myself from calling out to him. I wanted his arms to cage me in and pull me to his chest. I wanted Ryan—my Ryan—to take all of this misery away. I wanted his passionate whispers and hungry kisses. I wanted to know he loved me. I needed it like I needed air.
I tried to inhale, but a sob rose up in my throat, so I turned my face into my pillow to smother it. I cried hard, my body shaking and my heart breaking, as I struggled to remain silent.
“Julia.” Ryan called softly.
I gasped at the sound of his sleepy, velvet voice and turned, my hand reaching through the darkness for his. He rolled toward me and loomed above me as our hands threaded together.
“Are we together? Is this real?”
“Yes,” I breathed, and an instant later, his mouth was hungrily latched onto mine. He kissed me like it was the first and last kiss we’d ever have. Not a minute passed and he had my shirt off, and we were skin on skin, both frantic in our efforts to get closer. My hands squeezed around his butt cheeks as I pulled his hips toward me, and he parted my legs with his knee.
We kissed again and again. Deep, aching kisses, full of passion and sorrow, want and need. But the need felt deeper than physical, even more than emotional. There was a desperateness born of uncertainty and urgency in each and every touch. Our fingers pulled at each other’s flesh and then softened to reverent caresses, hands wound in each other’s hair as we pulled each other closer still.
Neither of us uttered a word as our bodies came together in long slow thrusts, our mouths fed on the other and hands stroked and pleasured. My fingers traced the strong muscles of Ryan’s back, memorizing every single line, feeling every flex as he moved above and inside me. He was strong and tender, heartbreakingly loving and demanding in his need at the same time.
My breath rushed out and my back arched, the tension beginning to build, my body opening. I pulled my knees up to take him in deeper, my hips thrusting opposite his. He was big and wide, swollen and hard as steel. It felt incredible as my body stretched to remember his, only to contract around him. Ryan groaned against my neck, gently biting my shoulder before claiming my mouth once again. I sucked on his thrusting tongue, and my body milked his, my muscles begging him to come inside me.
When my breaths began to come in soft pants, Ryan pulled hard on one breast with his mouth, sucking and twirling his tongue around the nipple before grazing it with his teeth. His breath was hot against me, and when his hand reached between us to stroke the sensitive flesh crying out for his attention, my head fell back in helpless abandon. His name left my mouth in a breathless rush, and he took me over the edge in a powerful climax. Ryan’s thrusts slowed as I rode out my orgasm, his kisses became less demanding and tender until his movements stilled.
Even as my hips surged against him, urging him to continue and find his own release, he was motionless, still embedded deep within me but no longer kissing me. My eyes opened to find him staring down into my face, his expression pained, his brow furrowed in confusion and anger, his breathing ragged, and the low light making the light layer of perspiration on his skin glow. He’d just made such passionate love to me, but he was angry, and my heart crumbled to dust.
“How could you leave me without a Goddamn word?” he asked, sorrow dripping from his words. “Can’t you feel how much I love you?” I was still gasping, my body twitching. I reached up to touch his face with gentle fingers, aching to take the pain from his eyes, praying for his understanding. “You knew what it would do to me!” he said brokenly. “I told you in Boston last year. It would fuckin
g kill me if you left me!”
Ryan pulled out abruptly and moved to the edge of the bed, leaving my arms empty, my body bereft, and my heart breaking for both of us. I was still quaking with the aftershocks of my climax, and the air around me felt arctic at his absence. I rolled nearer, my eyes searching for his face, needing to read his expression, but his back was to me, his head dropped into his hands, his elbows on his knees. His body shook violently with the force of his pain, and I could almost smell his tears mixed in with the scent of our sex and his cologne. His quiet sobs were left alone in the silence; sorrow flowing and thundering around me like a violent storm.
He hadn’t let himself come. This wasn’t about sex. It was about love.
Nothing had changed the love; sometimes suffocating, sometimes debilitating, sometimes so joyous and incredible, but always overwhelming and utterly amazing. The mad, mad love remained, maybe stronger and more than it had ever been. Always growing, no matter what we faced. It had always been unconditional, and nothing could ever change it. Not in this lifetime or a thousand more. No matter how much we hurt each other, the love was still strong enough to make us invincible, or kill us both.
Crawling up behind him, I wordlessly slid my arms around his waist, one hand reaching out to wrap around one of his forearms. He didn’t resist or pull from me, but his body was ridged. Tears spilled from my eyes as I tried to find a way to take away the pain I myself had caused. More than anything, I needed to heal the abyss between us, but I felt more helpless than I’d ever been.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I whispered, leaning into him and resting my cheek on the hard muscles of his bare back. His sobs shook us both, and my heart broke all over again.
“I wanted to make sure you were real, and not just another fucking dream that turns into a nightmare the minute my eyes open. I wanted…” his whisper broke raggedly. “No, I needed to be close to you… but even making love can’t do it until we get this shit resolved between us.”
“Ryan, I’m sorry…” I said again in a whisper, my mouth beginning to trace circles on his skin. “So sorry. I was wrong to leave you.”
Tears dropped on the arm that I’d wrapped around him, and yet he said nothing. I kissed his back in a series of soft caresses while my fingers squeezed his arm and the other hand splayed open on his stomach moving upward. I paused when it rested over his heart. I could feel it pounding, feel his chest heaving in his anguish.
“I never should have left, but I was in so much pain. After I saw her in your arms and what she said to me…”
Ryan tensed even more. “She wasn’t in my fucking arms, Julia!”
“Okay…” I soothed. “Maybe it wasn’t what I thought, but it hurt more than anything has ever hurt me. And, after I left, I knew I’d hurt you, but I was in so much pain, I couldn’t face yours, too. I was selfish. Please…” my voice broke on what seemed like a hallow explanation, even though I’d suffered unspeakably myself. I realized no amount of suffering would justify leaving him, ever. Nothing was more important to me than being with this man. My heart thundered painfully in my chest as I waited for some sign that Ryan felt the same way. “Ryan, please forgive me,” I begged again.
He didn’t move or say a word as the precious seconds ticked by, my hands kneading the firm flesh of his chest, my forehead resting on the hard muscle of his back. Until finally, I could bear it no longer and scrambled off the bed and around in front of him, kneeling, naked, on the floor and forcing him to really see me. His features contorted in agony, and he turned his face to the side, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me. My heart exploded. I knew he loved me. Knew it like I knew my own name, but we’d hurt each other worse than we ever had.
“Do you have any concept of what you put me through? Any fucking idea?” His voice was low and harsh, thick with pain. “Hearing you say I forgot to remember you—I can’t believe you’d think that was ever a possibility. To use those words against me…”
“I felt like I was losing you,” I said softly. My hands slid up from his knees to his thighs, up over his arms and then around his neck, my body hovering between his legs, yet he was still. I pressed my mouth to the curve between his neck and shoulder lovingly. Somehow, I had to make him understand. “I guess, I wanted you to feel the possibility of that loss, too. But, I love you, Ryan. I never stopped. Please…”
I didn’t know what I was doing. I felt desperate for his forgiveness, for his arms around me, holding and cherishing, like I needed from him. I pressed more kisses to the side of his face, praying he’d turn and find my mouth. “Please, hold me, Ryan, and don’t let go,” I begged as I began crying in earnest. “I need to know you still love me. I need to know we’ll always be us.”
Instantly his arms locked around me in a tight embrace and his chest filled, pressing against mine. His face turned into the curve of my neck and stayed there for a good five minutes, one hand clutched into the hair at the back of my head and the other flat between my shoulder blades. My eyes closed in relief as I stroked the silk of his hair back and ran kisses across his shoulder and up his neck over and over again. My hammering heart slammed into his.
His hand closed around my upper arms and held me away so he could look at me. His blue eyes swam with tears, but they burned with fury.
“That’s just it! You know how much I love you, Julia! You know you’ll never lose me. Unless you want to kill me,” he ground out, his voice thick and hard. “If you didn’t know it, I wouldn’t be breathing. That’s why I’m so pissed! How can you not trust that?” I could physically feel his anger, but I also felt the magnitude of the love he couldn’t deny. My heart swelled with hope.
My chin trembled and fat tears tumbled from my eyes. I reached for his face and nodded.
“Yes, I do. I know you didn’t sleep with Jane.”
“Would you still love me, even if I had?”
I gasped loudly. It never occurred to me that he might actually cheat. My face crumpled, and my shoulders shook. I cried harder, but still, I couldn’t lie to him. I dug my fingers into the nape of his neck, and I held onto Ryan as if my life depended on it; because it did. I nodded as the truth rocketed through me. I loved him unconditionally, and I would never stop. No matter what. Forever.
“Yes. Even then.”
“Really? Because you gutted me and still I love you! I fucking hate you right now, but I love you so Goddamn much it’s killing me!” The words ripped from him even as his hands pulled me tightly against him again, his fingers digging into the flesh of my back painfully as he buried his face in my neck and shoulder sobbing with me. “It hurts so much! How could you doubt me? Did you really think I could touch anyone after you?”
“It wasn’t about that. It was about…” my voice cracked as emotions choked off my words. God, my chest hurt!
“You don’t have to say it. I know what it was about!” His voice was muffled against me.
“No!” I pushed back, and his dark eyes burned into mine. His face was damp with tears, the remnants clinging to his lashes. I reached out to brush them away with both hands. “No, obviously you don’t. I…” The loss I felt, even as I held him in my arms, threatened to overwhelm me. “I just… I missed you. I felt pushed aside.”
Ryan’s face twisted. “But, we made love all the time. I thought you knew. When I touch you… I can’t get closer to you than that. Our time was so limited, I tried to show you every minute we were together. Making love… it’s like a religious experience!” He huffed in anguish. “At least, it is to me.”
Panic seized my chest. How was I going to make him understand? “It is, Ryan. It means everything, but remember you used to tell me that as long as you had my words, you didn’t need my body? Remember? In Estes Park that first Christmas?”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with this? I was joking around!”
“That didn’t make it less true, did it?” I pulled back. This time it was me who needed to see his face.
“No.” He shook his head. “
It’s true.”
“Right. I needed you! Just you. The talks, the coffee dates… just hanging out.”
Realization flooded his beautiful face, and we came together almost violently, desperation filling our embrace. His hand threaded through the hair at the back of my head as my arms wrapped around his waist.
“I missed you,” I whispered against him. “I needed my best friend.”
“Oh, Jesus! I’m so fucking stupid.” His soft lips rained kisses all over my face, at first quickly and then more slowly, becoming caressing in the way he savored my skin. My mouth ached for his; my heart ached for his love. “I’m sorry, baby,” Ryan whispered against my lips. “You should know I’d never put anyone before you. I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I’m the one that needs forgiving.”
He pushed back and cupped both sides of my face with his hands; his thumbs brushed my cheekbones, and then one raked over my lower lip. His eyes glistened with tears that still clung to his lashes and left trails down his face, but his expression was searching.
“Only if you forgive me too. I’m so sorry.”
We were both laughing and crying at the same time as we hugged and kissed over and over. Relief washed over me and I could finally breathe again.
His strong arms tightened around my body and lifted me effortlessly onto the bed. Somehow, we ended up wound around each other under the covers, my head resting on Ryan’s chest as his fingers traced delicate patterns on my shoulders and back. My hand wandered down over his iron flat stomach to grasp around him. He began to swell and harden instantly.
“Mmmmm…” he sighed.
I ached to tell him about the baby, but the moment seemed to be just about us, and I wanted to bask in it for a few minutes. The weeks apart seemed endless, and now, with his arms around me, I felt safe and relaxed; finally happy. The last thing I wanted was for Ryan to believe that the baby was the only reason I was going back to him.