A Forever Family

by Jamie Sobrato

  He thrust into her hard and fast, and Emmy could only arch her back and urge him deeper, taking him in as far as she could. She could not get enough. No matter how hard or deep he thrust, she wanted more. More, and more, until she felt him swelling within her, then he cried out, gasping, and gave his final thrusts. His orgasm nearly put her over the edge, but not quite.

  When he caught his breath, he leaned forward, and as he kissed her back, he slid his fingers between her legs. He was still inside her, and the delicate coaxing of his fingertips was the last bit of stimulation she needed, and she fell spiraling into the pleasure that overcame her.

  When her climax had passed, Aidan sat and settled her onto his lap, where he held her quietly, his face pressed against her back.

  Emmy felt a mixture of joy and shame. She wanted to escape, and she wanted to stay here all night making love.

  As if he could read her mind, Aidan said, “Just give me this, okay? It doesn’t have to be anything more. Just this, tonight.”

  And she knew she would.

  They eventually got cold, gathered up their clothes and walked naked back to the cottage, where they fell into bed together and made love a second time, more leisurely and tenderly than the first.

  Afterward, they lay awake together, in spite of the fact that it was going to be morning soon. Emmy should have been tired, but she found herself alert and wanting to talk instead.

  There was so much she didn’t know about Aidan’s life since they’d broken up.

  She had been afraid to ask about Darfur. She wanted to ask though. She didn’t feel like she could really know Aidan—this older, darker version of him—until she knew about his time in Sudan.

  She lay on her side and spread her hand across his belly, marveling at how after only a short time in the outdoors again since his confinement, his skin was already darker than hers.

  He lay on his back with an arm behind his head, his eyes closed. He looked about as peaceful as she’d seen him, and it seemed wrong to ask now and upset that oasis of peace he’d found. So she stayed silent and trailed her fingertips back and forth across his belly.

  “What’s up?” he asked, as if reading her mood.

  He’d always had an uncanny ability to read her.

  “Nothing,” she lied.

  He opened his eyes and gave her a skeptical look. “I can feel you hovering there. You’re wanting to talk about something.”

  She grinned. “Sorry. It’s nothing.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Spill.”

  “How’s your book coming along?” she asked, which seemed as safe an introduction to the subject as she could come up with on the spot.

  “Still going well since I’ve been seeing the therapist. I mean, I feel like my head’s a little clearer now, so I can focus on it and edit it down into a cohesive story. The first draft was me sort of vomiting out everything that was in my head, with no real sense of organization about it.”

  “I’d like to read it. When you’re done, I mean.”

  She watched his expression tense. “The dumbest thing about my deciding to write a book? It never occurred to me that people I know—my family and friends—would read it.”

  Emmy laughed. “That’s how I felt about my brief stint on television.”

  “You were on television?”

  She nodded. “I was the host of Famous Homes of California. I quit after shooting one season though, because the schedule was too hectic for Max.”

  “What was so bad about people you know seeing it?”

  “The camera really does add ten pounds,” she joked, then realized how stupid and shallow she sounded when compared to why Aidan probably didn’t want his friends and family reading the memoir of his capture and torture at the hands of a brutal militia.

  “I’m sure you looked beautiful. You always do.”

  He looked at her for a moment with such naked longing, Emmy felt a jolt of fear shoot through her. She was playing with fire here. She didn’t want a relationship with Aidan, and all this time they were spending together—it was going to lead to one of them getting hurt.

  Probably Aidan. Again. And he clearly didn’t deserve another moment of pain in his life.

  She withdrew her hand from his belly. Step one, cut out the physical contact. Step two, keep things unemotional.

  But…

  He needed a friend. Couldn’t she be that for him?

  “Do you not want me to read your book?” she asked.

  “No, it’s fine, I guess. It’s just…”

  “It probably feels like your worlds colliding—two worlds you probably want to keep nice and separate.”

  “Something like that,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

  “I remember feeling that way after my divorce. I had a hard time interacting with people who’d only known me as part of a couple. I lost some friendships because of that.”

  Aidan nodded. “Yeah…When I came back from Africa, I felt like…like a stranger to everyone who was acting like they knew me. A stranger to my own family, even.”

  “I remember seeing your aunt on TV during the hostage situation, pleading for your return. It was horrifying those months.”

  Aidan swallowed. “I didn’t like that my family, who hadn’t wanted anything to do with me the rest of the time, were suddenly all interested in me once I’d come back from Africa. It was as if they wanted to get on TV and talk about me.”

  She knew Aidan had never been close to his mother. He’d grown up in a trailer park in Santa Rosa, to a single mother and a father who’d disappeared, and he’d worked as hard as he could to get away from that life—even getting a scholarship to Stanford. For as long as she’d known him, he’d rarely visited his family, so it wasn’t hard to imagine him estranged from them now, too. It was part of the reason he’d always been close to her own father.

  “It makes sense that you decided to get away then.”

  “I kind of took getting away to the extreme though,” he said, expelling a bitter laugh.

  “You’ve done what you needed to do to survive.”

  “I guess. It feels like being a coward, though.”

  “What was it like, being a captive?” Emmy dared to ask, unable to contain the questions any longer.

  She watched his expression go from strained to oddly blank.

  “Not a lot different from how I live now.”

  “So,” she said quietly, “it’s kind of like you’ve kept living as a captive voluntarily?”

  He nodded. “Crazy, huh?”

  But she could see all the scars on his body that hadn’t been there before. It was almost too painful to consider what had happened to him…what might have happened.

  Without meaning to, she reached over and traced a jagged scar on his side below his rib cage.

  “You were tortured,” she said, and saying it aloud made her stomach turn.

  This person she’d once loved and cherished—though not nearly enough—had been treated as less than human, had been abused and nearly killed.

  “Most of it, I can’t remember very well. I guess the brain is merciful that way, erasing some of the worst memories.”

  “Do you remember how you got any of these scars?”

  “A few, yeah.”

  “Could you tell me about it?”

  “You don’t want to hear those stories.” His level gaze, dark and wary, was telling her to back off.

  He looked like a stray dog who’d been backed into a corner and wasn’t afraid to fight his way out.

  Emmy felt her courage to push him any further falter. “Only if you want to talk about it.”

  “That’s why you referred me to a shrink, remember?”

  “I referred you to Lydia because of the agoraphobia. I don’t think having a therapist replaces being able to talk about your experiences with a friend.”

  “Oh, is that what we’re calling you now, a friend?”

  His tone was sarcastic, turning his words into a slap in the
face. Emmy nearly flinched.

  “I hope so,” she said weakly.

  “Friends with benefits, huh?”

  “Aidan, that’s not—”

  “Things with David didn’t work out, huh? Did he get too serious for you?”

  “His name is Devan, and we’re just friends. There’s no romantic interest there.”

  “Sure there isn’t. And you swear he’s not the reason you started dressing all sexy and wearing that skimpy little bikini, huh?”

  Emmy flushed, then fury replaced her embarrassment. She didn’t care what had happened to Aidan—it didn’t give him the right to be an impossible asshole.

  They’d never addressed in the light of day what had been happening between them under the cover of darkness. And Emmy had not imagined it coming up this way, like such an insult.

  She’d only been seeking a little bit of solace, and she’d thought he had, too.

  “It’s none of your business what I wear or why I wear it. And I never meant for you and I to become sex buddies or anything like that.”

  “Which is why you keep arranging for Max to have sleepovers, huh?”

  He sat up, and his posture looked combative now. Emmy, sitting up, too, crossed her arms over her chest and willed herself not to flee before they’d seen this conversation through. But it would have been so much easier to run away…

  “I—I wasn’t really thinking about anything except that…you’re lonely, I’m lonely, we both have needs—”

  “I’m just the nearest convenient available male, right?”

  “You’re the one who followed me out to the lake tonight.”

  “And you’re the one who hopped on my lap and started grinding your hips against me. You’re just using me for sex.”

  “I am not!” But, she supposed, it was kind of like that.

  She’d been telling herself it wasn’t, but it was.

  She was being shallow and selfish, as he’d always accused her of being. She was taking what she wanted without regard for his feelings.

  “I’m sure Devan will be happy to accommodate you from now on. Don’t bother using me for sex again.”

  Emmy flinched at his words as he got up from the bed and started dressing.

  “Aidan, please wait. I’m not finished talking about this with you.”

  But he buttoned his jeans and headed for the door with his shirt in his hands.

  “I owe you an apology,” she called after him as she rose to follow him. “I’m sorry. Now will you talk to me about this?”

  Her apology garnered no response. He simply kept walking, and Emmy stopped, watching his departing form. He was too angry now to reason with.

  She felt awful, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on why as she went back to the bed and sat. It wasn’t just that she’d hurt Aidan, and it wasn’t just that he’d accused her of using him for sex.

  It was more than that.

  It was as if she was losing something she’d never even known she had.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The people of Darfur wanted to know why their lives didn’t matter. They wanted to know why the world could watch them dying and not care. I’ve never come up with a good answer to those questions.

  From Through a Soldier’s Eyes

  by Aidan Caldwell

  MAX SOMETIMES thought he could see the ghost. He didn’t all the way believe in ghosts, but he sort of did. It was like how he didn’t really believe Aidan was a pirate, but he sort of did believe it, too.

  What he saw that morning though, while he was under the bed, almost made him start all the way believing in ghosts.

  What happened was, his mom was over at the new house, and he was in the cottage by himself, looking for his favorite marble that had rolled underneath the bed. He’d had to crawl to the farthest side that was against the wall before he’d gotten his fingers around the marble again, along with a big dust bunny. He was clutching both in his hand as he inched his way back to the edge of the bed.

  But when he was about to crawl out, he thought he saw something moving over by the kitchen cabinet. Maybe it was just a fly buzzing around, or one of the moths that liked to flap around the lamps at night. Or maybe it was the ghost he’d been hoping to spot. He got really still and quiet like a mouse, and he watched and waited to see what would happen.

  Another movement caught his eye on the other side of the room—a see-through white curtain blowing in the breeze from the open window. Through it, he could see the teacup.

  Hadn’t his mom moved the teacup back to the cabinet? He thought she had, but…He couldn’t remember for sure.

  A beam of sunlight shone through the flapping curtain, casting a square of light on the wooden floor, and he could see little things floating in the air. Dust, Max guessed. He’d once tried to convince his mom that he could see tiny fairies flying around the room, but she’d assured him the little specks weren’t fairies but rather dust that came from some mysterious place.

  Where did the dust come from, anyway? He’d demanded to know, but his mom hadn’t given him a very satisfying answer. She’d said something about fibers and dirt and stuff that floated in the air.

  Maybe what grown-ups thought was dust, was really ghosts, or fairies or both.

  His breath caught in his throat and his belly got that million-butterflies-flapping feeling again, because he could almost see, in the curtains, the shape of a woman. If he squinted hard, he could imagine her there, standing next to the window in the sunlight, admiring the flowery little cup and how the light shone through it and lit up the roses in a way that looked pretty.

  Maybe it could have been the ghost lady’s teacup from when she was alive, he decided. Maybe this had been her house a long time ago, and she wasn’t a mean ghost, but just someone sad and lonely who didn’t want to leave her home behind. Max understood that—he never wanted to leave here either, he loved it so much at Promise Lake.

  “Max?” his mother called from outside, making him jump a little. “Could you come out here?”

  The butterfly feeling disappeared from his belly, and he could no longer imagine that the curtain was really a ghost lady. Now it was just a curtain, and the dust was just dust, and nothing felt magical at all.

  He slid out from under the bed and went outside, but not before deciding that he would hide under there again sometime and watch to see if a real ghost might appear.

  Outside, his mom was holding a bucket and some muddy toys and sandals he’d left in the woods that morning.

  “You need to wash these things off with the hose and then set them out to dry in the sun,” she said.

  He wanted to tell her about how he’d just seen a ghost and now he knew why the teacup kept ending up on the windowsill, but he couldn’t say it. His mom looked kind of mad lately, since she started having to work all the time and worry about the house getting built right.

  He didn’t want to say something else that would make her even madder. So he just said, “Yes, Mom,” and took the things from her.

  She went back to the building site, and Max kept looking around, curious to see if he’d spot the ghost again, but he never did.

  He wondered if Aidan had ever seen it, since he’d been living here longer than them. Max went to the back door of the cabin and knocked softly, even though he’d been told not to. Maybe the rule had changed now that Aidan was being nice to him. Maybe since he’d taken Max on a nature walk, he would be happy to see him now.

  He waited, but when he heard footsteps on the other side of the door, he felt a little scared and thought of running away. Before he could do so, the door swung open, and Aidan was staring down at him. He didn’t look too mad, but he didn’t look happy either.

  Max suddenly couldn’t think what to say.

  “Hi, Max,” Aidan said, still sounding not mad but not happy either. “What’s up?”

  “Is it okay for me to knock on your door now?”

  Aidan didn’t say anything. Then he finally said, “Sure, I g
uess it is. It’s probably best to do it later in the day, maybe around dinner time or later, because I write in the morning and afternoon.”

  “Oh.” Max had hoped he’d say he could knock anytime.

  “But if it’s important,” Aidan said, “you can knock anytime.”

  That made Max feel like he’d just gotten a new toy. He forgot about feeling scared and blurted, “Have you ever seen the ghost here?”

  “No, I haven’t. Why do you ask?”

  “I just saw the ghost!”

  Aidan frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I was under the bed getting a marble, but when I was about to crawl out, I saw the ghost lady. She was behind the curtain next to the window.”

  “Did she see you?”

  Max shook his head. “No, I stayed under the bed until she was gone.”

  “Are you sure she wasn’t a real person?”

  “No, she was a ghost. I could only see her by the shape of the curtain.”

  Aidan frowned again. “Have you told your mom about this?”

  Max shook his head. “Don’t tell her.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’ll be worried.”

  “I think she’d like to know, though.”

  “She’s always worrying about things.”

  Aidan knelt in front of him and looked at him real serious. “It’s wrong to keep things from your mom, but I need to know if this ghost you saw is kind of like how you said I was a pirate.”

  “You mean, am I making it up?”

  Aidan nodded.

  Max thought about it. He could see Aidan didn’t really believe him, and if Max kept insisting the ghost was real, Aidan would tell his mom. Then she’d get even more worried about him.

  “Yeah, it’s like how I said you were a pirate,” Max said, disappointed that he hadn’t managed to convince Aidan of his story.

  He still didn’t know for sure if Aidan was a pirate.

  He might really be one…

  “Okay, so you imagined the ghost?”

  Max nodded, a little angry that Aidan wasn’t willing to go along with the story. He’d been sure the man would understand.

  “Are you the one who keeps moving the teacup?”

  Max didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to keep lying.