In Dark Woods (Signal Bend Series #4.5)

by Fanetti, Susan

  Because nothing she could say or do seemed to convince him that he could have a life without his legs. At his best and brightest, he would only pay lip service to the idea that he could survive a life off the road. Without her to goad him, cheer him, kick his ass for him, he would just give up.

  She was so fucking tired.

  With a glance in the rearview to make sure Gia was still well asleep with her little purple stuffed unicorn clutched in a pudgy fist, Lilli turned the volume back up on They Might Be Giants and had herself a good, hard cry as she sped down I-44 to Isaac.

  ~oOo~

  He was sitting in his chair when she walked Gia into his room. He looked good—the hours of daily therapy had given him his upper body back and then some. Even in the six weeks since he’d been able to sit in the chair and roll it on his own power, his shoulders had filled back out, and his arms were even bigger than before. He’d put back on about half the weight he’d lost in the hospital. He was still wrapped in a hard back brace, from just below his arms to his hips, and his legs had lost a lot of their bulk, but Lilli thought he looked virile, his hands in black fingerless driving gloves and his biceps bulging.

  When he saw Gia, he grinned openly, his face losing the shadow of gloom that was otherwise on it constantly. For Gia, and for no one else, Isaac found some light. Because of Gia he found that light.

  “There’s my squirt!”

  Gia shook free of Lilli’s hand and ran to Isaac, yelling, “Daddy, whee! Whee, Daddy!”

  She climbed up his legs and settled immediately into his lap. “Okay. Hold on, G. You ready?”

  She hooked her hands into his brace. “Whee, Daddy!” He rolled out of the room, turned the chair, and sped down the hallway. Gia yelled, “Whee! Whee! Whee!” all the way.

  When he got to the corner, he locked the wheels and drifted into the turn. Gia squealed with delight.

  ~oOo~

  When Lilli got back from dropping Gia off at home on Sunday afternoon, Isaac wasn’t in his room. She went down the hall to the nurse’s station. Lately, she’d been caught off guard every time she went through the halls here. Everything was festooned with glittery green and red decorations. It was nearly Christmas. She no longer thought of time passing in terms of seasons and holidays. Time was only meaningful to her in the way that it measured Isaac’s progress.

  Kelly, a burly male nurse, was the only one at the desk.

  “Hey, Kelly. Have you seen Isaac?”

  He looked up from his charts. “Yeah—he was going down for a soda, I think. That was a while ago, though.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  She headed down the hall to the rec room, where there were vending machines, couches, tables and chairs, a big shelving unit full of board games—a place for patients and their families to stretch out a little. She didn’t see him in here, either, but then she looked out the wide window and saw him sitting on the patio. It was dusk on a December evening in Missouri and not even ten degrees above freezing, and he was out there in his t-shirt and sweat pants. Lilli crossed the room and pulled open the slider.

  “What are you doing out here, love?”

  He turned his head and smiled at her. His smile was so much different now. Always a sadness at its corners. “Hey, Sport. I like it out here. I don’t know why, but the cold makes me feel almost normal. Like when my face goes numb it doesn’t feel like the other parts are wrong.”

  She pulled up a chair and sat next to him. “Okay.” They sat together in the cold until dark was full on the night.

  ~oOo~

  Later that night, Isaac hoisted himself into bed, using his arms and the triangle hanging over the bed. Lilli helped him get rid of the back brace and take his shirt off, and he relaxed onto the bed. As had become their routine, he turned on the television, and she kicked off her shoes and climbed into bed with him. She tucked her head on his shoulder, against his strong neck, and ran her fingernails over his chest, through the hair on it. Because he could only feel to his navel, she concentrated her attentions above it. Groaning, he pulled her ponytail loose and combed his fingers through her hair.

  His chest had regained its chiseled tone. He was still so gorgeous, so solid.

  She loved this part of their day best of all, when they were quiet and close, when he was touching her. They would lie like this for hours, talking or being silent, just together, until he slept. And then she would go across the street and try to shut her head off for a couple of hours, until she could come back to him.

  Tonight, on a downstroke as he ran his fingers through her hair, he carried on downward until he reached the hem of her top. He curled his fingers under and dragged the hem up, exposing her belly. And then both of his hands were on her bare skin, the flat of one on her back, the fingers of the other teasing her belly.

  “You’re so thin, baby. I can feel your ribs.”

  She shrugged but didn’t answer. There was no time anymore for working out. There was barely time for eating. She had more important things to do.

  He continued caressing her skin, and she closed her eyes against the emotion surging through her. He hadn’t touched her like this since he’d been shot. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want him to stop, but she didn’t want to start down a road that would end for him in a chasm of depression.

  When his still-calloused hands moved upward, and she felt his palm cup her breast—the sensation so intense, even through the silk of her bra, that she gasped and flinched—she covered that hand with hers.

  “Isaac, don’t.”

  He shook her hand away and pulled the cup of her bra down so he could flick at her nipple. Awash in emotion and sensation, she whimpered. “Isaac, please.”

  “Let me get you off, baby. I want to feel your pussy in my hand. Let me get you off.” He was panting, and it worried her. He still had some trouble keeping his breath.

  But his words drove her wild. Now she was frantic with excitement, and she sat up and got off his bed, divesting herself of her clothes as quickly as she could. He watched, his eyes focused and fiery. “Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he rumbled.

  She climbed back up to lie next to him, but he patted his legs. “On me.”

  So she sat on his lap, hooking her arms around his neck, and pressing her mouth to his. She felt his hand on her face, his fingers tense, and his thumb pushed gently down on her chin, opening her for his tongue. They kissed ravenously, virtually feeding off each other, as his hands held her and touched her. One hand tangled in her hair with an iron grip, holding her head to his, he explored her body with the other. She had missed his touch more than she’d allowed herself to acknowledge, and now it was everywhere—over her thigh, her ass, her side, her belly, over her breast, her neck, her arm. He returned to her breast again and again, brushing the nipple gently and then pinching it abruptly, swirling his fingers around it and then pulling it sharply, until she thought she’d go mad. She moaned into his greedy mouth, the sound undulating in time to the movements of his hand.

  For her part, she slid both her hands into his hair and held herself as tightly to him as she could, wanting all the contact she could find, wanting him to feel her everywhere he could. And then, at long last, he pushed his hand between her legs. She reared backwards, against his grip, away from his mouth, and cried out.

  “Oh, baby. Oh, fuck, I missed the feel of you wet on me. Oh, fuck.” He shoved his fingers into her, making them rigid and then pistoning them in and out, his thumb pressed on her clit. She came hard and nearly right away, her body flailing and out of her control, biting down on her lip against the scream that rose up into her mouth.

  He pulled his hand away and held her. “Oh, God, yeah, that’s beautiful. Fuck, I love you.”

  There was…something. She stopped, held still, trying to understand if…yes. Oh, yes! “Isaac. Love, you’re hard. Do you feel that?” She reached down under her ass and grabbed him over his sweats. He wasn’t the rigid steel she remembered, but he had himself a respectable boner. Sh
ifting to straddle him, she asked, “Do you see this?”

  He looked down at himself and grinned, “Well, damn.” Then he met Lilli’s eyes. “I want to be in you.”

  She slid her hand into his sweats and wrapped around him. “Do you feel me?”

  A cloud flitted through his eyes, but he didn’t lose the grin. “No. I don’t care. I want you to feel me. Put me in you. Come on baby, let me fuck you while I can. Who knows how long that’ll last or if it’ll ever happen again.”

  He was right. Wasting not another second, she pulled him free of the sweats and sat down on him.

  “Oh, shit! Oh, Isaac, oh, shit! You feel so good. So fucking good.” He did. She’d thought never to have it again, ever. She wanted to savor him, to remember this feeling, to take none of it for granted. As she gyrated on him, bringing him as deep as she could, she felt the bed changing positions. He was bringing the head down, until they were nearly flat on the bed.

  “Lay over me, Sport. I want your tits in my mouth.”

  Her body clenched at his words and she came down onto her elbows, bringing herself up so that her breasts hovered over his face. It meant that she couldn’t bring him as deep inside her—he was considerably taller than she was—but she would not deny him. And his cock was prodigious, so she didn’t lose all of him. She could still flex and shimmy and feel him, still hard, inside her.

  He suckled her like a starving child, his hands tight around her breasts, holding them together so that he could move back and forth, sucking and licking and biting. He groaned and grunted and gasped. The feel of him, the need in him, was fantastically hot, and she was going to come again, and hard again, maybe harder than before.

  But she couldn’t get there. He had her hovering on the brink, about to explode, her body quivering with the need for release. But she needed his cock—all of it. “Isaac,” she gasped. “I need you to fill me up. I need to sit down on you so I can go.”

  Without a word, still suckling her madly, he let go with one hand, and the head of the bed began to rise again. When their position made him lose her breasts, he moved immediately to her mouth, claiming her with avid ferocity, and she sat down hard on him and jerked her hips until she screamed and his arms locked around her. She dropped her head to his shoulder, sobbing, and he held her.

  He didn’t ask if she was okay or why she was crying. He knew. She knew that he knew.

  When she was quiet and relaxed again, she felt his soft cock sliding partially, awkwardly out of her. Reluctant to lose any connection of their bodies, she ignored it and stayed right where she was.

  “I think I came, Lilli.”

  She sat up and met his eyes, which were wide with pleased surprise. “What?”

  “I’m not sure. I didn’t feel you on me. God, it felt so good, just to be touching you. To have your tits in my mouth. Watching you come—fuck, that was intense. But I didn’t feel my cock. I felt it in my gut and in my chest. I don’t know, but I think so.”

  She smiled. “That’s awesome, love! Maybe it means—”

  He cut her off. “Don’t. Don’t ruin it. I need it just to be what it was. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  He pulled her to lie on his chest again, and they were quiet for several minutes.

  “Do you know what day today is?”

  She’d been drifting on a cloud of a contentment she hadn’t felt in months. “Hmmm?”

  “Do you know what today is?”

  “Um, the twenty-first, I think.”

  He chuckled. “Lilli. Happy anniversary.”

  She sat up, appalled, and he finally slid out of her. “Oh, shit! I’m so sorry!”

  “No, Sport. Don’t be sorry. I know why you’re not thinking about days and dates. I just wanted to say it. I love you so fuckin’ much. I’m only around because of you.”

  “God, Isaac. I love you. Don’t you leave me.”

  “No. I’m here. I’ll stay.”

  She stayed on the bed with him, her naked body wound around him, until he was well asleep. Then she eased herself off the bed.

  When she stood, she felt the drizzle of semen down her thigh, and her heart stopped.

  SIX

  Lilli wasn’t speaking to him, so they drove the two hours back to Signal Bend in silence. She hadn’t been speaking to him for more than a week now. It wasn’t total silence; she spoke to convey information or to ask him what he needed. She was still taking care of him as carefully as ever. But she had pulled so far into herself she was practically an automaton.

  When he’d told her what he’d done, she’d lost her mind. He’d never seen her so angry—and he’d seen her plenty angry in their two and a half years together. She’d flipped the fuck out, then she’d left. When she’d come back, she was this silent cipher. For nearly two weeks.

  But he’d been right. It fucking sucked, and losing the connection with her sucked more, but he’d been right.

  It had all started right after New Year’s. Lilli had been home with Gia, and Isaac was in the rec room, just trying to find somewhere to be that wasn’t the four walls of his room. He’d had a frustrating therapy day. For the week or so before that, they’d all be frustrating therapy days, with no new progress—and that was still the case now. His legs were just fucking dead. He hadn’t had even another twitch of his cock since the night of their anniversary. And they’d messed around several times more. He couldn’t get enough of her. Without his cock, it didn’t feel the same, but it still got his heart pounding. He loved touching her so much. He loved making her come. He wanted more, but he’d take what he could.

  And then this, and she’d pulled away.

  Charlie, a young guy in his twenties, who’d been hurt waterskiing, was in the rec room that afternoon right after New Year’s. Isaac didn’t know Charlie well—he was younger and kind of a shithead for it, listening all the time to obnoxious, bass-heavy hip hop or what the fuck ever it was. Not a bad kid, just annoying. All the younger people in the rehab center hung out together. It had an irritating high school vibe to Isaac, and he tended to roll the other way when he saw them.

  But on that day, they’d been having a party or something, and he’d been curious. So he’d gotten his Mountain Dew out of the machine and hung out for a minute, mainly because the only other thing he had to think about was his dead body, and puzzling out the reason for the cake on the table across the room was better than that.

  It was a going-away party. Looked like Charlie was getting paroled. But the mood of the group was surprisingly somber. Isaac had shrugged and rolled on. But when he’d seen Charlie later, he’d asked.

  He was leaving before his time was up, in the middle of his therapy, where he’d been making good, steady progress, because the money had run out. He’d talked about how expensive the center was and how his parents had bankrupted themselves keeping him here as long as they could.

  Not once in the almost four months since the shooting had Isaac considered how they were paying for all this. His attention had simply been elsewhere. After talking to Charlie, it became just about all he could think about. And, unlike Charlie, he wasn’t making progress in therapy. He had stalled out.

  He’d asked Lilli, and she’d shut him down completely. She hadn’t tried to lie—not her style—she’d just shut him the fuck down and wouldn’t even begin to talk about it. So, when she’d gone off to pick Gia up for the weekend, he’d rolled himself to the center administrator’s office and asked her how much the place cost.

  Holy fuck.

  Then he’d called Show. He’d called to have him put Dom on it and find out for him how their finances were doing. Pretty bullshit that he had to ask the club hacker for information about his own goddamn money, but he’d planned to have that out with Lilli at a later date. First things first.

  But he’d been able to tell right away that Show already knew. He knew, and Lilli knew he knew, and he’d promised her he wouldn’t say anything. Isaac understood all that within three sentences of Show’s tortu
red non-answer.

  If he’d been in Signal Bend, and if he hadn’t been dead from the waist down, he’d have beaten his best friend into ground meat.

  By the time that call had ended, Isaac had the full, gloomy picture. He’d gone back to the administrator and ended his care, effective when whatever Lilli had already paid ran out.

  And that was today.

  His therapist told them that there was no point doing inpatient rehab at County at this point, since they didn’t offer the same services. He’d just be sitting in a hospital room most of the time. So he was going home, and Lilli would drive him to therapy three times a week, for three-hour sessions.

  Nine hours of therapy a week. As opposed to the thirty he’d been getting—three-hour sessions, twice a day, five days a week.

  That was it. He was stuck in this chair for good.

  But there was no other choice. He would not take his family into poverty and ruin. He would not.

  And fuck Lilli for trying. If she wanted to ice him out, then fine, because he was plenty pissed himself. Trying to pile at his feet the financial destruction of their family, on top of the mountain of other shit he was to blame for. Just fuck her for it.

  As she drove down their drive and he saw what awaited him, he swore.

  “Motherfucker. I said I didn’t want that shit. Motherfucker.”

  “You need the ramp. The rest of it you can blame on the club. I told Show what you said. So did you. But maybe it’s time you stopped fucking hiding.”

  She pulled up, threw the truck into park, and climbed out. Fuming, he sat where he was and waited—like he had a fucking choice—while she pulled the chair out of the back. Show was walking to his door, grinning. Son of a fucking bitch, this sucked.