by Holly Ryan
He looks down at my hand and says, “What are you doing?” His voice is gravely and it sends shivers through my spine.
He gets me, like he always does, and it only takes a second for my thoughts to register in his mind. He submits and places a likewise sympathetic hand on my bare leg, his intention as innocent as mine first was.
I lift my face to his, trying to say something, but when our eyes meet, the words disappear. That’s okay. It feels as though none need to be said anyway.
He curls an arm around my waist.
I lean into his magnetic warmth, my head coming to rest against his chest.
The next time I look at him, this time to force some kind of words out, he locks his eyes on my lips and brings his to mine. My mind draws the moment out in slow motion, until I’m left watching him in anticipation. I can practically taste those lips before they arrive.
His lips are flushed from what he’s just been through, as is the rest of his body, and they warm mine as he kisses me. He cups the back of my head with his palm and together we fall into the bed.
As he rubs his thumb across my cheek, any remaining sensations of cold wash away. He runs that same hand from my face down my body, eventually to the top of my panties and then below them, resting at the top of my thigh.
We kiss until we can’t anymore, pulling back at the same time to save the remaining kisses for later with an unspoken promise that we both understand. Cohen sighs into my mouth as he touches my smooth upper leg. I wrap one leg around him and take in the ripples of his muscles on his perfect chest.
I give him a warm smile and a soft, crooked grin grows on face in response. I’ve never felt as safe as I do now, being held in the strong arms of this man who’s proven in more ways that on that he will protect me.
Suddenly, while I’m watching, that grin of his starts to fade away. Something dark passes behind his eyes, closing them off from me.
Just like that, I’ve lost him. He pushes himself away from me.
I sit up, confused.
He swings his legs over the edge of the bed. “You should get out of here, Stella.” He stands and grabs a shirt that’s hanging from one of his open dresser drawers.
I don’t respond. I can’t believe what he just said.
“This isn’t good for you,” he says as he puts the shirt on.
My mouth hangs open. “What?” I say in an exhaled breath. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not.”
And I can tell that he’s not. He’s trying to keep his back to me as he puts his shirt on, and from where I am I can see the muscles of his jaw tense. He’s dead serious.
“Okay, you’re serious. But… why? What are you talking about?”
He stands in front of the window before finally turning back to me to speak. “Come on, Stella. You’re smart. You know what I mean. I’m trying to tell you that I’m not any good for you.”
I shake my head. “You’re wrong. You might just be the only thing that’s good for me in my entire train wreck of a life.”
He huffs his disapproval and glances at me out of the corner of his eyes, his look giving the impression that he’s the all-knowing authority when it comes to train wrecks of a life. He says, “Your life isn’t a train wreck.”
I rise up on my knees. “How would you know? You won’t let me get anywhere close to you.”
“And there’s a good reason for that.”
“Well, why don’t you tell me, Cohen? What’s the deal with you?”
“What’s the deal with me?” he almost growls. He stops to calm himself before continuing, “What do you mean?”
I’m not ashamed of what I said. I didn’t say it to be mean or confrontational, and Cohen knows that. I said it to get more out of him, to keep him talking about it, because whatever it is, that is how we heal – and he knows that, too. I’d say it again if I had the chance.
“I mean,” I answer, “what’s your problem? What’s with the nightmares, and what’s with turning me away even though we both know you and I want this, and what the hell is with the mystery man you keep trying to be?”
He shakes his head. “I sure as hell don’t try to be mysterious. I helped you that night because it was the right thing to do, and that’s the only reason.” He breathes heavily again.
I pause. “Is it?” I might as well press him; we’ve come this far.
He doesn’t answer. He’s giving me nothing but more silence, mystery and non-answers.
I sit back on my ankles. It’s obvious that Cohen isn’t the kind of guy who will let me get anywhere with anything that resembles hostility, so I need to take a different approach. “I want to help you, Cohen,” I say softly.
The wind whips outside the closed window. The snow that’s keeping me here is showing no sign of letting up.
“I wouldn’t ever judge you,” I finish, the words so meaningful they exhaust me.
He lowers his head. “I know you wouldn’t.” He turns back to the window. “But you don’t want to hear about it.”
“What?”
“I said,” he looks at me, “you don’t want that on you.”
He’s wrong. I do want it, whatever it is. I want it because I want him, and I know that with a person automatically comes all their fears, their baggage, their deepest, darkest secrets... their nightmares. I want it because I know that with all that also comes the best of them.
But I don’t have the guts to say that out loud.
“Well,” he continues, his mind working to predict me, “even if you do, I don’t want that for you.”
I try to hide my anxious breath. When it feels like everything has been said and done, I stand.
It breaks my heart that this might be the end of Cohen Thatcher for me. It doesn’t appear that he wants me here. At least, he definitely doesn’t want any kind of romantic relationship at the moment, and a friendship between us wouldn’t work because of what just happened here. Love is a thin red line. When it’s crossed, there’s usually no going back.
I pull the door shut behind me and dread that fact that I’m leaving him. He probably won’t get any more sleep tonight, although I have a feeling that has more to do with those nightmares than anything that just happened between him and I.
Of course, I could be wrong.
COHEN
I saw her again.
The woman from my dream.
The woman I couldn’t save from the sinking car.
She came to me again, shortly after I said goodnight to Stella, and almost immediately after I fell asleep. Except this time, she wasn’t waiting for me outside my bedroom window.
She was inside my room.
She stands at the foot of my bed, wearing nothing but a long, flowing white nightgown that blows with the breeze coming in through the window.
I sit up. “What are you doing here?”
There’s no answer from her.
I throw off the covers and walk over to her. I look her over. Her feet are dirty, encrusted with some kind of dried mud. I turn my attention to the door – it’s still closed, and there’s no trace of mud anywhere on the floor. “How did you get in here?”
She still doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even move.
I lower my head to look into her face. She doesn’t try to meet my eyes. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was trying to avoid them. “Are you okay?”
She looks at me. At least that’s a start.
“Can you hear me?”
She nods.
“If you can hear, then answer me.”
She lifts her hand and sticks it toward the open window. “Wave,” she says.
I clench my fists. I’m close to losing it. I hate that repetitive bullshit. She needs to use words that mean something, words that I can actually do something with. I’m desperate for those kinds of words.
As soon as the word left her mouth, I hear a roar similar to the sound of a train rumbling down the tracks. It comes closer and closer. It’s loud, only
slightly muffled by the house we’re in.
“What do you want from me?”
She smiles widely, pausing for a second to take me in, unaware that she’s already taken a good part of me. The best part.
When she’s done, she shakes her head and says, “Wave.”
A flood of ice cold water rushes in through the open window, filling my room. The woman’s eyes grow wide as the cold overcomes her.
I’m immediately swept off my feet. “Hold on to me,” I yell.
I reach out for her through the rushing water, but it’s coming in so fast and with such power that I can barely see. It whips her thin body like a ragdoll. Then, with another gust, it whips her right into me. Her body hits my chest, knocking the wind out of me.
She frantically spins around, clutching for anything she can. She finds me and takes hold of my neck, wrapping her arms around me.
“Stop struggling,” I try to say through the rushing water. The words come out broken and sputtering. “Just stop.”
When the room is almost full, she locks eyes with mine. Our breaths fall into synch. Her eyes are as wide as a helpless deer, that horrendous, familiar look that is engrained in my memory rearing its ugly head again.
The water around us slows.
“Cohen,” she whispers, because a whisper is all she can manage, “please help me.” Then the water picks up again, stronger than before, and with a mighty force pulls her out of my arms.
The water carries her swiftly out the window, her arms outstretched and that look of panic never leaving her face.
“No… stop!”
When she’s gone, the water recedes, and I’m left alone. I’m soaking wet, like everything around me. I grab the side of the dresser to help myself up. My footsteps make a squishing sound as I walk back to bed. I crawl under the covers and pull them up to my head, wanting nothing more than to hide from all of this. What just happened doesn’t really register; what does is the fact that I want out.
I drift again and then start to shiver. My pants are still wet and they’re now sticking to my legs, making me cold. I need to get them off.
Someone shakes me. I hear a voice – a woman’s voice.
These nightmares are getting out of hand. First, she never came to me.
Then she did.
Then she began to speak.
Now, she’s touching me.
My body tries to recoil but she takes hold of me again. The shake is more forceful this time. I try to see around me, but there’s nothing but darkness. The only thing I can do is react. I reach out in the dark and my fingers meet flesh.
I want to ask her again what she means by all this. Why she won’t leave me alone, and what she wants out of me. As for what I want? I mostly want to make sure she’s okay.
She screams, and the scream is unlike anything I’ve heard from her before. I pause. Actually, now that I think about it, the tone doesn’t quite match her voice at all.
She’s trembling beneath me when I finally realize what’s happening.
“Stella?”
I push myself off of her and find myself in the corner of the room. I reach down to touch the clothes that I’m wearing. They’re dry. The rest of me is dry. The room is dry, and the window is closed.
I’m awake.
“What are you doing in here? It’s almost pitch black. I had no idea who you were. I could have–”
I stop when I catch the look in her eyes. She’s confused, but concerned. She too reminds me of a deer, but her look is different. It’s the look of an innocent, disoriented fawn. She’s not afraid.
I give up on trying to get any more sleep when the clock reads eight. The second it does, I can’t get the covers off fast enough. On any other night, I’d have gotten up to start my day after an hour or so of trying, having accepted the fact that I’m going to have to get through my day on a night of hardly any sleep. Tonight was different, though. I was so beat from what happened, both with Stella and the nightmare that had been going on prior to her coming into my room, that it didn’t feel right to get out of bed. I’m tough; I can only imagine how much thrashing was going on in here to make me worn out. I guess when you have such fucked up dreams, thrashing comes with the territory. I’m just lucky I didn’t hurt myself. Not to mention Stella.
I shower, then walk to the dresser and wrap my watch around my wrist. My watch is always the first thing I put on, a little life lesson I learned from my father. It’s one of many lessons that he left me with, but this one just so happens to be my favorite. Time is the most important thing in a day, he used to say, and promptness is the foundation of trust when it comes to business relationships. Nobody’s going to take you seriously if you can’t even be counted on to show up on time, so it’s your ass if you don’t make it a priority.
As I tuck the tail of strap away, my eyes lift to the top of the dresser. My black leather wallet sits on top of a silver tray, next to where my watch was resting moments earlier.
I slide it off, then stuff it into my back pocket.
I expect things to be awkward between us, or at least on her part, but it turns out I’m wrong. Stella doesn’t miss a beat, and if I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought I was encountering her on any other normal morning. Not the morning after a complicated, near-sexual encounter. I hear her in the kitchen when I reach the bottom of the stairs, clanking away with pots and pans.
“Good morning,” she says.
“Morning.”
She’s holding a pan above one of the lit burners of the stove, tilting it around to coat the bottom with a layer of melted butter. The smell fills the kitchen.
“You’re up early,” I say, taking a seat.
“I’m a unique study in sleep patterns, Cohen. Not only am I a night owl, like you… I can also be an early bird. When the situation calls for it.” She looks over at me. “And sometimes, like last night, I can be both at the same time.”
I play along. “You’re amazing.”
“Thank you.” She cracks and egg against the counter, sticks her thumbs inside, and pulls the shell apart. The egg falls into the pan.
“So you’re telling me you didn’t get much sleep last night either?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“In that case, at least I’m not alone.”
“Yeah, you look like you didn’t get much sleep,” she confirms.
My fingers naturally gravitate to my jaw, where I feel that I forgot to shave this morning. I can only imagine what my hair looks like. “That wasn’t supposed to be an insult, right?”
She smiles. “Not at all.” She cracks another egg and splits it open into the pan. “Sorry.”
“You really don’t have to do this,” I say, watching her. “Cereal is my morning go-to. And you’re working too hard. Stop.”
“Cereal? Every single morning?”
I stand, walk over to a nearby cabinet and pull down a box. “Yep.”
“Hey, wait a minute. I’ve got four eggs going here and I can’t eat all this by myself. I’m slaving over this, you know.”
I laugh. I think that’s the most spirited I’ve ever seen her, and I’ve seen her in a lot of varied situations. “Don’t worry. I’ll have whatever you’re making, too.” I lift the box to pour the cereal into the bowl, and the moment I do pieces that were once stuck suddenly come dislodged. The cereal floods the bowl and overflows onto the floor.
“Shit.” I look around at my feet where pieces are now spread around.
Stella looks at the ground, another smile growing. “That’s karma for you.”
“And also just my luck,” I say with humor in my voice. I bend down. I pick up the majority of the pieces and toss them in the sink. “The universe punishes me for needing an extra large breakfast.” It’s too early for this, and my slow movements prove that, but there’s nothing but lightness between us.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. The universe kicks everyone’s ass sometimes. Some more than others.” She
flips an egg and then slides one off a spatula, onto an empty plate. “Here. Eat up.”
When we’ve finished breakfast, I pass her a dripping wet, now-clean plate. She takes it from me, wrapping the white clean dishtowel around the plate’s edges almost as if she’s being loving about it. Carefully, she finishes smoothing over the plate with the towel, and then examines it for any remaining drops of water.
“You’re pretty good at this,” I say as I start to rinse off the plate I had been using.
“We didn’t have a dishwasher when I was a little girl.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Every night my mom and I would gather around the sink and wash the day’s dishes by hand. We’d help each other, tell jokes and talk about our day over some nostalgic background music. It was nice. There was no fighting about anyone needing to clean their own, or any complaining about not being in the mood that night. It was always one of the best parts of my day. It was just… harmony.”
“It wasn’t always that way though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, is it ever? Always so harmonious.”
She loses herself in thought, her hand slowing across the new plate. “Well, no, it’s not ever always harmonious. My mom and I have had our fair share of struggles, for sure.”
“Where is she now?” I ask because the way Stella talks about her mother screams that she misses her.
“She’s down in Florida with the rest of my family.” She looks away from me. I was right.
“And you’re the only one up here?”
She takes a breath. “I am. It’s not that big of a deal, though. I get to see them when I see them.” After another moment of silence, she reaches down into the sink and splashes me with a little water. Then, smirking, she dries off her hands.
As I finish up, Stella puts on her coat and slips her feet into her boots.
“What’s going on?”
“I have to go.”
“It’s still pretty nasty out there,” I say. “You’re welcome to wait it out here for a few more hours.”
“I know,” she sighs, sliding her fingers into a glove. “It doesn’t look much better out there, but I have to give it a shot.” Despite how direct she’s being, I think I catch a hint of sadness in her voice. “You know… things to do and places to be.”