by Aubrey Gross
“What exactly did you do? You said you didn’t do diet pills. The most I know about eating disorders is anorexia and bulimia.”
“It goes beyond those two, but they’re the ones that get the most coverage, I guess you could say. For me, I started out bulimic, but hated puking. So I turned to restricting, and over exercised. Basically, I counted calories and was obsessed with the macros—carbs, proteins, fats. I was eating about nine hundred calories a day, and exercising for at least two hours a day. Every now and then I would lose it and go on a binge, which would sometimes make me sick. I would feel so guilty about the binge I would go right back to restricting and amp up the exercise.” She shook her head at the memory of herself in high school and college.
“I was sick. I looked awful. My hair was falling out and I stopped having periods, which is probably more than you want to know. I felt awful, physically and mentally. Logically, I knew I was slowly killing myself, and in a way I didn’t care. Therapy showed me a lot of things, including the fact that at that time, I truly didn’t care. It wasn’t that I wanted to die, or that I was suicidal, but that I wasn’t sure why I should care about living. I was depressed, to say the least, along with having some anxiety issues. I’d felt out of control since junior high, or rather, that life was out of control. I was ashamed of my parents, and there really was no control of any sort in our household. If it wasn’t for Gran, I honestly don’t know what would have happened to me as a teen. She was the only stability I had. But I could control what I ate, and how much I exercised. Until I couldn’t control it anymore, which was when I would binge. And that was probably way more than you ever wanted to know about the crazy inside my head.”
Chase tugged on her hand. “Come here.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Where?”
“Just get up and come here.”
She did, and he pulled her down, moved so that she was lying on her side next to him in the oversized chair. He ran a big hand up and down her back, dropped a kiss on the top of her head. She felt him breathe in and out, could hear his heartbeat under her ear. “I’m okay, Chase. I’ve dealt with all that crap and moved on. I haven’t fallen into the trap of disordered eating in over eight years, and I’m healthy as a freaking horse.”
He dropped another kiss on the top of her head. “I know.”
“I appreciate the comforting, stud, but I don’t need it,” she said, keeping her tone light while trying to draw his thoughts out of him.
“I know you don’t. But I do.”
She raised an eyebrow and asked into his chest. “And why is that?”
Jo waited long moments while Chase inhaled and exhaled. She could almost hear his brain working. “All this time, I’ve been really pissed at you. I don’t think you have any idea how mad I was at you when you stopped talking to me all of a sudden. I was a kid, and you’d hurt my feelings and that made me mad. I tried to hate you, but I couldn’t. But God, Jo, I was so mad at you. There were so many times in high school, and especially in college, when I almost reached out to you. Those few times we saw each other in college? I was pissed. It seemed like everything was great for you and you were happy and didn’t need me or our friendship. I was a chickenshit, and instead of asking you a question I didn’t want the answer to, I acted like everything was fine, too. But it wasn’t fine for either of us, I don’t think.”
Jo swirled the tip of an index finger over the soft cotton of his t-shirt, turning his words over in her brain. “The last time we saw each other in college, I’d been in therapy for a few months. At that point I’d been refeeding and was starting to get healthy again. My therapist had been gently nudging me for a few weeks, trying to get me to open up to people who didn’t know about the ED. She knew about you, because in some ways the day I heard my mom on the phone with your dad was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and she firmly believed I needed to talk to you and explain to you what had happened. When we bumped into each other that afternoon, I wanted to tell you everything. But I was scared, and there was some girl with you, so I didn’t. I knew my therapist was right, but I couldn’t get over the thought that telling you would mean losing you again.”
He tightened the arm he had wrapped around her. “To be honest, I still have to fight not being pissed at you sometimes.”
His words stung just a little. “I guess that’s fair.”
“It is and it isn’t. You walked away, but I didn’t put up any sort of fight, and I had plenty of chances.”
“Chase, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—we were dumb teenagers, and God do teenagers make really stupid mistakes.”
He sighed. “That they do. I just wish I would have been there for you. I can’t imagine what it must have been like going through that.”
“And I wish you would have been there, too. But things happen for a reason, and life has a funny way of working itself out. We end up where we’re supposed to be, when we’re supposed to be there.”
They cuddled in the chair for long moments, the silence broken only by the laughter of their friends from inside the house, and the sounds of nighttime in the desert around them. Overhead, millions of stars shone in the sky, and Jo could see the glow of the Milky Way. A sense of melancholy settled into her heart. She loved it here, not only on this ranch with Chase, but in Del Rio. In a month she would have to go back to Austin, start preparing for another school year, meet the new students that had transferred in, help others with scheduling. The thought made her heart feel heavy.
“I wish you didn’t have to go back next month.”
Had he been reading her mind? She snuggled closer, silently vowed to make the most she could out of the next month, and said, “Me too.”
~~*~~
Chapter Fifteen
Chase rolled his head and glanced at the glowing numbers of the alarm clock beside the bed. 2:17.
Jo’s warm body snuggled against his hip, and she sighed in her sleep. Trying not to disturb her, he sat up and rested his back against the head board. He’d slept in this room at the ranch multiple times, but tonight was the first time he’d ever had a woman in it.
He looked down at Jo, her blonde hair spilling in waves across the dark blue pillow case, illuminated by the moonlight filtering through the window. He knew that if he reached out and touched it, sifted a lock between his fingers, that it would be soft and silky to the touch. The citrusy scent of her shampoo teased his nostrils.
God, even her hair turned him on.
She shifted in her sleep, rolled over on to her back. Her breasts pushed against the tank top she’d put on before falling asleep. He grew hard. Just like that.
Chase looked away from Jo, stared into the darkness in front of him, and gently thumped his head against the headboard. His dick throbbed and his heart hurt. Hell of a combination, that.
He kept replaying their earlier conversation in his mind, the cool, almost detached way she’d talked about the past, and the completely not detached way he’d reacted. As he’d listened to her story, he’d felt such a mixture of emotions. Sadness for the young woman she’d been, dealing with demons he couldn’t even begin to imagine; even though he’d had his own crap to deal with, he’d at least had a supportive family to help guide him through it. Sadness because her relationship with her parents had been even worse than he’d imagined. He couldn’t understand how a parent would say or do the things her mom did, and couldn’t fathom having a father so out of touch with reality and his family that he was completely clueless as to what was going on in his daughter’s life or what his wife was doing behind his back. A little bit of anger.
To be fair, the anger had begun to fade the first time he’d kissed her, and by now it was pretty much gone. Every now and then it would rear its ugly head, but now it was more that he was angry that they were in a situation that was emotionally tricky at best. She had to leave in a month and go back to Austin—even though i
t seemed like she didn’t exactly want to.
That alone was hellish, but when he added to it the fact that there were some things she probably had a right to know before they got in even deeper with each other…yeah, this situation was quickly spinning out of control.
He’d avoided Jenn’s comment about he and Jo being in love, even though he’d known after the first time he’d kissed her out on the lake that his heart had been hers since he was fifteen. Hell, if he was being completely honest with himself, he’d loved Jo for as long as he could remember.
The organ in question almost ached at the thought of what she’d been through, the fact that in a month she would be gone again, and that if the distance didn’t kill their relationship his secrets could. Her leaving he could respect; she had a career in Austin and couldn’t exactly leave at the drop of a hat (not that he’d ever ask her to do that to begin with).
And then there were his secrets. Once he opened up and fully let her in, he wasn’t sure what the future would hold for them, or if they could even have a future together. Sure, everything was all fun and games and hot sex right now, but what about six months, a year, two years down the road when things got bumpy?
Because it was going to get bumpy. It was going to happen whether he wanted it to or not, and it wouldn’t be fair to drag Jo down that bumpy path alongside him. Would having someone to lean on be nice? Absolutely. But it wouldn’t be fair, especially since he had absolutely no clue what the future had in store for him beyond the next few weeks.
His scars ached—phantom pains that sometimes popped up when his anxiety levels ratcheted up—and he rubbed at them, as much to sooth the ghost pain as himself.
Jo stirred beside him, opened her eyes and blinked a few times before sleepily asking, “You okay?”
Chase grabbed her hand and wrapped his fingers around hers. “Yeah, just couldn’t sleep.”
She sat up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, yawned. “Anything you want to talk about?”
I don’t know how.
“Always the counselor, huh?” he forced himself to tease.
“It’s hard to turn off. But right now I’m asking as your friend, not a counselor. What’s wrong?”
“Come here.” He tugged on her hand until she scooted towards the headboard. Jo rested her head on his shoulder, her back against the headboard. She fit beside him perfectly, which should have comforted him but instead scared the shit out of him.
They sat there like that for long moments, the silence of the night broken only by their breathing.
“So tell me, Chase Roberts, why can’t you sleep?”
“I was just…thinking. That’s all. Having a hard time getting my brain to shut up.”
I’m going to lose you, and I don’t think I can do that again.
“That happen often?”
“Often” would be an understatement.
He nodded, even though she couldn’t see it. “Yeah. Has since I was a teen. I would get pretty bad insomnia sometimes, and would just stay awake at night thinking and worrying about things.”
“Anxiety?”
“Correct.” He was somewhat more comfortable talking about the past than the present and the future. At least the past was a known entity. “When Mom figured out what was going on with me, she marched me to the doctor and then a therapist—which I hated, by the way. The therapist diagnosed me with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and suspected I had a tinge of PTSD thrown in, which seemed stupid to me at the time. PTSD was for people who fought in wars and shit, not some kid who really had it pretty damned good, all things considered.”
Her breath brushed against his chest when she spoke. “PTSD happens to all kinds of people who experience traumatic and frightening situations. After all the surgeries you went through as a kid, I can’t blame you for having some anxiety issues and a little bit of PTSD.” She snorted. “I probably didn’t help much, either.”
“My therapist thought that was the switch, so to speak, that flipped it all on. To this day I don’t quite understand it. I survived six biopsies, two surgeries, and a fairly frightening medical diagnosis. I was fine through all of it. You stopped talking to me and it was like my world just stopped or something.”
“Our brains don’t always work in ways that make sense. We have an amazing survival instinct, and do a great job protecting ourselves from the really bad shit. And then something that’s bad, but not as bad as the real trauma, triggers a reaction and the floodgates open so to speak.”
He twisted a lock of hair around his finger, memorizing the feel of the silky strands between his fingers, just in case he didn’t get to do this for forever. “Yeah. So I started having panic attacks and was just constantly anxious. Couldn’t sleep. Luckily we were able to do cognitive behavioral therapy to get it under control. I kind of refused to take meds, didn’t want it screwing with my baseball career, especially since the only time my brain was quiet was when I was on the mound.”
Not to mention the fact that the very unknown future had always loomed just there on the horizon, a grim shadow reminder of everything he could eventually have to face. Baseball—and the pitches he made—was the one area of his life where he felt he had any semblance of control.
She looked up at him. “Sports are amazing like that, aren’t they?”
His eyes met hers. “Yeah, they are.”
“So what has you feeling anxious tonight?”
“Who said I was anxious?”
She sat up. “Please. You don’t have to hide it from me or act all macho. If anyone understands crazy, it’s me.”
The words were there, pushing at his brain and his heart, lying in wait on his tongue, waiting to be spoken. As he looked into those clear green eyes he felt as though he were falling, falling, down into a fathomless ocean and only she was there. In her eyes he saw understanding, compassion, friendship and what he hoped like hell was love.
The words got stuck, though, and Chase hated himself just a little bit for not being able to say them, to tell her the truth and lay it all out on the line—the good, the bad, and the really fucking ugly. But she was leaving in a month. What good would it do to spill his heart and have it broken again?
Still, though, if he was too chickenshit to tell her all of the words, he could at least show her some of them.
~~*~~
Jo saw the change in his eyes, felt it in the tension coiling through his body, seconds before his lips were on hers. Firm, insistent and yet oh so patient. She knew what he was doing, resorting to sex to deflect talking about his feelings. She couldn’t exactly complain about it, though, since in a way she’d been doing the same thing for the past few days.
So she kissed him back, tangled her tongue with his, let him draw her leg over his so that she was straddling him. Those hands that she was so utterly fascinated with drew her tank top over her head and tossed it somewhere over her shoulder. When his mouth closed around one of her nipples, all of her thoughts scattered and the only thing that mattered was his mouth and his hands and him.
Chase.
She sighed his name as he teased her breasts before trailing kisses back up her chest to her neck, along her jawline. His hands cupped her hips, the fingers sliding under the waistband of her panties. He guided her back, so that she was lying down, her head at the foot of the bed, before he slowly drew the scrap of pink lace down her legs and off her body.
He touched her everywhere. Slowly. Reverently. Kissed her slowly, thoroughly, like she was a dessert he wanted to savor. She could feel her heart beating, like the slow, seductive thump thump of a sexy love song.
Moonlight filtered through the window, casting Chase’s body in light and shadow as his mouth moved from hers and down her body. He watched her face as he gently palmed her breasts. His melted chocolate eyes were intense, filled with an emotion Jo knew all too well.
“Oh, Chase.”
She reached out and palmed his cheek. He closed his eyes, drew in a breath. She didn’t know what kind of demon was chasing him, but she had the overwhelming urge to make it all better, whatever it was.
Jo sat up, so that they were face to face. She kissed his nose, his forehead, his jawline, pressed her lips to his before simply sitting there, forehead to forehead, nose to nose. Blindly, she reached for his hands, tangled their fingers together.
He kissed her again, and she let him, even though there were so many things she wanted—needed—to say. Chase untangled a hand from hers, brought it up to cup the back of her head, gently at first and then harder as his fingers dug into her scalp.
As if in a dream, she vaguely heard music coming from somewhere down the hall. Apparently they weren’t the only ones who couldn’t sleep, she mused as the strains of a fiddle filtered into their bedroom, followed by lyrics filled with longing for a lover’s touch. A little longer. Just a little bit longer.
He kissed her again as the music softly played somewhere in the house, the far away sound combined with the ethereal moonlight filtering in through the window, making Jo feel almost as if she were in a dream. She rose up onto her knees, scooted forward so that she was straddling his hips. She could feel his erection straining against his boxers and she rubbed herself against him, wanting, no, needing more.
She really couldn’t get enough of him.
Somehow he managed to get his boxers off without breaking their kiss. She teased them both, rubbing against him, her body on fire and heart racing. He broke the kiss and caught her gaze with his own before taking matters into his own hands and guiding his length into her.
Slowly, she sank down, taking him inch by tortuous inch until he was buried to the hilt. Their position made hard, deep thrusts impossible, but the way that he tilted his hips slowly against hers was a friction better than anything she ever could have imagined. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, wrapped her legs around his waist as his hands gripped her hips and moved her body with his in slow, sensual strokes.
