The Roots of Us

by Candace Knoebel

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded, never more sure about anything in my life.

  Longing lit like a match within his eyes. “This won’t be soft. I’ve wanted you for too long to make it soft.”

  It was funny how the right man’s words could make me feel like he was already inside. Already claiming me in all the delicious ways I’d imagined. And I wanted nothing more than to let him. I was putty. A tightly pulled string on the edge of snapping.

  Trailing a finger down his chest, I batted my lashes and said, “Good. I don’t like soft.”

  With a guttural growl, he swept me up, cradled me to his chest, and hauled me up the stairs with hulking steps, taking them two at a time toward the shower. It took but seconds for us to be standing face to face, under the spray of water, naked except for the desire painted across our skins. Wonder and excitement passing between our gazes as we held our breath and took the plunge.

  His mouth clashed against mine, his tongue hungry and greedy and warm. Swirling and tasting and claiming what we’d put off for too long. He was fire and spice. A heat wave crashing over me.

  It was overwhelming at first, that feeling of falling and floating as his hands found my hair, pulling me closer and closer to him, as if he wanted us to be bone to bone. Heart to frantically beating heart. I couldn’t get enough. Couldn’t get close enough.

  His tongue moved down the side of my neck. Tasting. Sucking. Teeth gently sinking into the sensitive flesh of my shoulder. My thoughts dissipated as my head fell back, and his hands rose to my breasts. Rough, calloused, starving hands. Thumbs caressing my nipples, sending shockwaves of pleasure throughout my body. He was deliciously aggressive in his movements. The perfect amount of pressure. He liked to play… just like me.

  I wanted him. God, how I wanted him.

  He groaned when he took my nipple into his mouth. Feasted on it with a frenzy as his other hand slid down my stomach and disappeared between my legs.

  “You’re so wet,” he said, his eyes finding mine. I thought tipsy looked good on him, but tipsy didn’t stand a chance against desire.

  “You made me that way.” My words dripped from my lips as I met his gaze head on. I wanted him inside me. Fast.

  “And now I’m going to make you come.”

  His throat clenched with restraint as I took his finger into the warmth of my mouth. Lightly sucking. Teasing. Letting him feel what I wanted to do to him. He was the one in charge, and I could tell he was finding it hard to stay in control.

  “Sit,” he said, gesturing past me to the small seat inside the shower where a few shampoo bottles rested.

  I did what he said. Of course I did what he said.

  I was deliciously anxious and starving for him. He lowered himself before me, and then pushed my legs open. Gave me one long, slow, torturous lick, keeping his eyes on mine. I felt it all the way up my body. All the way into my soul as his tongue danced around the edges of my clit, teasing, tasting, waiting for me to beg.

  My eyes fell shut as a pent-up moan surged past my lips, the sound awaking the animal within him.

  His lips devoured me then, sucking and licking. Tasting and consuming. I was barely hanging on as he slid a finger, and then two, inside me, tongue driving me to the edge faster than I’d ever been. A feral feeling awoke in me. A wild being that wanted to slip out of this skin and fill up on him. My hands dug into his hair and my hips thrust up, wanting to give him more to taste.

  He groaned against me and I spilled over the edge, grinding against his face as he soaked up every inch of me. My eyes were closed in satisfaction when his mouth found mine. Tentative. Gentle. Waiting for me to open for him again.

  I parted my lips. Wrapped my arms around his neck, letting him take whatever he wanted from me.

  And then he was gone.

  I opened my eyes. He was fiddling with something near the counter. A second later, he appeared, a condom wrapped around the full length of him. He’d grown bigger than he was but moments ago.

  The length… Jesus. Could I handle that?

  I sat straight. Shoulders back.

  I was damn sure going to try.

  He chuckled. He must have had that reaction before.

  “Stand up,” he said, stepping back into the shower.

  I did.

  Softly, he ran his lips over mine, winding his hand through my hair. With a light tug, he pulled my head back. I groaned as his tongue slid over my neck again, sucking, leaving marks of ownership behind.

  When he let go, his hands found my ass and he lifted me up, pressing my back against the wall, already resting at my opening.

  “You’re so fucking sexy, Hartley. I want to fuck you senseless.”

  “So stop talking and do it.” I was barely hanging on.

  He pushed inside me, slowly, filling me all the way up to my spine. I gasped, wrapping my arms around him, trying to settle around the length of him. He slowed his kisses, allowing my body to adjust.

  “Fuck,” he said, his voice shaky and deep. Body trembling against mine.

  I’d never felt so full. So completely taken by someone as he began to pull out and push back in. A slow rhythm that pressed against the tension coiled inside my belly, waiting for him to unwind me.

  When my lips found his, the frenzy started over again. He was slamming into me, driving me higher and higher to the stars. Stealing my breaths. His groans feeding my exhales. I hung on as the coil popped and unwound, and then the stars burst behind my eyes as he spilled into me with small, exhausted thrusts.

  We clung to each other, our skin sticky with sweat. Hearts beating wildly behind our chests, trying to break out and claim one another. When his eyes found mine, we both kind of laughed. There was no other way to describe the shaky, consuming high we had just climbed. No way to process the emotion we’d exchanged.

  After he set me down, we washed off, laughing as we soaped each other up. Sighing as we lathered each other’s hair. And then I found myself lying next to him, skin to skin beneath the covers, collapsed in a tangled mess on his bed.

  This was new territory for me as he wrapped his arm around me, pulling me against him. This was when I left. When he was supposed to want me to leave, but we both knew neither of us wanted that.

  We were safe inside a moment we’d created, hanging onto the ends of it by our fingertips. Knowing sunlight would surely steal it away.

  “You can stay if you want,” he said as the moon peered inside his room, stars blinking sluggishly. “I’d like it if you did.”

  “Okay.” I snuggled closer, too tired to protest as the lull of mind-blowing sex and good wine tugged at my eyelids.

  I could feel it happening then… happiness grabbing me by the hands, pulling me into her lively dance. I avoided her when I could. Kept to myself in the corner of the room while I watched her waltz with everyone else.

  Because being happy meant being sad. It wasn’t possible to have one without the other. I’d been content living my life in a safe medium of dull and gray. I couldn’t be let down, because I never let anyone in. I couldn’t be sad, because I’d never truly been happy to begin with.

  But for one small moment… just for this day, I let happiness pull me to the center of the floor, and I rested my head on her shoulder, smiling within the darkness of his room for the first real time in my life.

  I WOKE TO A NOTE on the bed next to my pillow.

  At the lake. See you soon, beautiful.

  I grinned as I stretched, and then sat up. Even the sun seemed to smile, the glittering light streaming through the window, warming against my skin. Being in his arms, I didn’t get a good look last night at the place he rested his head each night. There was a certain thrill to being in his bed in a room I’d never slept in before. A newness I loved the taste of. He was as simple as I pegged him to be from the beginning. Dark gray sheets. A black comforter. Walls painted a calming shade of muted gray. A small desk near the circular window overlooking the lake out back. He had a wooden dr
esser and a closet with no more than a handful of shirts and pants.

  Other than that, it was bare. Walls empty. Desk free of clutter, as if he didn’t want to fully tie himself to this place.

  I could still smell him in the sheets. Salt and wood. The memories of last night rolled over me in pleasurable waves. How could I feel so close to someone I was still getting to know? What were these dusty feelings yawning awake inside me? It was his capacity to care that brought them out. To pay attention to the small details most would overlook in the beginning.

  He was deep and vast, and I was in over my head. Life was so much easier when I kept moving. When I shielded my heart from all the color in life.

  But he was breaking through my defenses, one hue at a time.

  After slipping into one of his T-shirts that hung past my knees, I wandered down the stairs into the kitchen, toward the scent of coffee. There was a pot freshly brewed with another sticky note on the counter from him. Like leaving breadcrumbs to my final prize.

  I hope you like the strong stuff. Cream’s in the fridge and sugar’s next to the pot. Damn, you’re beautiful.

  Problem number one—he was good.

  I thought about his hands and his lips, and the way his eyes never let me go. Not for a second last night.

  Problem number two—he was really good, and that was new territory for me. Words like boyfriend and love found their way into the forefront of my mind. The mushy stuff. The kind of feelings that no matter how hard they tried to find their way into my heart, they were drowned by the past.

  Love.

  I was sure I’d felt it a time or two with past lovers. But ultimately, I left because they could never stick to my condition that I didn’t want anything serious. I never believed in that expression we should love unconditionally. What about self-worth? What about my own wants and needs and desires? I liked my freedom to come and go as I pleased. I liked knowing I could rely on myself. That I didn’t need anyone to hold me at the end of the day. We were taught at a young age that we had to grow up and find a man to take care of us. But my mom and I survived fine without one. If I lived for the past fifteen years without one, I could go another fifteen more just fine.

  Right?

  After drinking a cup of coffee, I headed toward the back door, passing through the office. He was standing exactly as he said he liked to, shin deep, staring at the vast, smoky horizon. The mist was a thin, silver thread across the still water. There was a solace in the quiet, dew-laden morning which brought a peace over me that reminded me of my childhood before the mess happened. When I’d wake to music playing in the kitchen, and that meant Saturday pancakes were being made. When I’d draw chalky rainbows on the sidewalk while my dad raked the leaves.

  If only we knew the value of a moment when we were in it.

  Hudson must have heard me coming because, when I was close enough, without turning to see me, he said, “When it’s quiet enough, you’d be amazed at the truths you learn about yourself.” He twisted a long blade of grass between his fingers. It was another thing I’d learned about him. He had to have something in his hands or his teeth.

  I moved closer, standing on the edge of the bank, wishing I had my camera on me. “What are your truths?” I asked, surprised by how much I wanted to gobble up his past and pain. Being with him like this, new and fresh, made me feel stiff and tight. Not quite broken in.

  “I haven’t seen him in seven years. He left the day after he turned eighteen without a goodbye, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

  My stomach twisted for him as I took a few steps forward, wanting to reach out to him, the water swallowing my shins. Was that who he was stuck waiting for? Who he flew to California to find?

  “What happened?” I asked softly, stopping in front of him as it clicked into place.

  When he met my gaze, I finally understood the pain that haunted his eyes, and it nearly stole the breath right from me. “I happened.”

  Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around him. He clung tighter than I had ever been held before. Like if he let me go, he’d be letting a whole world of opportunities go.

  I buried my face in his neck, kissing his skin in feather-light kisses as our chests collided with every rapid breath. His pain was mixing with the sexual tension that had grown between us, building like electric currents in the air.

  “I have all these feelings inside me, and I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t know how to let them out. I don’t…”

  I trailed my fingers up the back of his neck, whisper soft, stopping on his cheek. He turned as I did, his lips closing over mine in a demanding way. I melted into him as he parted my lips with his tongue. As the world fell away and left us suspended in a galaxy of our own making. I felt his pain in that admittance. The way he walked beside loneliness as if it were his friend.

  Seven years without his brother. More without his mother and father.

  When he finally let me go, he guided me back to the bank, and then we sat on the dock, side by side, our toes skimming in the cool water. “After my mother died, things changed between Silas and me. My brother was only fourteen when it happened, and I was three weeks away from leaving for college.” He paused. “I chose to stay.”

  “Hudson…”

  “The house was left in our names, and the only option my brother had was to move across the country to live with our uncle. I couldn’t do that to him. He had a life here. Friends. He was on track for a scholarship with football. I had to. It was what was best. I couldn’t sell the house. My mother spent her whole life working for it. And I couldn’t abandon Silas. So I became his guardian.

  “I don’t think we ever adjusted to the switch in roles. I had to look after him and keep him on track. He wanted to rebel. Silas was a free spirit. He was unruly and emotional. No one understood him the way I did. Mom would tell us that I was the river, and he was the forest. I was the constant, and he was the adventure. And when it came time for him to graduate, after I’d already taken out a second mortgage on the house to pay for his future, he decided adventure was worth more than the constant I’d provided.

  “Everything I gave up… I did it for him. For his dreams. Only to find out that those were never his dreams.” He stopped. Sucked in a deep breath as his head fell forward. “That night, after he told me his plans to leave, I did what I do best—I hurt him. I blamed him for our mother’s death. For pushing and demanding her to be there for every sporting event when her hands were tied. He left after that fight, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

  I covered his hand with mine. He raised his head, eyes haunted. “Have you tried looking for him?”

  “Everywhere. I even tried searching on that Facebook thing, but there isn’t a profile with his name that’s him. It’s like he vanished off the face of this earth, and it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t… if I didn’t…”

  His face contorted with pain, and I pulled him against me as he struggled with his emotions. It made sense now. His distance. His boundaries that kept anyone from getting too close. How could he let anyone in if he feared they’d leave? How could he let me in knowing I was only there temporarily?

  “I can’t leave this house. I can’t move forward with my life, because if Silas can ever forgive me and come around, he knows this is where I’ll be. And I’ll wait until I die if it means I get a chance at telling my brother how sorry I am for saying what I shouldn’t have said.”

  My fingers wove in his hair as he breathed through his troubles, staring out into the vast silver horizon. There was a deep unspoken truth in his admittance that I didn’t want to hear. A thorn digging into our hearts. Even though what we shared was new, it was different and we both understood that. There was a bone-deep connection between us that couldn’t be denied, and he basically told me that he wasn’t willing to leave this area for the sake of his brother. My job functioned around my availability to come and go.

  We were already doomed before we started.

  I leaned
my head against his shoulder. “He’ll come around, Hudson. Sometimes it takes some people longer than others,” I said, offering the only advice I could think of. Trying to push away any thoughts of the dismal future.

  He grunted a little, as if he knew the likelihood was less than ideal.

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek. The truth was I didn’t know his brother. I didn’t know if he was the type who came around. But I did know what regret and hurt felt like, and sharing that with Hudson might make him feel less alone. I just had to step out of my comfort zone and open up.

  He twirled the blade of glass between his fingers, shoulders weighted forward, eyes leaden with sorrow.

  Something told me he was worth letting in.

  “I know what it’s like to feel trapped by your own mind. To feel like you’re your own worst enemy. To feel like you’re too much and yet not enough, all at once.”

  That got his attention.

  “When my dad left, he never looked back. He only called when he wanted something. Never checked in on me. It was like I never existed. And then he found a new family.”

  It was his hand squeezing mine this time.

  “It’s been years since I’ve spoken to him. Longer than that since I’ve seen him,” I admitted, feeling the wound inside my heart splitting open again. “For the longest time, I told myself I was fine. I used my anger and disappointment as a shield to block out the pain until I thought it was gone. It was just a nightmare. A bad dream I’d finally slayed. But then I realized something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pain isn’t loud. It doesn’t barge into the room. It’s sneaky. A criminal, hoarding all your happiness. It’s like our shadow, silently following us wherever we go. Jealous of the light we stand in. So maybe… maybe every once in a while, we should try to stop and acknowledge it.”

  We sat there for a while as the sun crawled its way up the sky, holding hands, letting our truths sink in as our shadows rested beside us.