Between Here and the Horizon

by Callie Hart

  “I always knew a woman could speak volumes with one look. That was a whole new level, though, Lang.”

  Embarrassment nearly drowned me. I must have been red. No, scratch that. I must have been purple with horror. “Forget the last three minutes,” I said, grabbing my purse. “Thanks, Rose. I’ll be back later, okay? Goodbye, guys.”

  Connor and Amie got up from the table and gave me a hug, one at a time. Connor seemed to be growing more and more tactile by the day, so I wasn’t all that surprised when he wrapped his arms around my waist and gave me a very brief, tight squeeze. I was shocked when he shyly held out his hand for Sully to shake, though. “It was very nice to meet you,” he said in a quiet voice.

  Sully swallowed, looking down at the little boy. He seemed a little lost for words. “You too, little man. Any time you want to hang out, you just let me know, okay?”

  Connor considered this for a moment, and then nodded. “Okay.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Lamest

  Over the following weeks, Sully came to the house more and more. At first it had to be by formal invitation. Would he like to come for dinner? Would he like to come with me to take the children down to the beach? Was he free to come build forts in the library? But then as the days and the weeks passed, he just started showing up. He would come by the house at around ten in the morning, have lunch, come with me to pick Connor up from school, and he would be the one to help him with his homework while I cooked dinner with Rose. He would be the one to take Amie to bed at seven. He would be the one to sit through endless episodes of Peppa Pig, and Marvel Action Hour re-runs.

  The change in him was spectacular. And in amongst the quality time he spent with the children, he was constantly pulling me aside, hands all over me, mouth rough on mine, touching me, caressing and kissing me. Never in front of the children. But when they weren’t looking? Boy, that was a different story altogether.

  “I just can’t believe it,” Rose told me, one day toward the end of January. “I swear, I’ve never seen him like this before. This is…well, it’s kind of shocking. I never thought I’d see him smile like that again.”

  Sully was lying on his back on the living room floor, and Amie was straddling his chest, sitting on his stomach. Her tiny hands were pulling at his cheeks and his forehead, mushing his face into strange expressions. She giggled at the top of her lungs every time he growled or poked his tongue out. Her laughter was infectious. Connor might not have taken to Sully so quickly, but the little boy loved having him around. He sat Indian style on the floor a couple of feet from them, watching, smiling, not saying anything but clearly happy.

  I leaned my head against Rose’s shoulder, sighing. “I know. I’m scared.”

  She glanced out me out of the corner of her eye. “I get that. I can see why you might be worried. But I’m not anymore. I don’t think this is a flash in the pan, O. He didn’t have PTSD when he came back from Afghanistan, thank god. He was just...angry. He might still be angry, but look at him. He’s happy now, too. He’s found some sort of balance. That’s pretty damn special.”

  She was right about him still being angry. There were days when he was so prickly and unapproachable that I wanted to kick him in the balls. Days when I came so close to doing exactly that. But all it took was calling him out on his crap and he pulled his shit together. It was remarkable that he was able to flip the switch so easily. When I asked him about it, he simply said, “War puts things into perspective, Lang. Sometimes you lose sight of things. Sometimes it takes a riled up SoCal girl to kick you into touch, but nothing is ever as bad as it seems. Feel free to remind me what an ass I am as many times as you like. If I’m too unbearable, then toss my ass out of the house.” I hadn’t had to do that just yet, but he knew I was prepared and willing. Perhaps that’s why he was clearly trying so hard to make this work. Weeks passed. A month. Valentines day arrived, and with it single pink rose and a simple handwritten card on my pillow.

  Lang.

  You’re not as smart as you think you are. I’m impervious to your wicked ways. I am not in love with you. When you leave this island, I won’t care.

  The world won’t stop turning.

  I won’t feel hollow, or bereft.

  I won’t look out of the windows of my lighthouse and see only greyness and misery where there was once beauty.

  I won’t stare at my cell phone, waiting for you to call.

  I won’t mourn the loss of you.

  I won’t cry (in a very manly way).

  I won’t pray your parents decide to close down their restaurant after all and move to the east coast.

  I won’t watch The Sound of Music over and over again, wishing for my too-good-to-be-true girlfriend to return to me.

  Every second.

  Every minute.

  Every hour.

  That would make me the lamest guy in the world.

  Yours, temporarily,

  Sully Fletcher.

  P.S. check your phone.

  I picked up my phone from my nightstand, skin prickling all over with hurt, eyes stinging a little too brightly at the words he’d written down on the paper…until I saw the text message waiting for my on the screen.

  At some point, Sully had changed his name in my contacts from ‘Hottest Guy In The World’ to ‘Lamest Guy In The World’. The lone message he’d sent to me contained few words, but they hit hard.

  Sully: Don’t do it, Lang. Don’t go.

  I sat up in bed, staring at the note, re-reading it over and over again, knowing now what he was really telling me. He did love. He would miss me. He didn’t want me to go. Later, over dinner at the house, I tried to talk to him about what he’d written, about what he’d asked of me, but it was difficult. The children were too excited, covered in glue and glitter yet again from making love heart and cupid decorations with Rose. And of course Rose was with us, too, and so it was almost midnight by the time we had a second to ourselves.

  Sully never stayed at the house. He didn’t seem to mind visiting for extended periods of time, but I still caught him every once in a while staring off into the distance, or standing in the doorway of a room with a lost look on his face. It was easy to forget that the house we were living in was the same house where he grew up. Each and every inch of the place was full of memories for him, no matter how expertly it had been renovated. And I just so happened to be sleeping in his parent’s old bedroom, which freaked him out endlessly. He never stepped foot upstairs if he could help it.

  In light of that, I tended to sleep over at the lighthouse with him whenever we wanted time alone together. More and more often Rose was staying with the children overnight and I was sneaking out of the house under a cloak of darkness, spending the night with Sully, only to drive back home at the crack of dawn before Connor and Amie woke up.

  Tonight would be no different. We didn’t make it back to the lighthouse, though. Sully drove halfway home, and then peeled off down a narrow track, taking us in the opposite direction. When he stopped his truck, we were in front of what looked like a ruined castle, the roof disappeared, most of the walls tumbled down. The snow covered what little standing stonework remained, obscuring what was left of the structure, so all I could make out were a few odd sections of wall and the very tops of some of the huge foundation stones.

  “Why have we stopped here?” I asked.

  “Because I’m going to fuck you now, Lang. I couldn’t wait until we got back to the lighthouse. This was the closest place I could think of where we wouldn’t be seen.”

  “No way! I’m not having sex with you in your car. It’s freezing cold, Sully.”

  “Pussy.” He unfastened his seatbelt, and then he reached across and unclipped mine, too. “Straddle me. Climb up out of your seat and straddle me, before I spank you for being disobedient.” He was joking, but there was a scandalous glimmer in his eye that made me blush a little too hotly. Being spanked by Sully wasn’t such a horrible prospect. In fact, the idea of his han
d tanning my bare behind made me want to press my knees together in the weirdest way.

  “We can’t be more than ten minutes from your place. Can’t we just go back there? Where it’s warm?” I tried not to think about being bent over his knee, but the image was well and truly cemented in my brain now.

  “I swear to you now, you won’t be cold for long, Lang. I’ll have you hot and bothered in no time.” He buzzed back his seat so that it reclined almost flat, smiling wickedly at me the whole time. “Look,” he said, taking hold of my hand. “Feel this.” He guided me to his pants, where I instantly felt the huge hard-on he was hiding in his jeans. He was harder than hard. He was rock solid. He closed my hand around him, closing his eyes.

  “If I let go of your hand right now, Lang, what are you gonna do? Make me drive you home? Or are you going to let me use this,” he squeezed his hand on mine again, emphasizing just how turned on he was, “to make you come?”

  When he put it like that, heading straight back to the lighthouse seemed like a hasty option after all. “Hot and bothered, you said?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow.

  He opened one eye and peered up at me out of it. “So hot. So bothered.”

  “Okay, then. Show me.”

  “I was hoping you would say that.” His calm demeanor a second ago was all an act. The second I green lit his evil plan, he sprang up and had hold of me, pulling me out of my seat toward him. I didn’t have time to protest, or even spread my legs in order to sit myself on top of him properly. Sully had everything under control, though. His hands were strong, and my body seemed to melt to his will without any effort on his part. The next thing I knew, my hair was twisted into a knot around Sully’s fist, my shirt was hiked up, my bra pulled down and Sully had my left nipple in his mouth. He massaged the swollen bundle of nerves with his tongue, flicking it, pinching it between his teeth, and the sensation was so big and so immediate that I could do nothing but struggle to regain my breath. It wasn’t happening, though. My lungs were working at half capacity and couldn’t catch up with my body’s need for oxygen.

  Sully pushed his hips up underneath me, grinding his pelvis against me, and I could feel his cock again, hard and insistent, rubbing up against my pussy through my jeans. “Goddamn it, Lang. Why the hell can’t I keep my hands off you? I can’t get enough. You’re more addictive than any drug. I crave you twenty-four seven.”

  “Shit, Sully. Ahh!” I bucked against him when he bit me again, squeezing my nipple hard between his teeth. The sensation was electricity and fire all rolled into one. I couldn’t take it, couldn’t bear it another second longer, and yet the pain and pleasure swirling through me was all I wanted at the same time. I couldn’t have told him to stop, even if I’d wanted to.

  Sully’s hands worked quickly, ripping my shirt off over my head. My bra went next, and then I was half naked and shivering, my skin exploding into goose bumps. Sully growled low in the back of his throat as he studied me for a second. “Fuck, Lang. Look at you. You’re perfect. You’re the most beautiful girl on this island.”

  “I’m one of the only women under the age of thirty-five on this island. That’s not a very grand compliment, Sully Fletcher.”

  He laughed. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, then. How about that?”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous.” My cheeks were warming, though, pride washing over me. Sully stopped smiling and propped himself up on one elbow, head angled back so he was looking up at me. His dark hair was brushed back out of his face, at least three or four days’ worth of stubble marking his jaw, eyes dark and simmering with intensity. He told me so easily that he thought I was beautiful. Why was it so hard for me to tell him he was easily the hottest guy I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting, then? “I mean it, Lang,” he whispered. Skimming his fingertips over the ends of my hair, brushing them lightly over the bare skin of my chest, he breathed out slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. He looked like he was staring straight inside me, as if he could see through the flesh and bone, straight into my soul. His words echoed that thought when he spoke again. “You’re wildfire. You’re stubborn, and you don’t take any shit. You’re strong. You won’t be talked down to. You’re a woman, and you’re a warrior all at once. You’re brave, and you’re kind. And I’ve learned recently that being kind really does take courage sometimes.” He paused, eyes narrowing as he watched me. “Fuck. I’ve been living in my lighthouse, casting a narrow beam out to sea for a long time, Lang. And then you swept into my life and lit up the dark. That’s pretty fucking scary for me. I’m not used to the way you make me feel. I feel like I’m constantly on the back foot with you, one step behind the game.”

  My heart was in my throat. He was always so closed off, the first to crack a joke or a sharp-edged comeback to avoid being serious, but right now he couldn’t have been any more serious. There was a calm resting over him that I’d never experienced before, and it made me want to fold myself into him, to wrap my arms around him and just lie there, our heartbeats syncing and beating together. Who was this man? He was so different to the cautious, aggressive, cold guy who’d nearly scared me half to death at the bottom of the stairs all those weeks ago. Here was a man who could love, who had so much love to give if only he just let himself.

  “You promised me,” I whispered.

  “Promised you what?”

  “That you wouldn’t let me fall.”

  Sully blinked, remaining absolutely still. “You knew all too well that was going to happen the moment you started showing up on my doorstep with food in your hands, Lang. It was nice to pretend we were gonna be able to prevent it, but we both knew…”

  “I thought you didn’t like people who lied to themselves,” I said, giving him a small smile.

  “I’m not perfect. I break rules.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  Sully smirked, taking my hand in his, placing it over his heart. “Let’s not hide anymore. Let’s just be honest. It’s time.”

  “God, Sully, I just…the situation, it’s…”

  “Don’t,” he whispered. “Remember? No bullshit. Tell me. Say it.”

  “Say what?” It was too late for games now, though. We’d already come too far.

  “Ophelia.” He said my name softly, carefully, so that it carried weight. He said it like it mattered. It was a reprimand, and it was a caress. It was the first time he’d ever called me by my first name, and the way he shaped the word flooded my body with a warm vibration, a deep undercurrent, like a tuning fork that had been struck and would hum on and on forever unless someone closed their hand around it.

  “I love you, Sully. I tried not to. I tried really hard. God knows I tried.” I wanted to bury my face into his shirt, but he placed his fingers under my chin and lifted my face so that I couldn’t.

  “Open your eyes,” he commanded.

  I opened them, but it was so hard to look at him. Impossible, almost. He sighed heavily. “Don’t you think,” he said softly, “that I feel what you feel? I told you as much in that letter. Don’t you think the bravado and the machismo are simply signs that I’m running scared? Because I am, y’know. I have been since the very first moment I saw you. I love you, too, Ophelia. God, loving you is the cruelest, most unkind thing I can do to you, and yet I’m going to do it anyway. Do you know what that means?”

  I tried to look away again—I was buried under an avalanche of emotion, and I felt as though I would suffocate from it. Sully wouldn’t let me hide from him, though. He ducked down, bending so our eyes were locked once more. “Loving you isn’t me telling you something we both already know. It’s waking up together every morning. It’s making love, and arguing and fighting, and dealing with each other’s shit. It’s walking across hot coals for you. It’s protecting you, and keeping you, and honoring you always. There’s no half measure in this, okay? So you have to be fucking sure, because once we travel down this road together, there is no turning back. There is no good ol’ college try. There’s me, and there
’s you. Forever. This will change me, and it’ll change you, too. It’s a part of us already. Once we let it overtake us, there won’t be any turning back. Is that what you want?”

  “Is it what you want?” I asked in a small voice.

  “Don’t do that. Own your feelings. You don’t need to know what I think before you can make up your mind.”

  “I know I don’t. I’m just scared to say it.”

  Sully smiled—big, contagious, unfathomable—and my heart felt like it was going to burst. “You’ve already done the hard part, Lang. This next part is just the first step.”

  “Toward what?”

  He gave me a chiding look. “You tell me. Actually tell me, Lang. Right now.”

  A cold shiver of panic ran up my spine, but I ignored it. I pushed down my fear, and I plucked up every last scrap of courage I owned. “The rest of our lives,” I said firmly. “It’s the first step toward the rest of our lives, because that’s what I want. I want it all. With you. I can’t imagine it any other way.”

  Sully moved quickly, sitting upright. He grabbed hold of me, his hands fisting my hair, running down my back, groping my ass through my jeans. His mouth found mine, and for a moment the world outside of the truck drifted away. There was no snow falling out of the window. There were no dark, ominous clouds blocking out the moonlight. There was no island, and there was no tomorrow. There was just this moment, our moment, and the breath we shared as we kissed.

  He was a man possessed. I was a woman lost. Together, we were two halves of something fragile and delicate, beautiful in its complexity.

  Sully bit at my lips and my tongue, growling. Placing one hand at the nape of my neck, he kissed me harder, grinding his hips up again; his hard-on was still raging, still made of solid steel. He rocked his hips back and forth, rubbing himself against me, igniting a desperate ache inside me. I needed him. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anybody, and I couldn’t wait any longer.