I take my eyes off the car, and look up to see Nathan slowly approaching me from the garage.
“I had it painted, tires are new, new engine and all that stuff. Cleaned the inside and had a new sound system put in.”
He says this all while looking a little sheepishly at me, does he think I wouldn’t like this?
“Nathan,” I smile and smack his arm.
“Ow.”
“You didn’t have to do all this,” I smile as I open the driver’s side door and sit inside, the fresh scent hitting me as I inhale deeply.
“Well,” he begins, leaning down to put his head in the car, his arms resting on the roof. “I know having a car is important to you so…yeah, I kind of did.”
Looking up at him, I can barely hide how grateful I am.
“I also didn’t want you to bitch me out again, even though it was pretty hot.”
My fist balls as I make a move to hit his stomach, but he stops me, opening my hand to rest my palm against his hard abs. Nathan helps me out of the car and I lean up on my tippy toes to wrap my arms around his neck, as he does the same around my waist.
“I can’t thank you enough, this is…everything you do for me is beyond anything I can put into words,” I tell him.
His arms wrap tighter around me.
“Just show me with your mouth on my cock.”
“Oh my God,” I laugh and lift my knee like I’m going to lodge it in his balls.
“You’re very hitty today,” he says, backing away.
“Well someone thought it was a good idea to show me self-defense, so I’m a little charged up,” I say, raising my fists like we’re about to spar.
He smiles while taking my hands in his, pulling me into his body.
“I’ll show you some more moves tonight. There’s this one where I’m behind you and I push against you, and you have to push back against me like this,” as his hands grab my ass and grinds my pelvis into his.
“For someone who gets laid, like a lot, you sure are horny,” I tease.
“No, it’s just you. Too much is never enough.”
His voice is deep and intimate, and I know that voice, that’s the ‘I want to fuck you right now’ voice.
“Jesus Christ, we have work to do,” Smokey yells from the garage.
Neither one of us acknowledge him, but we swiftly kiss one another before heading in opposite directions. Dropping my purse into the bottom drawer of my desk, I stop when I hear my cellphone ringing. Digging through the massive sack and its contents to locate it. As I pull it out, I answer before it’s about to transfer over to voicemail.
“Hello?” I say quickly, “hello?”
“Skye?”
I’m shocked at the voice on the other end, shaking my head to clear my thoughts.
“Amber?” I ask, not really sure I heard correctly.
“Hi, yeah it’s me,” she says hesitantly.
At a loss for words I just sit there with the phone pressed to my ear.
“Hello, are you there?” she asks.
“Are Mom and Dad okay?”
That’s the only reason I can think of as to why she’d be calling me.
“Yes, sorry they’re fine, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Something about her voice is off, it’s not so much that she’s afraid to talk to me, but I can’t put my finger on it.
“How are you?” she asks.
“Fine, I’m really great actually. How’s Tabby?”
The one thing I miss most about my relationship with my sister and I falling out, is not knowing how my niece is.
“She’s good, she starts fifth grade soon so she’s very excited.”
There’s a softness to my sister’s voice as she speaks of her daughter, but for whatever reason I don’t want to let my guard down. She defended Tyler after what he did to me, hurting me with words and actions that I still don’t want to acknowledge. I know my parents haven’t told her I’m pregnant because I asked them not to, which they understood, not like they would ever get involved in our business like that anyway.
“Good, are you settled somewhere?”
“Yes,” I reply.
There are a few beats of silence before I clear my throat.
“Why are you calling?” I ask.
Amber sighs.
“I miss you. I know we have a lot of talking we need to do, and I know there’s a lot of healing. But I wanted to reach out, and tell you I’m willing to mend our relationship, if you are.”
I chew on my bottom lip, I want to, of course I do, but I don’t think I can ever get over how badly she betrayed me. The relationship I long for with my niece is the only reason I’m even considering this. If it means making things neutral with Amber will get me to see her, then that’s what I’ll do.
“I think we can try that,” I reply.
There’s no sense of anything after I say this, no relief or happiness. My sister hurt me almost as much as Tyler did, her betrayal wounded me deeply and I know nothing she will ever do will erase that scar. Amber lets out a relieved sigh.
“Great. Thank you, Skye, I mean it. How about you visit this weekend?”
“I don’t think-”
“Or we can come to you, where did you say you live again?” she rushes out.
I don’t understand what happened to slowly reconnecting to let’s meet in a few days, in the same conversation. I don’t understand her motives at all here, and my wall reinforces itself.
“I didn’t…and I don’t think it’s a good idea to get together so soon.”
“Tabby misses you, she really wants to see you,” she adds.
“I can call her soon and talk to her on the phone.”
Amber lets out a long sigh, and I hear her muffle the receiver and talk to someone.
“That’s fine,” she finally replies.
We continue to talk but I still don’t let my guard down, I’m still too in shock that she reached out to me in the first place, and how all of a sudden she wants to rush back into my life. My silence on the car ride home alerts Nathan to something being wrong, and he asks me once. When I reply only with, “Nothing,” he takes my hand, linking our fingers and bringing our hands to rest on his thigh.
I want to talk to him, but really I don’t want to bring up anything that has to do with Tyler right now. It’s like just by saying his name conjures all these demons I don’t feel like taming right now, but I know I will have to talk to Nathan about what happened with my sister. Skipping yoga, I decide to paint.
I’ve not painted anything really, just getting back my technique and the mechanics of painting since it feels I haven’t done it in so long. But like riding a bike, my skills are coming back to me swiftly. Even as engrossed as I am in a simple painting of the oak tree right outside my window, I can’t shake the feelings my sister’s phone call has evoked.
Nathan shouted up to me a while ago that he’d be right back, then I heard the truck pulling away from the house and I don’t remember hearing it come back yet. I don’t know how much time has passed, but the sun has lowered and the orange from its setting rays are filling the room. I wash my hands and head downstairs, and I hear Nathan closing cabinets in the kitchen, standing in the doorway I watch him. I’ve never seen a man like him before, his muscles defined even at rest, his hair pulled back in a bun and just looking at him gets me so turned on, I don’t think I will survive it.
“Oh,” he says noticing me. “I was just about to come get you.”
I watch as he grabs a box of graham crackers, a bag of marshmallows, and a bar of chocolate off the counter.
“S’mores?” he asks with a raised brow and that dimple grin.
I nod eagerly and follow him out the side door to the back patio. He’s started a fire in the pit with two long metal sticks lying on the stones. He’s moved the chairs and set out pillows for us, and I swoon, hard. He sets the goodies down by the pillows before taking my hand an
d leading me over, not letting go until I have my butt perched on the fluffy seat.
“You went to the store and got this stuff just now?” I ask, looking up at him as he stokes the fire.
“I did…I know something is bugging you, and when something is bugging me, I eat,” he replies with a smile.
“Do you?” I ask and can’t help but smile in return.
Nathan sits down beside me, adjusting the pillows around him as I wait for him to get comfortable. When he finally gets his shit just right, he reaches out and grabs the bag of marshmallows, tearing it open and retrieving two. Piercing them with the sticks and setting them in the fire.
“How do you take yours, ma’ lady?” he asks in a southern drawl.
“Burnt,” I reply.
“Good, because I think that’s all I can do.”
After two s’mores, each, I finally feel ready to talk about my conversation with Amber. I love that Nathan hasn’t bugged me about it, or even mentioned it again, and it helps get out what I want to say.
“Did I tell you I have a sister?” I ask, licking melted chocolate off my fingers.
“No, but I remember Maven asking you about visiting her before.”
He doesn’t look at me as his attention is on the fire, my eyes also go there and the flames licking up into the night sky.
“She called me today. I haven’t spoken to her in months. It just kind of put me off center.”
Nathan jabs the burning wood with the metal stick, embers sparking off and popping, as chunks of the wood fall into the ashes.
“Things are tense between us…she kind of pushed me and Tyler to get back together, when I went back to visit. She wanted me and him to be together so badly, I knew she was living through me since she always thought he was something special. When shit got bad between me and him, she was the only person I was allowed out to visit. Even though I had withdrawn and looked like shit, she never asked me if something was going on. I felt dead inside and looked dead on the outside, but yet she carried on like I was the same person she’d always seen.”
I stop, and look down at my sticky fingers holding onto the end of my metal stick.
“The thing that really stopped our relationship was when I was in the hospital. She came one time and demanded to know why I was making things up.” I feel my brows furrow. “She asked me this while my eyes were swollen shut and could barely talk because he’d damaged my vocal cords so badly. She said…” I stop and gather myself, not wanting to cry. “She said ‘why didn’t I leave, if it was so bad?’”
Nathan is no longer looking at the fire, but at me. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, but I can’t stop talking and I can’t look at him as I do.
“She said I was lying, that she’d never seen any bruises. But what she didn’t understand was that even if he hadn’t hurt me on the outside, my insides were demolished. She told me that I was ruining the reputation of a good man, that I needed a psychiatrist because I was crazy to do this to myself.”
The hurt in my voice is there, the pain of retelling the words I tried to extract from my brain daily. But there they were, like she had just told them to me, fresh and cutting.
“Can I ask you something?” Nathan says quietly.
I nod, “Of course.”
He clears his throat.
“What happened with you and Tyler? I mean, when you still worked at the shop he was always sending flowers, and you seemed so happy.”
This is something I’ve been struggling with for so long it seems like, I look back and know how dumb I was, and I can’t stop that guilt that I did this to myself.
“At first, he was nice, he treated me good. We talked about goals and the future. It was a nice thought to have dreams to share with someone. It started off with little things, asking me who I was talking to on the phone, isolating me from my friends and family. Slowly making me feel that I needed to prove my faithfulness to him all the time. He’d accuse me of wanting to go to the grocery store because I could find someone there to fuck, and then I’d have to plead with him that he was the only one I wanted. Even though being with him made me sick. Then the other stuff started, and I felt invisible. People would see me when I’d go out and see the bruises I tried to cover and they would look right through me.”
“Why did you get engaged to him?”
I sigh, not sure if I can explain this.
“I think…I think part of me wanted to be part of someone. I wanted you, but there was always the thought that you didn’t want to settle down, that you’d never be satisfied with just me. Tyler was, well when we met and reunited, he was, predictable, stable. He always got up at the same time every day, went to work, came home at the same time. For as chaotic as I was, I think I craved order in my life or something. But then it all changed anyway, he started not coming home and sleeping with other women, I didn’t care though. It was like I was numb inside. I realized it didn’t matter what he did because I didn’t love him. The man I loved was in Plantain, sleeping with whoever he wanted to, not thinking of me.”
I turn to look at Nathan, his eyes intense on me, not that he’s mad or even offended. But more like he just…loves me.
“Does that make sense?” I ask with a small laugh, trying to make the tears in my eyes clear.
Nathan leans forward and presses his lips to mine softly, his rough hands smoothing my hair off my face before he cups my cheeks.
“This goes without saying, but I hadn’t been with anyone after the night with you in my apartment, and it was four years before that that I was with anyone.”
I swallow thick, my throat all of a sudden dry and achy, as a feeling of relief hits my chest. There was never anytime I wanted to know truly what Nathan’s past relationships were, or even if he did sleep around, or if it was in my head.
“You are the third woman I’ve ever been with Skye. I just want you to know that, for me.”
I nod and lean forward, resting my forehead against his. There is a cleansing I feel in my soul, having told Nathan my secrets and him sharing his with me.
“I should have left him a long time ago, before shit got worse. I just didn’t know what was out there for me. I wanted to come back to you, but the fear of you not wanting me after what I did to you, the guilt of how we ended things. I felt in a way I was getting what I deserved for hurting you, for leaving you when I knew you were the best thing that could’ve happened to me.”
“What he did to you, wasn’t your fault,” he says softly and I look up at him. “It wasn’t your fault.”
I feel my eyes burn as my chin begins to quiver, his hands cup my cheeks hard and our eyes lock.
“You didn’t make him who he is, if he didn’t do this to you, it would have been to someone else, it wasn’t your fault.”
We inhale one another’s breath. For the first time, I believe it. I can see in his eyes he means what he’s telling me. But I didn’t need him to say it. I see it every day in him. Every day he loves me, he makes me stronger, makes me feel beautiful and special. This man has helped me realize I’m worth something, he’s given me back the confidence I had when we first met. He’s given me the precious gift of our baby, and I know I deserve to be happy.
“I wouldn’t change anything as long as it brought me here, back to you,” I whisper.
He stops my words with his lips on mine, kissing me with acceptance and love. With every cell in my body I kiss him back, I love this man. Although I told him he was the man I love, I had yet to tell him the actual words.
“Marry me,” I whisper in between kisses.
As if he didn’t hear me, he continues to meld his lips to mine, sliding his tongue into my parted lips. His grip tightens on my cheeks as my fingers move to the button of his jeans, he’s hard and all I want is to take him inside me. Bringing down the zipper and reaching inside to pull his dick out, he inhales sharply as I run my hands up and down him. At the same time, he sits back onto the pillows and I foll
ow, not allowing our kiss to end. He pushes up the bottom of my skirt as I straddle him, sitting up onto my knees until I feel his cock head at my entrance.
Placing my hands on his shoulders while his fingers spread my pussy lips and opening me to accept him. He’s so hot against my wet skin, biting my lip I begin to lower myself onto him, slowly his thick cock fills me and we both moan as my thighs rest upon his.
I begin to grind my hips back and forth, my eyes fluttering closed, as Nathan begins kissing my neck down to my collar bone, before pulling my tube top down and under my breasts. He pushes my shoulders back for his mouth to have better access to my nipples, which he begins to suck and lap with his brilliant tongue. I lean back further and brace my hands on his knees, while bringing my legs up and use my feet on the ground for leverage.
“Ride my cock baby, go crazy on me,” he growls.
My nipples are sensitive, and every time he draws them deep into his mouth, I feel the ache inside grow more intensely. The protruding veins of his penis rub against my walls, the thick ring around the head plunging deep inside me, with every push of him my senses are blown.
“I need you deeper,” I whimper.
Although I don’t know if it’s possible for him to be any deeper, I can feel the man hitting my lungs for God’s sake. But I want him to fuck me, not me fuck him. Taking one last pull from my nipple, Nathan wraps his arms around my waist above my baby bump, slipping from me as he turns me around like I weigh nothing. He rises onto his knees as he positions his dick at my entrance once more, at the same time pulling me down onto his lap and slamming into me.
“Ohhh, Nathan, yes, yes, like that-ohhh yes, like that,” I garble out because I literally feel like he’s got me chanting in tongue.
His teeth sink into my shoulder as his arms band around my chest moving me up and down as he thrusts into me and I start to come, my fingernails digging into his jean clad thighs, just before he brings my hands up and over me to grasp his shoulders. I continue to come as he searches for his release, he’s holding back and I want him to take me however he wants.
“Come for me,” I plead.
I know sometimes he wants to be rougher with me, he definitely doesn’t go hard on me like he used to, before he knew about the pregnancy.
Come as you Are: Plantain Series Book Two Page 19
