“Thank you, Eric. But no. Today is about – about me and Cam. I’m sorry.”
That hurt him, but he knew she was right. That was, after all, the deal he’d agreed to.
It was one night, man. Remember? You were here to help her through, and that’s what you did.
But as he looked at her and he realized that he’d have to go soon, he suddenly understood just how stupid he’d been when he had asked himself what one night was.
What’s one night?
Everything. It can be everything.
**
They ate together, and after, he got dressed. She stood by the door and watched him put on his shoes. She felt a tightness in her chest.
Eric stood up and took her in his arms. He held her close, his large hand stroking her hair, feeling her breath against his neck. She felt amazing right there, her curves fitting in to his planes without any gaps or odd angles.
Goddammit. This is harder than I thought.
Annabeth closed her eyes and let her body sink in to Eric’s. She didn’t want to let him go, she wanted him to save her from herself. But that wasn’t his job, and with a huge effort, she pulled back from him.
They gazed at each other, so many things unsaid.
“Thank you, Eric. Thank you. You don’t – you don’t know what it means to me that you were here last night. That you… made love to me. Made me feel safe and good.”
He stroked her lips with his thumb. “It was wonderful for me, too, baby. I’ll never forget. I promise you.”
They kissed, sweetly, gently. Then she let go of him and he opened the door.
“Bye, angel.”
“Bye.”
And he was gone, back to getting on with his life. And she was still here.
Time to get on with my death.
Chapter Six
Phil slid in and out of Vicky’s hot body, loving her moans. She was lying straight out on top of him facing the ceiling in his bedroom, her back pressed to his muscled chest. His hands reached everywhere – they caressed her breasts, moved down her stomach. He licked his fingers and moved them between her legs.
Vicky gasped as he gently stroked her clit, teasing her. He always knew exactly what to do to get her body’s strongest reaction. His breath was in her hair, in her ear, and he lifted and lowered her with each thrust.
As the pressure built inside of her, Vicky’s head slipped off his chest and landed on his shoulder. He licked her neck and increased the thrumming on her vulnerable bud. She gave a cry as the tension inside of her grew, backed off, grew again.
Phil felt her pussy fluttering around him and he gripped her hips tighter. He held her in place and started to thrust now, hard and fast. He ran his tongue over the sweat on her slim back, nipped her shoulder blade.
Vicky felt everything start to contract to the point of no return and she closed her eyes as her climax sat tantalizingly just outside her reach. She ground her body down on Phil’s with desperation.
“Oh, God, Phil… I need to come! Please!”
“You’re so close, sweetheart. So fucking close…”
Phil slammed in to her as hard as he could now and she shrieked as the impact finally hit: the tensing and relaxing inside her went on and on, over and over again. He felt her surrender and he let himself move faster and harder, his own orgasm seconds away.
He came in a blinding explosion of heat, his huge body shaking and twitching under her. She felt his cock throbbing inside of her and she smiled, loving that he had found his own release with her, that he wanted this as badly as she did.
He wrapped his arms around her chest, his lips nuzzling the back of her neck.
“How was that, babe?”
“Amazing.” She grinned up at the ceiling. “I like that I get to be so lazy in this position… I just basically lie down on top of you and you do all the work.”
He growled and carefully flipped her over and off his body. She landed next to him on her stomach and laughed. He put one arm behind his head, his muscle bulging and she leaned in for a kiss.
“I love you.”
“I love you.” He stroked her cheek.
She lay curled up on his chest, listening to his heart beating. She glanced at the clock on his bedside table to see if it was time to get ready to pick up Sonia from the stables. That's when she saw the box.
“What’s that?” she said.
“What’s what?” Phil said, running his hand up and down her back.
“That. That box.”
He squinted at it. “Oh, yeah. Annabeth brought it over to your place yesterday. I forgot about it with all the packing and everything. Anyway, she said it was a present for you.”
Vicky sat up. “A present?”
“Yeah. Seems she went around yesterday giving goodbye presents. She’s leaving first thing tomorrow morning, apparently. A bit early.”
Vicky’s brow was wrinkled. “Who else did she give something to?”
“Julie for sure. Annabeth gave her the necklace that her husband gave to her right after he proposed.”
“She what?”
“Oh, I almost forgot… she left a message with your gift, too.”
“OK.”
“She said her husband Cam gave this to her after she beat cancer and so for her, it represents strength and new beginnings. She said that she wants you to have it because you’ve made this whole new life for yourself, and so you’re the best person to give this to.”
Vicky listened with a rising sense of worry. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
She opened the box and stared at its contents. “Oh, my God.”
“What is it?”
“Her engagement ring.”
They stared at each other in shock.
“This is all wrong, Phil… no way Annabeth would give this way. Unless –”
“Unless what?”
Vicky launched herself out of the bed. “I need to get back to the ranch. Right now.”
“What? Why?”
She was getting dressed at roughly the speed of light. “I’m not sure. I just – I just need to go see Annabeth.”
Phil got out of bed too. “You think she’s going to hurt herself?”
“I don’t know… but I do know that giving away items with real emotional and sentimental value is what people do just before they take their own lives.”
“Holy fuck,” Phil said. “I had the feeling something was off with her, but I figured it was about the anniversary of Cam’s death. I didn’t think that.”
“I know… and I may well be wrong, but I need to make sure.”
“Should I call Julie, have her go over to Annabeth’s cabin?”
“No. No, don’t do that.”
“Want me to come with you?”
“No, it’s OK. I’ll go alone.”
He followed her through the living room, watched her frantically search for her car keys. “Why do you want to do this? And alone?”
“Because, sweetheart,” she said. “I know all about wanting to die and planning to end it all. I thought about it every day for years, and more than once, I almost went through with it.” She opened the door. “If anyone can reason with her, hopefully I can.”
**
Annabeth watched the sun set over the Rockies and she sighed. That’s what she had been waiting for; the blazing orange and yellow and pink rays were stunning. That was the last thing on her list and she checked it off. All done, now.
She walked over to the kitchen counter and slowly opened the bottle of wine she had set aside for this night. The sleeping pills were in a bowl and she was surprised how harmless and innocent they looked. Almost like candy.
She opened the cupboard and took down one of the beautiful wine glasses. She had already written Julie a huge check to replace the broken dishes from the night before, and a handwritten apology. She really hoped that Julie would forgive her. For everything.
Annabeth poured a glass of wine and sat down near the window facing th
e mountains.
OK, just one glass of wine, to relax you. Then a few pills. Slowly now. No rush. Don’t screw this up.
As she sat and sipped, she remembered drinking this wine when Cam proposed, drinking it at her wedding. She smiled at the memories, then her mind jumped to Julie and Jake’s engagement. She wondered what kind of wine they were going to have at their engagement party with the staff, what kind of wine they’d have at their wedding. She wondered if she’d like the wine. She wondered what Julie’s dress would look like.
Then she thought about Vicky and Sonia moving in with Phil, and Phil’s invitation to the housewarming party. She wondered what their house would look like, and she imagined it as warm and open and bright, bursting with life and love. She wondered what color Sonia’s room would be.
And then she thought about Eric, just across the clearing, so close to her. What if she just walked over there and knocked on his door? Took off her clothes and climbed in to his bed, kissed him and took him in to her body? She wondered if he’d make love to her all night again; she wondered if she’d want it for more than one more night.
She shook her head.
Cold feet, girl. Totally normal. Focus.
She finished the wine and got to her feet. She went in to the kitchen and poured another glass. She stood and stared at the bowl and wondered how it was going to feel to die.
Chapter Seven
Vicky raced to Open Skies Ranch, praying to God that her intuition was wrong. She had been wrong so many times in her life, about so many things, and she hoped this was just one more time and thing.
Deep down inside, though, she knew she was right. She knew what it looked like to slowly give up. She knew full well that sometimes, losing a war happened one small crushing defeat at a time. It was one tiny thing and then another, and then one day, one last tiny thing happened and you just couldn’t take anymore. That was the tiny thing that could kill you.
Oh, sure. Over Annabeth’s most recent three or four visits, Vicky had seen her face increasingly take on that look, the look of a woman losing herself one piece at a time. But Vicky had also read her blog and her books, and she had believed what Annabeth had written about healing and getting stronger. That the bad days were fewer and fewer; that she was open to loving someone again. Vicky remembered how overjoyed she had been when she’d read that: she had been cheering Annabeth on, wishing her love and happiness with someone new, when she was ready.
Maybe she wanted to mean it all? Maybe she thought that if she said it and wrote it enough times, it would be true? Maybe the person most fooled and deluded by Annabeth was Annabeth?
Annabeth had given it her best shot, Vicky knew, but she wasn’t going to win this battle against the creeping darkness. Or so she thought. Vicky was determined to convince her otherwise, convince her to get some help and talk and be honest.
Assuming she got there in time.
She pulled up to Annabeth’s cabin and jumped out. She ran on to the front porch, noticing that the front window blinds were drawn and there was a light on inside.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Annabeth!” she said knocking. “Are you there?”
No answer.
She tried the door. Locked.
I swear to God, I will break this door down.
“Annabeth! I know you’re in there… open up right now or I’ll throw a rock through the fucking window!”
She was just looking around for a rock big enough when she heard a noise. She turned and saw the door swing open.
Annabeth was standing there holding a glass of wine.
Vicky hurried over to her, pushed past her, slammed the door, looked around. When she saw the pills on the counter, she blanched.
“How many? How many have you taken?”
Annabeth stared at her blankly. Vicky shook her, hard. The wine spilled all over the floor.
“Annabeth! How many?”
“None.”
“…None?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Vicky heaved a sigh of relief.
“I wanted to… I really did. But I just couldn’t go through with it.”
“Thank God.”
Annabeth and Vicky looked at each other.
“How did you know?” Annabeth asked.
“Because, hon. I know all about thinking you just can’t go on.”
Annabeth’s eyes filled with tears and she started to cry. The sobs burst out of her hard, and Vicky knew that they had just been sitting there in her chest for a long time, waiting to come out. She held out her arms. Annabeth stepped in to them, and the women sank to the floor. Vicky held her as she sobbed and wailed, rocked her back and forth.
“It’s OK, Annabeth. You’re going to be OK now.”
Annabeth held on to her, finding comfort in Vicky’s warmth and words. Somehow, she found them just as soothing as Eric’s had been the night before. And for some reason, this time she believed the warmth and the words. She believed it might be OK after all.
**
A long time later, Annabeth and Vicky were sitting on the sofa, glasses of wine in their hands. Annabeth talked, Vicky listened, nodding.
“I thought I was at the end, Vicky. I really did. But… I guess I wasn’t.” She looked at Vicky. “Why – why did you never go through with it?”
Vicky took a sip of wine. “At first? Because of Sonia. I just couldn’t leave her with her father.”
“Was he abusing her too?”
“Not then. Carl didn’t start hurting her until she was five, and that was actually when I started to seriously think about running. It was like… somehow, I could handle him hurting me, but if he laid a hand on her? We had to get out.” She was quiet for a second. “It’s so odd what we can get used to, isn’t it? How much pain we can learn to live with?”
“Yeah.”
“Carl first hit me when I was pregnant. He was so sorry… he cried for an hour after. I wanted to believe it would never happen again, and I couldn’t believe I’d be so stupid as to marry and have a baby with a monster… so I stayed. And of course it happened again and again and after a while, it became so normal. The pain and the fear and the aloneness. Totally normal.”
“I know what you mean.”
“After Sonia was born, I hung in there for her. Any time I seriously considered ending it all, I thought about her. But after a while, I realized that having Sonia as my only reason to not kill myself was a big mistake. I started to resent her for it. Can you believe it? I actually resented my own child.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It was like I was saying, ‘Well, if not for you, I’d be free to do what I really want!’ You know what I mean? It was like – like Sonia was preventing me from stopping the pain. From escaping.”
Annabeth leaned back. “My God.”
“I know. I know. But that’s where I got to… I was so, so trapped. I didn’t have a job or money, I was so isolated. I had a baby who needed me, and I couldn’t even take care of myself. It was a – a terrible, dark time in my life.”
“So how did you get through it without taking your own life or going crazy?”
“Small things. I mean, tiny fucking inconsequential nothing things.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, TV shows. I started to watch TV shows with running threads in the storyline.”
Annabeth shook her head, still confused.
“Well,” Vicky said. “I’d want to know what happened next, right? I’d get close to the edge and then I’d say to myself, ‘But you have to watch that show tonight, to see if they finally kiss’, or ‘They’re so close to catching the killer… you can’t die until you see how they get him.’ Things like that.”
“Wow.”
“I know. It sounds ridiculous. But I just started finding small things to look forward to. Dumb, meaningless things, but still. They kept me holding on.”
Annabeth shook her head. “That�
�s so…so…”
“Bleak,” Vicky said. “Desperate. Sad. But that’s what I had, and so that’s what I held on to. Small things were manageable in a way that huge things just weren’t. I mean, what’s so overwhelming about a TV show?”
“Yeah. I get it.”
“I did that for a long time, and then Sonia got older and I had new things to look forward to. School plays, a ballet recital. Her birthday, Christmas. And soon, I didn’t even have to hang on for small things. Suddenly, I had big things. I had things for Sonia.” She smiled. “And that’s when I left.”
Annabeth was quiet, running her finger around the rim of her wine glass. “I think – I think I did the same thing tonight. I think that’s what changed my mind.”
“Small things?”
“Yeah. I didn’t miraculously find one big reason not to kill myself… there was no lightning-bolt-from-the-blue moment. It was more like… like I kind of wanted to see how some things turned out.”
“Like what?”
“I started to think about Julie’s wedding dress and Sonia’s new bedroom at Phil’s house. Just stuff like that.”
“Well, sweetie, those are things that matter. I mean, they won’t end war or cure cancer or stop world hunger, but they matter. They mean something to people who mean something to us, and life is made up of these things.”
“Yeah. You’re right.”
“The little things can grind you down or they can also keep you here.” Vicky took Annabeth’s hand. “You do need some big things too, though. You know that, right?”
“Like you have Sonia?”
“And Phil, and my job here, and all the people at Open Skies who care about me. You’ll need things like this too.” She smiled. “But I can’t expect anyone to do all my work for me… I’m in therapy and I fight every day to get past what Carl did to me. That’s not Phil’s job, or Sonia’s, or Julie’s. It’s mine.”
“I have lots of work to do, don’t I?”
“Yes. That’s OK. And maybe you’ll find someone who can help you get through it, someone who will be in your corner.”
Annabeth thought about Eric, remembered how it felt for him to be thrusting inside her, his breath hot on her face as he whispered for her to come. She blushed.
Open Heart Page 6
