by Vella Munn
“I know.”
Despite everything that was going on inside her, her thoughts caught on the emotion laced through Cord’s words. They shared a parent’s love for a child, and that love would bond them for as long as they lived. Why had she not allowed herself to see that earlier? “I feel cheated,” she admitted. “There ought to be a string attached to him. I should be able to pull on it and bring him back to me.”
“I know.”
“That’s how you feel? As if he’s just out of reach?”
“More than just. Damn it, much more.”
“Cord? Don’t, please.”
“Don’t what?”
“Talk like that. It scares me.”
“What do you want, then?” He spoke with his hands on his thighs and his head turned toward her, but his face was in the shadows, making it impossible for her to read his emotions. She would have to go by what he said, and that wasn’t enough; his few words had never been enough. “I can’t tell you I’m not frustrated. You have to know that.”
He sounded much more than just frustrated. He’d told her that everything in nature could fit inside the human heart, but right now he didn’t sound at peace with either himself or the world they were in. Was it because he’d piled the long, disappointing day on his shoulders and didn’t know how to shake it off?
Or maybe he knew more than he’d told her.
Concerned now more for him than for herself, she took his hand and pressed it to her waist. She was dimly aware of how unwise the gesture was, but she could no more stop herself than she could tell her lungs to cease breathing. This man was the other half of her son’s existence.
Still a vital part of her life.
“I do know how frustrating this is,” she told him gently. “But, Cord, you found his trail and where he spent last night.”
“Yes.”
“Then think about that, not what you still have to do.”
“I can’t help it.”
No one had ever heard that raw and uncensored tone from him. She was certain of it. She accepted his honesty both as a gift for her alone and as proof of how much this search had taken out of him. “Tell me what you’re thinking now. Please.”
He tensed and then released the tension in a long, deep sigh. She felt the hand she held move and accepted it when he laced his fingers through hers. The sun was nearly done with its work for the day and the moon hadn’t come out yet. She thought of their son having to look up at the sky alone, with the universe surrounding him, and then tore her mind free. She couldn’t help Matt tonight, couldn’t do anything more than send him a silent message of love. His father was here and maybe Cord needed her as much as she needed him. Had he ever before? Had she ever asked herself the question? “I have to know what’s going on inside you,” she begged. “I know I keep asking you for that, but, please...”
For a long time he simply stared at her in the deepening gloom. Then he turned his attention to their intertwined fingers. He lifted her hand toward him and touched his mouth to her knuckles.
“You really want to know what I’m thinking?”
“Yes.” She kept her eyes off their hands, breathed, tried to think. He kissed me. And the night—the night was for them alone. “Yes, I do. Cord, I know so much about your silences, I’ve tried to reach beyond them. Please, no more, not tonight.”
For the second time in a matter of seconds, he kissed her wind-chapped knuckle. A jolt filled with equal sparks of ice and heat raced through her. She breathed again; it didn’t help.
“You saw my silence as a barrier?” he asked.
Incapable of speech, she nodded.
“I wish you’d told me before,” he said.
“I wish I’d known how to, gently, without carving a wedge between us. Cord, please.”
His mouth worked; she all but tasted his effort. “I’m comfortable not saying much,” he told her. “It’s what I grew up with, what I was taught.” Still holding on to her, he shifted position until he was sitting cross-legged, so close that their knees touched. “You know that.”
“Yes, I do. But, Cord, so many times I didn’t know what to do with your silence. I needed you to talk to me. I still need that. Try—that’s all I’m asking.”
He began by telling her about the first time he saw his grandfather. He’d been six or seven, living hand to mouth with his mother, when they went to visit this strange old man who lived all by himself in a cabin without electricity or running water.
“I could hardly wait to leave,” he admitted. “He kept looking at me without so much as acknowledging my presence. I barely understood anything he said. Later, my mother told me Gray Cloud spent so much time by himself that he didn’t know how to carry on a conversation. She understood him, at least a little, because he’d passed in and out of her childhood, but she had to work at it. And she told me that sometimes she didn’t like what he said.”
“What did he say?”
Cord released her hand, shrugged off his backpack and helped her out of hers. Only when he was done and they were back to sitting with their knees touching did he go on.
“I think he was critical of the way she lived,” he said. “Because she wasn’t interested in the old ways.”
“A generation gap.”
“That and other things. He and my grandmother were divorced when my mother was very young. I don’t know what went wrong between them—he never said.”
“No. I imagine he didn’t.”
“I’m sure my grandmother’s family didn’t want him around. It hurt him deeply not to be in touch with his child—maybe that’s why he had so little to do with people. I don’t think he knew what to do with his grown daughter. I remember the criticism in her voice when she told me he didn’t understand that the world was changing and she couldn’t live in a hut and spend most of her time in the wilderness.”
“But you did. And it worked for you.” Her body belonged to her again, but she didn’t trust it to remain that way. She wanted their time together to go on forever.
“Yes, it did. Once, not long before Gray Cloud died, I asked him why he took me in after my dad split and my mom died. He said it was in my eyes—that mine were the same as his.”
“Yes, I think they were.”
“Do you? I don’t know whether he had legal custody of me—I don’t think that kind of thing concerned him. He said I had to go to school because that’s what every other child was doing, but he had little use for the institution. He never once let anyone tell him how I should be raised. People, like principals and social workers, tried—he ignored them. He never told me why he’d changed his life for me, shared it with me—just that there was something in my eyes.”
She became aware of the way her heart was beating. It seemed to work in fits and starts, sometimes strong, sometimes weak, always making its presence known. Hurting and yet singing at the same time. She’d gone beyond tears simply because Cord had said more to her tonight than he ever had before. “He never told you he loved you, did he?”
“No.”
Cord’s simple word seemed to echo in the now-solid night. Mindless of the danger, she took his hand and once again held it to her middle. She felt him looking at her. What did it matter? She no longer cared that she’d begun to strip herself naked to him. “It hurt, didn’t it?”
“Hurt?”
“Surely you wanted to hear words of affection from him. You had a right, the right of every child.”
“I knew. It was in the way he treated me, the things he taught me. What we shared.”
Tonight it sounded precious. “What did you share?”
“Things. So many things. Listening together. Sitting in the mountains, melting into them, watching nature go about its life. We did that together.”
Shivering, she fought for words. “But a child needs to hear certain words from the people in his life. You tell Matt you love him. You know what he needs.”
“I learned from you.”
She went hot; ice
touched fire again. Tears raged inside her but she fought them.
He leaned forward slightly and increased the pressure of knee against knee. “It came so naturally to you. Nursing Matt. Holding and rocking him in that comfortable old rocking chair you bought. Singing to him. Showing him that it was wonderful to smile. I’d watch the two of you, the way he studied your face as if it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. Then he’d smile and you’d show him how to make it bigger.”
She shivered, fought a sob. “What about love, Cord?” Silent? Cord Navarro? Not tonight, not for these few precious seconds. “What did I do that guided you?”
He hesitated, as if leery of entrusting her with too much of himself, but she held on with hand and heat and heart, desperate to keep the suddenly precious channel between them open.
“What you said to him. And to me. Actions as much as words.” He took a deep breath and she could tell that he was looking around at his surroundings. Then he stared at her again and she was glad it was only the two of them.
“There was no way you could stop yourself from expressing what was in your heart,” he said. “That love boiled up inside you and spilled over to engulf Matt. And, for a while, me.”
A sob again slashed through her. She fought it, only barely aware of her fingers boring into his flesh. “Cord?” The word came out a whimper. When she tried again, it sounded the same. “Cord? Why didn’t you say this to me before?”
She felt his forefinger rubbing against the back of her hand, a strong, yet gentle gesture. “Maybe what I felt was caught too deep.”
Someone else might have laughed at his hesitant explanation, but she understood. It went back to Gray Cloud and before that a mother overwhelmed by the responsibility of a child. In her mind and heart she saw the little boy he once was, a boy desperate for love and clinging as best he could to what was given him. Or maybe he’d been born self-contained, self-confident. It didn’t matter, did it? “Why is it different tonight?”
By way of answer, he looked upward. The moon had just begun its journey over the tips of the shadow trees. The cool, distant source of light was a little more than half full with a gentle rounding on one side that gave promise of more to come. It struck her that Cord was like that, much more than a thin sliver of emotion but not yet having reached what he was — she hoped—capable of.
“It still isn’t easy for you, is it?” she whispered. “Talking about emotions.”
He grunted.
“Cord, nature speaks to you. Shares its secrets with you. Sharing with another human being isn’t any different, not deep down. I’m trying to be that person, at least for now, listening in ways I didn’t...wasn’t capable of before.”
He was fighting within himself, at war with something she could only guess at. She wondered if he understood how much she wanted to give him of herself, now. Finally. For long, hungry minutes she waited for him to give her another glimpse of himself so she could do the same in turn and damn the consequences.
Instead, “He should have enough food. Kevin said-”
“Kevin? We’re talking about you, not Kevin.”
“We’re here because of Matt.”
His words, his undeniable words, stripped her of anger as quickly as the emotion had assaulted her. “I know,” she said. “Oh, God, I know.” The sounds eddied and she didn’t bother repeating herself. No longer caring—or maybe caring too much, about everything—she reached out as if to grab her pack with its food supply.
He stopped her. Filled with the strength that had brought him here, he gripped her arms and pulled her close. She should have been prepared for her body’s reaction. Hadn’t she felt the contrast of heat and cold twice already tonight and known of the danger? But when he touched her, she became nothing and everything just the way she had all those years ago when she blindly, naively loved him so much she didn’t know if she could stand it.
“We can’t fight,” he whispered. “We don’t dare.”
She knew that, but with the sound of his heart pulsing through her and his capable hands holding her so near, she was aware of precious little except him.
I need you. Senseless, insane, I need you. She tried to pull away. He wouldn’t let her. She ended the battle she hadn’t wanted. “Cord?”
“Shannon? Please, I need to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Is it my fault?”
“Your fault?”
“That Matt’s out here? Never mind. I don’t have to ask. I’m the one responsible for his wanting to prove himself and not having the necessary skills to accomplish that. What I need to know is, how do you feel about it?”
She struggled to make sense of his words. He’d opened himself up to her and was asking for honesty in return. She wanted to give him that and erase a little of the distances that separated them.
But another distance, or rather the lack of one, had made its impact.
He felt far warmer than any summer night she’d ever known. Cooler than the moon that had briefly vied for her attention. There he sat with his incomplete and yet incredibly honest words, his life-hardened body, his mouth so close that its very nearness robbed her of a certain will and made her desperately hungry. She hadn’t exorcised him from her body after all, had she? What had made her think that possible?
He sat there looking as if he didn’t quite believe he’d taken hold of her, his eyes saying he was ready for her to resist him. But night sounds and sights and smells had begun to sweep over her and claim her for their own.
Most of all, there was him.
She leaned into him, asking with her body, shutting off her mind, accepting the truth about herself. He answered by standing and pulling her against him until they were pressed together chest to hips. So long—how long had she wanted this?
He hadn’t moved and his body continued to call to her and there wasn’t a half inch of her that didn’t know what that call of his felt like. She had only one answer in her.
She felt the stretch in her neck as she rose to meet his mouth. He covered her lips with his, a simple, complex, life-giving kiss that raced through her until the message in their embrace touched her heart. She was instantly flooded with memories—memories of that other lifetime when youth and wonder and love and physical hunger had her in their grip.
He’d met her with barely parted lips, but that soon changed. She felt his mouth open, slowly, tantalizingly. To give herself strength, she clamped her arms around his neck and waited. On fire, she waited.
He gave her access. Still mindless, she touched her tongue to his teeth and asked entrance. Something cool lapped at the back of her neck, but she ignored the unexpected breeze. For the past hour, her feet had been aching. Now the warmth boiling from deep inside her laced a slow trail down her legs until even her toes felt the impact.
Trusting that he wouldn’t leave her, she released his neck and slowly ran her fingers into his thick, coarse hair. In silent response, he pressed his palms into the small of her back. He’d done that a thousand times in the distant past when just looking at each other had stripped away the world. She arched herself toward him, stopping only when his hard body gave no more.
Sealed together.
Could she remember what he needed most in a kiss? She tried to put her mind to the massive question but it snaked out of reach.
His exploring tongue slowly worked its way into her. She closed her teeth gently around him and gave herself up to the magic of the other ways she’d once surrounded him.
Lovemaking. The promise was within her grasp—a teasing, testing memory that felt like hot coals applied to the heat already pulsing through her.
He’d once known her body, explored it as he explored his beloved wilderness. Maybe cherished both in the same way.
But that was yesterday. Years ago. Tonight his fingers and hands and tongue and lips felt totally new. Surely he’d never filled her so full of life before. She would have remembered that.
She would have learn
ed how to control her reaction.
But those lessons, if they’d once been hers, rushed away like butterflies caught in the wind.
She felt fingers along the side of her neck. She leaned into him, thinking to surround him, but went weak instead.
With her hands still in his hair and her palms resting over the pulsing veins at his temple, she covered his mouth and chin and cheeks with hummingbird kisses. Her body, needing more, fought her, but she refused to listen to its cry.
“Shannon?”
Her name on his lips. She touched her tongue there as if doing so could draw the sound deep inside her. She wanted to be able to say something that might reach him in the same way, but years of silence and distance stood between them, and she didn’t know how to begin to bridge that. What she could do was let him know how she felt about him at this moment—gentle and tentative and frightened and eager, wondering if there was a journey to begin, asking him to help with the decision.
He didn’t speak again. His hands inched lower until he’d cupped them around her buttocks and pulled her against him. He was ready to capture her, hard and alive and urgent.
She fought her own urgency, her mind nearly screaming in its need for that precious first step.
First step? A mountain to climb? Maybe. A bottomless ravine? Maybe.
With an awful wrench, she resisted him. At the same time, fighting herself, she continued her whispering kisses. She prayed he understood how dangerous what they were doing was and how it might explode at any moment. She should be able to tell him, to get him to go at the pace she was trying to set so they wouldn’t lose it all.
But they’d lost so many years, so much love. Maybe they should remain buried behind those years. If not, if there was something to their time together, the journey needed to be taken slowly.
Didn’t it?
Why couldn’t she think?
He pushed her away from him until she could no longer cover him with her questioning kisses. She felt his eyes dig into her, felt his own battle.
