by Eden Butler
He’d punished himself for a week, obsessing about his plays, his blocks, the blitz that he didn’t manage and that damn tackle. Not once did he seem remotely concerned about the concussion. Around the fourth day, post injury, I realized he’d never take this seriously, not until it was too late.
I couldn’t do it. Not a second longer. Not when he disregarded my worry yet again.
“I’m fine, Aly. You need to calm down,” he’d said the second he’d walked through the door that game day. He didn’t even bother to return my kiss or accept my hug. He was too pissed, I knew, about losing. My worry wasn’t even a factor anymore. Like a fly buzzing at the window.
I made up my mind to leave when he abandoned me for his media room and the analysis of why he’d gotten hit. It had taken me a week to work up the courage to actually prepare: there was a month’s worth of frozen home cooked meals in the freezer and all the bills had been paid. My stuff had been in suitcases for months. I was always gone, back to New Orleans or to New York for a fill-in gig when Tommy or one of my other off-Broadway dancer friends needed me.
My dresser was mostly empty. It wouldn’t take me long to pack. Only one thing was left—telling Ransom I was going.
Night number four and he was back in front of the screen watching his tapes. The light flickered from the television as he turned it off and I heard him move out onto the balcony that ran the length of our condo. The silhouette of palm trees lining the shore looked pitch black against the Miami skyline where the city shone brighter than a new penny. There was so much activity, so much chaos and life being led out there that Miami, no matter how beautiful it was, how rich the culture, had me aching for the slow pace and sweet taste of New Orleans.
That fast pace, was just another factor. We’d been there nearly three years and I had never completely unpacked. Ransom wouldn’t be surprised by my leaving. I knew that. It had been months that we’d gone without touching. Weeks where we kept missing each other, where responsibilities and schedules kept us from being in the same city for more than one or two nights.
“I miss you, Ransom and I’m so lonely,” I’d told him just a month before.
“Come here, makamae. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he’d soothed, taking me on his lap right out on that balcony with the lights of the fast moving city all around us. At the time, I thought we were the only things still. I thought we were the only things taking a second to see the life spinning around us.
Now Ransom leaned on the railing, his gaze all over that skyline, his stance a little unsteady as he gripped the metal edge of the balcony in front of him. I closed my eyes, reminding myself to call the nurse before I left. He couldn’t be left alone in the morning. It was too dangerous.
Ransom’s mouth was drawn down, his body so rigid, so filled with tension. I wanted to pull that away from him, to slip inside his bones and break away the knots and pressure that had him unable to relax.
“You okay?” I’d asked, slipping through the glass door. The night was hot, the humidity booming at ninety-five percent so that my skin felt damp and my already curly hair tightened in the night air.
“Just the game. Same as usual.” He pulled me in front of him so he could wrap those massive arms around my body. I loved how tightly he held me, that I felt every inch of his muscle, all that glorious skin as his pulsed around me. “I’m thinking about getting Kenny to put out some feelers for other teams.”
That had me turning, leaning against the railing to look up at him. Ransom hated the business of playing and though his agent Kenny was good to him, the idea of Ransom asking him to do anything was a struggle. Second round draft picks got decent deals. Defensive line players, which Ransom was, less so. Usually. But I knew Ransom’s option for another season was coming up. I had hoped to convince him not to take the option. We should have been back in New Orleans. Away from the league, starting a life that didn’t involve injuries and an uncertain future. Going home would make things so much better for us.
“Where would you go?” I asked, knowing in the pit of my stomach that it had all been wishful thinking—he wasn’t even considering retiring.
“I don’t know.” Ransom slipped a finger through the ends of my hair, not seeing me, his gaze once again focused on that skyline over my head. “New York maybe, or Colorado.”
My chest ached a little and I couldn’t help the disappointment that burned like fire in my gut. “What about back home? We could go back to New Orleans”
“Nah. Their defense is terrible now.” When he looked down at me, there was no expression on his face. “I want to play somewhere that will get me a shot at a ring.”
“Oh.”
“I know you’re homesick.” That flat tone was enough to tell me he was saying what he thought I wanted to hear. New Orleans wasn’t an option. Not for him. Ransom rubbed his neck, wincing, when stretching his shoulders didn’t give him the release he needed.
“Go lay on the bed and I’ll rub you down.”
Normally, he’d refuse me, tell me not to bother. We hadn’t spent much time together and when we did, there was always something that kept us from touching—the roughness of the game doing its worst on his body, wearing him so thin that most nights he barely managed to crash on the bed when he returned from a game. But it wasn’t just Ransom. I always searched for things to do— teaching dance camps for the Miami Dance Project, filling in now and then when I was needed in a chorus line here or there. I was desperate to find my place in this damn city. But it wasn’t enough. It hadn’t ever been enough. Leann asked if I wanted to buy out her studio. I hadn't even mentioned that to Ransom, not yet. And I knew why: I couldn’t operate that studio here in Miami. I’d have to move back to New Orleans.
With my decision made, I didn’t feel obligated to tell him what I’d just decided. I’d leave him for New Orleans and submerge myself with turning Leann’s studio into something that was solely, utterly mine. I’d need the distraction. I’d heard recently from my doctor, and it was disappointing. While not life threatening, it had me thinking about what the future held for me as a woman, and a potential partner. My priorities had gotten jumbled and I needed time to sort them all out.
It was time to leave him. God, even thinking about it had made me nauseous.
His back was so wide I had to lean over him to work out the knots along his shoulders. He wore only a pair of boxers and smelled like the shea butter soap Keira had sent from their vacation to Maui a few weeks back. Ransom’s skin was drawn tight, as though the muscles underneath were clustered with knots. I worked my palms and thumbs up the long thick stretch of his deltoids, to his traps and smiled when he groaned, wincing when a particularly large knot just underneath his shoulder blade took more effort to smooth away.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” he moaned, moving his head to the side. “Are you?”
“Just a little tired is all.”
Ransom went up on his elbow, tilting his head as he glanced toward the closet. Several of my suitcases were pushed inside with laundry scattered on the floor around them. “Are you ever going to unpack? That trip to New York was a month ago…”
It wasn’t time. Not just yet and so I distracted him with my mouth in the center of his back, nibbling over that slightly protruding spine and the thick muscle until I leaned over him, using my nails to scrape along his shoulders and down his sides as I kissed his neck.
“Damn, nani, that’s good.”
And it was—the way he reacted to me, how responsive he was. Stretched out on his stomach, Ransom let me play, sprawling out so that his arms were at his sides, palms flat on the mattress. I used my teeth, kissing a path over those wide shoulders, turning his head to bring his ear between my lips.
“I love the way your skin feels on my tongue.”
“There’s even more to taste on the other side.”
And he showed me, turning over in a quick twist so that I straddled him and he could get at my hips, those long fingers dancing up my back
, lifting my shirt, tugging off my shorts and thong until I was in only my bra and Ransom palmed me everywhere.
“I never get tired of tasting you, Aly.” He demonstrated with his lips pulling at my nipple through my bra before he took that off too. He cupped the heavy weight of my breast. “All this smooth, nani skin, damn baby, you taste like cotton candy and you’re just as sweet.”
He could never stand just the feel of me for long. Foreplay was great, but it wasn’t enough and Ransom was an impatient man. A few more strokes of his tongue and teeth up my ribs and his fingers inside me, driving deep, making me fly higher and then those greedy hands went everywhere, grabbing, holding me down onto his dick, him filling me inch by torturous inch. He was so big, the feel of him stretching me, filling me, sliding, making me feel tight everywhere.
“God, baby, I’ll never stop wanting you.” Deeper then, with me squatting over him, me watching his eyes, that lingering worry over his injury distracting me only until he moved me harder, faster until he held my thighs, stretching me further so I’d go deeper. “Not ever.”
“Me…me either…” and I’d meant it. It didn’t matter that I’d soon break his heart. It didn’t matter that I’d sign contracts to buy Leann out by week’s end. It was all impulse. It would all be done with an immediacy even I didn’t understand. I hadn’t told him. I wouldn’t until we were spent and all the tension had left his body. It wouldn’t be forever, I didn’t believe. Just until he left the league. Just until he was safe and I could breathe again. Maybe then, being gone would open his eyes, make him realize that I wasn’t just a body. Maybe then, he’d realize I needed him to see me, all of me. Until that time, we’d be separated by a few more miles. But no matter where I laid my head, or what city got to claim Ransom each night, I’d never stop wanting him. Even if I had to for his own sake, and mine.
“Makamae,” he said, flipping us over so that his hips sped, grip squeezed down on my ass, holding onto me as he chased that orgasm and brought me closer and closer to my own yet again. “You’re mine. Only mine. No one loves you like I do. I won’t let them. They can’t have you.”
My pillow was damp and the heavy scent of sweat collected in the center. My bed shook, the headboard jerking against the plaster walls of my condo when I jerked awake from the dream. It hadn’t been a memory, I didn’t think. Ransom had never made that promise to me. Not then anyway.
I lay back, trying to get my heartbeat to slow, trying to convince myself that the dream had not been real. That wasn’t Ransom’s skin I tasted in my mouth. It wasn’t his fingers that had filled me over and over. Not that night. Not for a long, long time.
Not anymore.
But no matter how often I tried to convince myself of the truth, alone at night in that Elysian Fields condo, sometimes I still felt him. Sometimes it was so real, so potent that I could close my eyes and paint a picture of his body, recalling every detail and know that it would be a perfect copy of the man. I could feel him. Dear God, I could feel every inch of him.
Sometimes it was real.
Sometimes I thought, it always would be.
Make a meal of sorrow.
Chase it down with struggle.
Small bites in sections
Chewing until there is only the smallest hint of bitterness.
Until you barely taste it.
Seven
Fall in Louisiana isn’t remotely cold. It isn’t like Miami, where the heat lingers, stifles, or like Nashville where the cold comes without warning or reason and stings against your skin if you aren’t ready for it. I knew Nashville, missed it. It had been the place where Mom had landed after she left New Orleans, the home I knew with Mom and Mark and Johnny raising me right along with my adopted grandmother Bobby until Kona had found us and we all settled back here in Louisiana.
Louisiana was the only home my kid brother and sister knew. Though Koa and Mack looked so much like they belonged on a surfboard in Maui, living on the beach, absorbing the sun like they did every summer when my folks took a month off to live in Hawaii, Louisiana was still in their veins. It was in mine as well.
And it was still damn warm for September. Around us the wind coming off the lake felt cool, not the frigid bite that brings in the coming cold, but the cool tease of wind that rustles the leaves and rattles the rafters when a storm approaches.
There would be no storm today. Not from the weather anyway. It was Friday at noon, a bye week for CPU, and my parents had kept my siblings from school and invited their friends over for barbeque, beer and the chance to celebrate my father’s birthday and to tell me goodbye before I caught a plane back to Miami that night. Two birds, one stone and a damn good excuse to start the weekend early.
The air filled with the delicious scent of grilling steaks, Beer brats and the tempting smell of potato salad and deviled eggs, grilled asparagus and green beans with caramelized onions wafting out from the kitchen through the open patio door.
For atmosphere, my father had lit the fire pit, the flames already high, dancing against the wind as the gravel crunched under our feet. The pit was centered around several patio chairs, cushioned with vibrant colors Mom would switch out when October and the harvest season hit. This section of the back area was set down, away from the patio, a middle point between the back of the lake house and the walkway that lead straight to the boat dock below. It was a beautiful spot, relaxing despite the tension that surrounded us. There was a colder wind coming from my mother and, for once, I hadn’t caused it.
Near the fire pit was where my father and I stood, twin copies of the same DNA, side by side as we cupped our Abitas and listened to Brian, Dad’s best friend and co-defensive line coach prattle on about the freshmen on CPU’s team.
“No discipline whatsoever and hell, Kona, did you see Bradford’s post the other day? I swear to Christ these kids don’t give a shit what they put online.”
“Yep,” Dad said behind a sip of his beer, utterly disinterested in his friends’ complaints.
“Brian, man.” The coach nodded at me, curious when I spoke. “It’s his birthday. No shop talk today.”
“That’s right. Shit, Kona, my bad.” Brian gave Kona’s back a friendly tap and knocked his bottle to my father’s. “You’re almost empty. Let me get you another. Ransom?” But I waved off his offer, not real eager to be shitfaced when I flew back to Miami that night.
“That dude hasn’t removed the stick from his ass in almost twenty-eight years.”
“He just wants his players to act right.”
“So do I,” Dad said, swallowing the rest of his beer, closing his eyes while he did it. “But I care more about how my guys block than what dumbass shit they put up on social media.” He shrugged, glancing at me. “You gotta choose your battles, keiki kane.”
I agreed, nodding back at him, narrowing my eyes when Mom walked out on the patio, glancing our way. Just then my parents caught each other’s gazes, held them for a long moment and I shuddered at whatever that was that passed between them. That look alone told me that my suspicions about something being off with them was right.
It was Mom who broke contact first, a thin, hesitant smile on her mouth faltering when Cass approached with his arm around a girl I didn’t know. Next to me, Dad’s grip on his beer tightened and he watched my mother with squinted eyes, not moving anything but his head in a nod of thanks when Brian returned, handing him a beer. Dad’s focus was solely on my mother—the way she moved, the flick of her hair off her shoulder, how she squeezed Cass’s hand, how the girl with him smiled a little too wide. Kona Hale had always been the jealous sort. He’d admitted that much to me years before. It had been a warning to me not to repeat his mistakes. But that look he threw at my mother, the lost longing I saw in it, had me convinced my father had forgotten the lesson he wanted me to learn years ago. The muscles in his neck flexed and I thought I spotted a flare on his nostrils, but it disappeared the second my little brother jogged down the steps, his attention on the phone in his hand.
>
“Put your feet down, keiki kane,” Dad told Koa when he’d flopped in the chair next to the fire pit and moved his sneakers too close to the flame. But Koa, a kid right in the middle of puberty and all those wild hormones, was full of attitude and disrespect and more concerned with whatever the hell held his attention on that phone than he was listening to our father fuss at him. “Koa. Now!” Dad’s voice carried, drew the attention of the few people that had already arrived to the party. Koa blushed, his eyes darting toward the back of the house, and I knew my little brother was grateful only a few people—Brian and his wife, our mother and Cass and his girl—were the only ones who’d heard Kona yell at him, or saw how he had jumped up so quickly at the sound that he dropped his phone.
“Makua…”
“When I tell you to do something, you fucking do it.”
My little brother stared at our father with his hands shaking and his mouth open. Dad yelled and cursed plenty, but not at his kids, not ever, not in anger. He might discuss, he might even lose his temper when we were being total shits, but he never yelled. Not like this, definitely never in public. The shock of it had the small group pausing and the second Koa closed his mouth, rubbing his palm against his thigh as though he was embarrassed he couldn’t get his hand to stop shaking, Dad seemed to realize that he’d gone a little too far. He blinked slow, sorry, and those wide shoulders lowered, then immediately stiffened with Mom’s approach.
“Koa,” Mom called, coming toward him. “Can you call Mark for me and see if he and Johnny have made it out of the airport yet?” She knelt next to his chair, picking up his phone, wiping it clean of debris against her leg before she hit the power button. The screen blinked on and Mom smiled at Koa, handing the phone over. “I need them to pick up a few things from the market before they get here. Tell him I’ll text him a list. Okay?”
My little brother seemed a little too eager to leave and nodded once, escaping our father’s attitude and the cold, angry look Mom threw at him. Brian, too, seemed to get that things were a little off kilter and excused himself before Mom stepped right in front of Dad.
