by Madi Le
"You're an idiot," he said to himself, softly.
She wasn't the same woman. He'd told her so, to her face. It wasn't a question.
But she smelled the same. She reminded him of a time when things were less fucked up. Now she'd brought down on him something much worse than a few missed dates and a slow descent into misery. And all he wanted was more of it, in spite of himself. Grant's teeth grit themselves together. He knew better. Or he should have.
But he rolled out of the bed and stood on his legs. They were steady now. Before this, he'd been spending so much time thinking about how miserable he was that he didn't trust anything. But now, he had something else on his mind entirely. He might be miserable, and he might be exhausted, but there was something that he knew he could do to take care of both.
And if he believed anything, he believed that she wasn't going to tell him that she didn't want it, too. A night's distraction might be just what the doctor ordered.
They could figure out what to do next in the morning.
Ten ♥
*
Misty's hip was bothering her less than she'd expected. The wound hadn't even bled so badly. She told herself that it was adrenaline, or something. She was no doctor. But the idea that it was milder than she had expected more than occurred to her.
She let out a long breath. "You're an idiot."
She turned away from the door and took half a step when it opened. Grant was standing there, looking down at her, for the second time that night.
"Is everything oka–"
His arms wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her in; his lips pressed hard against hers. Then Misty relaxed into him. Everything, she thought, seemed to be fine. And in particular, there was one part which seemed more fine than the others, starting to form a bulge that pressed into her stomach.
"You're drunk," she said, pulling away.
He didn't look drunk, though, when he fixed his eyes on her. "Is that going to be a problem?"
"I don't want you to regret–"
His lips cut off the rest of her sentence for a second time. She pulled away again, sooner this time. She felt him loosen his grip around her. "I regret a lot of things," he said quietly. "And I'm not sure what I'm going to regret if I move forward. But I know that I can't keep running from everything."
The words sounded almost pretentious, coming from the man in front of her. She liked them. It was a relief, hearing that someone wasn't planning on running her off in the morning. Even if it was a lie, it was the lie she wanted to hear.
"You sure?"
"Sure I'm sure," he said. His arms squeezed. Her body molded itself to his. There was startlingly little give in his physique, given what she could see under his uniform. Maybe he spent more time at the gym than she gave him credit for.
It was her turn to press the kiss this time, forcing her feet to elevate her a little more. His beard, short but not short enough, scratched and tickled at her cheeks. She liked it a little bit. Like everything about him, it felt like she should have been running for the hills, but she only wanted to have more of it.
An idea flashed into her head, about what else he could tickle with those whiskers. Her face flushed in the dark, and her heart started thumping in her chest. Grant took a step back. Misty took a step forward. They walked, exploring each other with their mouths, until he wrapped his arms around her and the pair of them went tumbling into his bed.
It was soft, and she only felt one lump; it wasn't in the mattress. He pressed it against her thigh.
Her hands found the hem of her shirt and pulled up. There wasn't anything underneath; she'd left her bra on the floor of his front room, when all that she had intended was to sleep. Now it seemed like a convenient choice to have made.
Grant trailed a line of kisses down from her lips; he pressed his lips against her jaw, down to her neck. His teeth scraped against her, drawing a gasp from her lips that she didn't bother trying to suppress.
Misty's hands wrapped around the back of his head, guiding him down. He kissed down her collar bone, nipping gently at her upper chest when he came to the center, going down. Then he found her breasts. His chin hairs scratched, and then before she could protest he drew one into his mouth and suckled. Then he bit, and the gasp turned into a whimper mixed between pain and pleasure.
She felt his hand between her thighs, and spread them. His fingers wasted no time in tracing the line of her inner thigh, higher and higher, until he was about to trace across her crotch. But he didn't.
Instead, his hands dropped back down. His teeth bit, distracting her from following their line back to her knees, and by the time Misty entirely regained her senses he was already tracing a line back up. It didn't seem possible, but somehow he managed to get closer still, never quite daring to touch her in her most sensitive area.
He pulled off her breast with a soft 'pop' and pulled her other nipple into his mouth. Her hands dug into his hair and in spite of herself she pushed his head down further. He obliged, releasing her breast pre-emptively from his mouth, tracing a line of kisses down her stomach. Down low on her hips. Between her thighs.
This time he didn't tease her. He pulled her thighs up, around his shoulders, and leaned in. The first touch of his tongue against her most sensitive areas was like an electric shock running through her.
Misty wasn't sure how long it had been. A long time, maybe much longer than she imagined. But the feeling of his mouth against her was like nothing that she could remember. A sensation that she had only imagined until this point. A want that she couldn't put a name to until this moment.
Her voice came out, and her fingers dug into her hair. His fingers stopped teasing, and joined him in pleasuring her. The sensations seemed to shift and fade into one another, like the waves of an ocean, and they washed over her entirely until she couldn't breathe any more and every muscle in her tightened, all at the same instant, and she wrapped her legs around his head and squeezed in tight. He didn't complain, and he didn't stop what he was doing.
When she finally started to come down from the high, her body felt as tired as it had in a year. Every drop of energy in her had drained out, and she felt as if she was going to pass out. But his lips were starting to trace a line back up her body. Her fingers tangled in his hair. He pulled her breast, ignored thanks to her own impatience, into his mouth. The electric feeling had spread now, she discovered; the sensation of his teasing her nipples felt twice as strong.
Misty heard the sound of a zipper, and felt him press something against her entrance. She held her legs around his hips, and when he entered her, she squeezed him tight. He moved against her in the dark, his lips moving up to her throat, kissing and biting and she guessed leaving at least one mark.
In that moment, at least, she didn't care. She rocked her hips up to meet a thrust, and tried to keep up with the next one, but her body wasn't listening to her any more. He moved harder with the second thrust, forcing himself to move a little faster and a little harder. She let out a groan of pleasure as she felt her muscles starting to tense up again. She knew what was coming next, and she knew that she wanted nothing more than that. If everything fell apart after, that was alright, as long as she could just continue another moment.
Her mind went blank. Her arms pulled against him, her legs tightening to get him to move just a little bit harder, a little bit deeper. He obliged, his movements long-since having lost their rhythm. There was another long minute of intense movement, and then she felt him spasm inside her, and she felt something hot spread through her belly as he spent himself inside her. She closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around him, and before she knew it, she was sleeping pleasantly for the first time in the life that she'd known.
The first thing that Misty knew, when her eyes finally opened, was that the lights were too bright. Grant was beside her. He didn't snore, was altogether a pleasant sleeping partner. Not that they had done as much sleeping as her body had wanted. The sun streamed in through cracks in the blinds
, and seemed to illuminate the room so well that it was a wonder anyone ever used light bulbs in the first place.
Then again, she'd been drinking the night before, and her head hurt. She closed her eyes to test it. The bright light seemed to be coming from inside her skull, reminding her constantly that she'd done something very stupid.
Looking over at Grant, she wondered how stupid that had been. It might come back to bite her in the ass later. She didn't mind. Every other thing that she'd done in the past year, and apparently many of the things that she'd done before that, had already come back to bite her. One more thing on the pile wasn't going to change her situation in a meaningful way.
She took a deep breath. The bed smelled like him. It was a good smell. Pleasantly masculine, even if it wasn't a particularly clean scent. Misty let herself lay in that bed, surrounded by that smell, for another long moment. She tried to do a quick scan of how her body felt, but the pain in her head was so much that she wasn't sure she could have felt it if there were a bullet hole in her hip.
Which, now that she thought about it, there was. It was sore. When she moved, it would only get worse. For now it consigned itself to a dull, vague sensation of discomfort that had been forced to settle some time in the night.
So Misty did what she knew how to do. She kept her day moving forward. She took another deep breath of the comfort that she'd found; it was only one nights' worth, but it was something. And then she slid out from under his arm and rolled onto the floor. The hardwood was cool compared to the warm blankets.
She pulled on dirty clothes, and took a step to assess the pain in her hip. It wasn't as bad as she had feared. She managed to hide the limp admirably well, if she had any say in the matter. Then she went to the kitchen and had a look around.
She needed to move along. She knew it as well as he did. But the question of where she would go was compounded by not knowing where she was right now. For all she knew, they were sitting in Canada right now, having crossed the border at some point in the night.
Or they had gone south. Or east. Or west. Or they were at the house he kept in the city, only a couple miles from where she'd been found in the first place. For all she knew, Joe was going to come in any second. Every moment that she spent doing anything other than getting the hell out of there might be her death.
If that was the case, then she was a dead woman already, though. She'd slept well past the sunrise–the digital clock on the wall said that she'd managed to make it to almost ten in the morning, which meant that she had gotten more sleep last night than in the past several days combined.
So she opened the fridge again, and looked around. Her lips pressed together. There was only one thing to do, then. She checked her pockets, pulled on her coat, and walked out. There was a voice in the back of her mind telling her that she should keep going, and not look back. It was a good memory, and she had few enough of them that a good memory was precious.
It would be better if she could keep it that way. Don't dirty it by sticking around, and finding out how wrong things can go. She tried to silence that voice, tried to tell herself that she controlled her own life. The effort was wasted, because in spite of herself she knew better than to believe it. Someone else had controlled her life since she woke up in that hospital. Someone else had set up the pieces and dealt out the hand, and now she was left playing it.
She grit her teeth and kept walking. She didn't have to go far, but her hip ached badly, and a quarter-mile seemed a lot further than it should have.
But she stepped inside the store. It was dingy, with out-dated decor that she could tell hadn't been updated in twenty years or more. It wasn't clear whether they'd have taken plastic if she had it. The place looked like they were still resisting the integration of the school system. But that was what she wanted right now.
She opened an antique refrigerator and pulled out a tray. Then she considered for a moment and pulled a jug out. She carried the milk to the counter, set the eggs down, and watched the woman behind the counter, a woman who the years had wrung every ounce of life out of, total the entire thing.
The total came out to a little under three dollars. Misty counted three bills, set them down on the counter, and walked out without waiting for the change that she was due. It was going to be a long walk home, and the last thing that she needed was to waste more time on her hip than she needed to take.
Grant was awake when she came back inside. He looked like he had been ready to call in the cavalry to look for her. It was lucky for both of them that he had stayed calm about the whole thing.
"You didn't have anything to eat."
The Sheriff fell into the stained-red couch cushion and sucked down air. His hand gripped his knee tightly. Misty ignored it. She wasn't going to be able to do anything for his mood. But she could do something for both their stomachs, at least, and that was what she intended to do.
So she eyed a pan suspiciously, trying to decide if it was clean. She decided that it didn't matter, poured some dish soap on it, and scrubbed with a sponge that probably needed the exact same amount of scrutiny.
The scalding hot water, she hoped, managed to kill off whatever germs the sponge didn't mop up. Then she set the skillet on the stove, poured in a little oil, and started beating the eggs without bothering to ask how many or how he took them. Everyone takes them scrambled.
She let the eggs cook, pushing them around the pan, and let things stay quiet, aside from the sound of the eggs cooking on the pan. It was a pleasant silence, she thought. Apparently, Grant didn't feel that way. He broke the quiet first, and he did it the worst way that he could have done. She let out a long breath as the question hit her.
"What does last night mean for us, moving forward? What are we, Misty?"
She kept her peace and pushed some eggs around the pan. She didn't have any answers. She didn't even know who she was. Who she was with someone else was a question that he could have answered better than she could. He at least knew one of the people in the situation.
Eleven ♥
*
Grant watched Misty cooking. She looked comfortable doing it. It wasn't that he doubted the claim that she'd lost her memories. It explained more than a little bit about the strange ways that she'd been acting.
But there were things about her that made it hard to believe, nonetheless. The cooking was one of them. Nobody learned to cook like that in a year. Why hadn't she forgotten that, when she had forgotten so many other things? When she'd forgotten him, forgotten the family that the two of them had been planning to build? Of all the things in her life, all the answers that both of them wanted, the only thing that she remembered, apparently, was how to cook a plate of eggs.
She shifted the pan and poured the eggs off onto a pair of plates. Wordlessly, she handed one off to Grant. He took it, and moved to the table. As if he weren't freaking out. Neither of them needed to be told that something was wrong. It was as obvious as could be.
Grant let out a breath and ate. Misty was as good a cook as she'd ever been. It had always been something that he had looked forward to about his life with her. The chance to have someone who really loved to make delicious food.
Maybe he could have found another woman just like that. He didn't. Didn't even try. That was the space reserved for one woman in his mind.
"So what are we going to do next?"
"Do next?" The question was unexpected enough that Grant almost laughed. It was strange to hear her asking it. After all, he barely knew what was going on. The woman sitting across from him had made such a serious effort to make sure that he didn't know anything that there was really no way for him to make a plan.
"I don't think we're going to be able to stay here forever, do you?"
"No," he admitted. "They'll probably find this place, eventually. But we've got plenty of time. There's no connection between Grant Holloway and this house. As far as any records are concerned, this place doesn't exist."
"That's not going to last forever
."
"You're not looking at the silver lining," Grant said. "This is a chance to kick the can down the road pretty far. I bet we've got a week, minimum."
Misty watched him. Grant wondered if there had been seven uninterrupted days in the entire life that she could remember. She seemed like she was so far past worn down that she didn't even remember what being caught up felt like.
"So we shouldn't make a plan now?"
"Instead of eating?"
Misty let out a breath. He could see the frustration on her face. What he couldn't see was the understanding in her eyes that signaled that she knew why he was doing this. As far as he could tell, she didn't. But eventually, she had to figure it out. He hoped, anyways.
"I'm not just being a shit, you know."
"You're not?"
Grant stuffed a fork-full of eggs into his mouth.
"You're awful acrobatic for someone who just got shot."
Misty looked down at her leg and pushed her eggs around the plate. "I guess it wasn't that bad."
"You're confident enough to go on without getting it treated? What if it ruins your hips? You'll regret that one for years to come."
"There's one thing I'll admit. I wouldn't regret going to the hospital nearly as long."
Grant opened his mouth to crack wise. He closed it again. There was no reason to get into a fight, regardless of what he might have wanted to do. Besides, he didn't even want to fight. He just wanted to move on. Wanted to pretend, for a little while, that things were going just fine and dandy. That his life wasn't falling apart at home. That Misty was here because she wanted to be, not because it was convenient. Grant was fine being used. He just needed the illusion.
He let out a breath. It was a long time before he spoke. When he did, the heat had gone out of his voice. "Alright, well. If we're both going to make a plan, then we both need to know what we're up against. It's not much use for me to make suggestions if they're just going to get shot down because I didn't even know not to make them."
