Finding Never (Never say Never)

by C. M. Stunich

  “Not yet,” I tell him, and I know how bad that sounds, but I want to be sitting down, want both of us sitting down. It could be a bench, a swing set, a slide, I don't care as long as we've got our butts on something for support. After all, this is the kind of news that rocks your world. Best to take it with the ground a few inches closer to your head, just in case you pass out.

  I sigh.

  “Don't freak, okay?” I say which probably makes things worse. Ty bites at his lip.

  “Is this about me?” he asks, and I give him a look. He raises his eyebrows at me and shrugs. “Sorry, but I don't see why you can't just tell me. I mean, it must be pretty fucking terrible if you can't just spit it out.”

  “Ty, stop,” I say, but he's already gone silent, fallen into this thoughtful darkness that is as attractive as it is scary. I wonder briefly what he was like as a whore. Did he talk to his clients? Did he even know their names? Did they cuddle afterward? I shiver. One day, I will have to know the answers to these questions. As of right now, I'm content with pushing them back. One thing at a time, please. “It's not the worst thing in the world,” I say honestly, knowing that to me, the worst things in the world are molestation, rape, torture, and murder. I mean, compared to those things, this is cake, this is easy.

  Yeah, right.

  “Is this about Noah?” Ty asks, freezing like a deer in the headlights. I roll my eyes and grab his arm. My fingers tingle when they touch him, even through the fabric of his coat.

  “Come on.”

  Ty follows me down a short trail that cuts straight across a field and into the park. There's a road to get here by car but folks rarely use it. The trail is deep and cuts through the dry grass like a wound. This is the kind of park that everyone walks to.

  The sky is about as gray as it can get, solid, uninterrupted. No sunshine peaks through and no clouds float by, but something about it is a bit mystical, like it's this otherworldly vortex, something that could suck me up and take me away. I look over at Ty, at his pinched lips and his worried eyes, and I know that I don't want to be sucked up or taken away; I want to be right here, with him, even if it's hard. That's what makes it worth it. I take a deep breath. I can do this.

  “Swing with me?” I ask him as I watch his eyes sweep across the bare limbs of trees, follow a flock of dark birds into the sky, and come to rest on the playground to our right. It's a big, plastic colorful thing with two slides, one yellow and one purple, and a green tunnel with small, grimy windows that Darla and Maple refused to leave for the longest time. They just sat in there and stared at us while we waved and encouraged them to come out. Finally Beth had to go up and get them. Strange kids, my relations.

  “Let's go up there,” Ty says as he points at the platforms above us. There's a ladder leading up to them along with a small rock wall. Ty pulls his hand away from me and has halfway scaled the damn wall before I even get over there. I watch his ass as he tries to wedge his big boots onto the fake, rubber rocks and try not to laugh.

  “You're certainly something, aren't you?” I joke as I take the easy way up and crawl into the tunnel on my belly. Ty gets stuck about three quarters of the way up and has to do a bizarre little jig to get his foot on the platform and join me. When he does, he's panting for breath. “Out of shape much?” I ask him jokingly and he grins.

  “Guess so,” he says as he squats in front of me and reaches for my hands, pulling me out of the tunnel and into his lap. “I haven't worked out in weeks. I think I'm getting a beer belly.” I reach my fingers under Ty's coat and shirt and feel the hard planes of his abs. No way in hell. I shake my head.

  “Not even close,” I tell him and he smiles, but there are no dimples there. He might be joking around with me, but he's worried, terrified maybe. I can only guess what he's thinking, but if his mind is on Noah Scott, nothing good will come of it. I take a deep breath and open my mouth to say it, to just blurt it out for all the world to hear.

  I'm pregnant, Ty. I'm pregnant with your baby, and I don't know what to do. We're finally getting our lives together and now this happens. Will you help me? Can you help me? I love you, but I'm not sure I can handle this. I put my hand on my belly and part my lips.

  “Wait,” Ty says as he grabs me by my upper arms and flips me over, lightning quick, pressing my back into the rubber platform of the play structure. It happens so fast that I nearly get the breath knocked out of me. He holds my wrists down on either side of my head and just stares at me like even he doesn't know what he's doing.

  “Before you say whatever it is that you're going to say, can I show you something?” he asks as the fog of his breath tangles and dances with mine in the crisp winter air.

  “Ty, you don't – ”

  He cuts me off.

  “Please.” He says the word like it's a question, but it's not. He's not asking my permission. Ty is telling me that he's going to show me whether I like it or not, so I better be ready for it. “I need to show you how much you rock my fucking world.” And then Ty is kissing me hot and hungry, down my neck and back up again. He's biting my lip and making me bleed, brushing his lips across the beating pulse in my neck, the one that throbs like crazy when he's around.

  “Ty, stop,” I say because we're on a playground for God's sake, but he doesn't. He doesn't stop. He adjusts my wrists so that he's holding them with one hand, and although I probably could fight him if I wanted to, I don't. I don't want him to stop, not now, not ever.

  Ty reaches under my shirt and coat and somehow, through practice or skill or instinct, finds just the right way to reach under the wire of my bra and cup my breast just so, massage it in strong, calloused fingers, make me moan into the empty air. Sure, people could show up at any moment and catch us, but that's half the fun. My body is humming like a musical instrument, plucked into life by Ty's hands, and I can't stop the symphony.

  “Never Ross,” Ty scolds as he positions himself between my legs and unbuttons his pants. “Tell me, why the fuck aren't you wearing any underwear?” I close my eyes and wait for him to push into me, to take my breath away, to breathe new life into me.

  “I don't like wearing underwear, you know that. Not even under scandalously short skirts.” Ty makes a wicked, nasty growling noise as he frees his cock from his pants and plunges it into me. I cry out and my back arches off the platform; my hips rise to meet Ty's as he thrusts hard and fast. I think he believes he's proving a point, that we're good together, that we're perfect together, but I already know that. He's trying to claim my heart, steal it away from the blonde haired boy who's already lost it. What Ty doesn't know and what I should tell him is he's already claimed me, filled me up with all of him and made something new. It's as intriguing as it is terrifying, and the only way I'm going to be able to understand it is by telling him.

  “Ty,” I try to speak, to just get the words out, but I can't. I can't move because he is; he's moving inside of me and breaking me into pieces and putting me back together all at once. He fucks me until he comes and then he fingers my clit with his ringed hands, proving that once again, I was wrong. Boys like Ty really do know where it is and how to use it. “You're not such a bad boy after all,” I breathe as he brings me closer and closer to orgasm. He laughs at this and bites the skin on my neck until it almost hurts, pulling back at just the right moment and leaving me tingling.

  “I never said I was a bad boy. That was you. I'm just a man that thinks you're the shit.”

  “How romantic.”

  “I never said I was that either,” Ty tells me and then he's letting go of my wrists and flipping me over, pulling my ass into the air and pushing so deep into me that I think I can feel the dark, twisted wrappings of his soul. “But I sure do love the hell out of you.”

  And that's just about all the talking either of us can handle as we join our bodies and souls together in the most inappropriate setting possible. Whether he knows it or not, Ty will always be my dirty, little bad boy, and that's just the way it is.

  Whi
le this is happening, while I'm experiencing one of the most exciting, most invigorating moments of my life, Noah Scott stops by the house like he's done a hundred times, finds out where we've gone and hikes over to see us, bitch-Never at his side. While Ty thrusts into me, vigorous and passionate, I hear her barking in the background, but I can't see straight or even think, so I don't realize what is going on. I don't realize that my high school sweetheart, the boy I left behind, the one who still wants me but doesn't yet know that I don't want him, is standing there at the edge of the wood chips seeing everything.

  From across the park, Noah Scott watches and knows that he's lost.

  32

  Noah Scott is sitting at my mother's kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal. He looks up at me when I come in and pause with my white robe wrapped tightly around me, my body sweetly sore from the night that Ty and I spent together. His blue eyes look into my hazel ones and I don't know what to say. You're too late. I loved you once, could've loved you again, but Ty is my tortured, twisted other half and we're too wrapped up together to be separated now.

  I open my mouth to speak when Noah scoots his chair back across our yellow and white linoleum floor with the little chickadees on it. It creaks and makes me cringe, at the noise, at his eyes, at him coming across the room with purpose. Noah pauses in front of me with a gentle, easy smile that Ty will never have and looks at me with eyes unclouded by uncertainty and pain. He loves me, too. I can see that, but he doesn't understand me, not anymore. Noah Scott cannot understand Never Ross, no matter how hard he tries.

  He puts his hands on my shoulders and leans in, nice and light, like a fluffy white cloud floating through the too-blue sky. Ty is like a rain cloud, fat and pregnant with a storm, full of crackling thunder and explosive lightning. I close my eyes and wait for it, wait for that last, perfect fairytale kiss, the one that will seal my fate and lock me away from Noah Scott forever. It never comes. He puts his lips next to my ear and whispers to me.

  “Goodbye Never Ross.”

  When I open them, he's smiling but I think I can see the slight shimmer of tears in his eyes. Mine fill, too, and I have to look away to let him go. I have Ty now, and I can't be selfish. I can't keep Noah on the same leash forever. It's time for him to get out, to find somebody else, someone that can give him all the love he deserves without a side of crazy. Fortunately for me, I have someone that needs both.

  “Morning,” Ty says through a yawn, shuffling up behind me and pausing as he notices that the screen door is swinging back and forth in the morning sunshine. He doesn't say anything or ask any questions, but he does kiss me on the top of my head and move over to the table where Noah's empty cereal bowl still sits. Ty picks it up and empties it into the garbage disposal. I stare at his strong back, at the long, lean muscles and the smooth skin and I wonder how the fuck I'm going to tell him what I absolutely one hundred percent have to tell him.

  I use the sleeve of my robe to wipe at my eyes and sit down at the table, my stomach roiling and threatening to open up on me, spill right across the perfect white top of this table.

  “Good morning,” Beth says as she slides in the door with a bag of groceries in either hand. Ty takes them from her before she drops them and spills bottled sweet tea across the floor. I can see it sticking up out of the bag.

  “Gram would have your ass red limned and sore as a prickly pear cactus if she knew you were buying your sweet tea pre-made.”

  “Who's going to make it?” she asks as she ogles Ty's body and makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight. “You?” Beth puts the offensive beverage in the fridge and ruffles Ty's hair. “You are such a sweetheart,” she tells him as he helps her unpack the groceries with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. Shit. Fuck. Damn. I want one so bad, my mouth is watering. But now I have to quit. Or maybe I don't? I can't possibly know until I talk to Ty about it. I can't now though, not with Beth hanging around the kitchen like a protective mother. She keeps throwing me these looks, trying to determine what Ty knows and what he doesn't know. I look away and ignore her.

  The park yesterday was a failure in some ways and a success in others. A smile quirks my lips for a second and falls back into a frown. We had the best sex on the planet yesterday, on top of a children's play structure for God's sake, but that doesn't mean he's going to be Father of the Year. Hell, how would I even know if he was? I barely remember my dad, and I've hated him for a long time for things he didn't even do. Besides, it's not as if Ty or I have had the best mothers either. How would I know how to even be one? I can't have a baby, not now, but I also can't decide anything until Ty knows. His reaction could change everything.

  I drum my nails on the table and notice that the polish is chipped. Beth sees me staring and smiles as she pours herself a glass of tea.

  “Want me to get those for you?” she asks, and I can't help but smile, even through my worry, because if Beth paints my nails like she did for that last, fateful performance then I can really feel like I've come full circle, like I'm back where I started, ready to make things new again. I'm so sorry, Noah, I think, and I hope that after he gets over the disappointment of losing me for a second time that we can be friends. I've decided that it really isn't possible to have too many of those, even if they send you texts that say, just fcked Trini. Was so good! Think i'm in luv, at three in the morning. I sort of even miss Lacey and her yellow nails and perfect blonde hair.

  “So,” Beth begins as Ty pours two bowls of cereal and sits one down in front of me. He smiles as he slumps in a chair and scoops massive mouthfuls of Cheerios up with the pink plastic spoon that belongs to Maple. I fucking love you, Ty. “What's on the agenda today? Christmas shopping maybe? Oh, or we could watch some home movies?” I think for a second, really think because I need to come up with a place that Ty and I can be alone at, but where we might actually be able to get some talking done. And I have to do it fast. Every moment I wait is another betrayal, and I have to stop the clock.

  “You know what,” I say as I sit up and grab my own bowl. “I actually have plans. With Ty.” He looks over at me but doesn't question my words. He'll call me on bullshit, sure, but something like this and he's all game. He might have a past that burns like fire and eyes that could kill with a single glance, strike right through the hearts of men and women alike, but he's all game for spontaneous. I clean my bowl out and stand up, finished even before Ty, which is a rare event for both of us. I hold out my hand, the one with the gold ring, the one that holds a perfect, blood red ruby, the one that Ty gave me and that I will never, ever let go of. “Ty,” I say. “Come with me. There's someone I'd like you to meet.”

  33

  “Ty McCabe, I'd like you to meet my father, Nicholas Andre Ross.” I pause next to the old headstone and lay my fingers across the cement. My eyelids flutter closed of their own volition, and there's a second there where I'm no longer inside my own head, where I'm floating through the cemetery on the breeze, coming to rest with a sea of dead leaves, melding into the earth. Being here is so … refreshing. I've been avoiding it since I was ten and now, I cannot believe I ever left. Despite what others may say, the dead are not frightening; they are peaceful.

  I open my eyes and watch Ty in his scarf and coat. He is so cute like that; he makes me want to do things like giggle or bite my lips. I resist both in honor of my father, and try not to notice the way his hair is ruffled by the cold fingers of the wind, how his dark eyes watch my every move with interest, with love. Yesterday, he thought I was going to tell him something horrible. What, I don't know, but now, he's even more cheerful than usual, if a bit jumpy. On the drive over, he was fidgeting with his rings, spinning them around on his fingers like I've never seen him do. When he saw me watching him with a raised brow, he blurted something interesting, something that I've tucked away for later. He told me that the rings were passed down from his grandmother to his mother and that that's why he took them. Because she didn't deserve them. And then, of course, he clammed up and
didn't speak another word about it. I'm getting the feeling that encouraging Ty to talk about his past is not going to be an easy thing to do.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Ross,” Ty says as he kneels down and lays a bouquet of black roses at the head of my father's grave. The flowers were his suggestion, something beautiful, something dark. Like you, he'd said. I smile at the memory. “I can assure you that my intentions with your daughter are in no way honorable, and I intend to ravage her quite savagely this evening.” I give in and giggle which is just weird. Never Ross doesn't giggle. I hold out my hand for Ty and he takes it, but instead of standing up, he pulls me down and rolls us over so that his body is lying mostly atop mine.

  “Tell me something,” he says as he rests his head on my chest and I stroke his hair with my fingers. “If I were to, say, ask you to let me ravage you not only this evening, but everyday for the rest of our lives, how might you respond to that?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I respond, sighing in tune with a winter breeze. I'm taking Ty's words figuratively, but he's serious. I can see that as soon as he sits up and kneels between my legs. I've never had fantasies about fucking in a cemetery but with Ty sitting there, it's not hard to get ideas.

  “I mean it, Never,” Ty says as he licks his lips and shakes his head like he can't believe he's doing what he's doing. “Look, I've been alone for a long time, forever it seems, and I've met a lot of girls and I've … ”

  “Ty, no,” I say. I don't want him to talk about that stuff, not right now. Even the thought of Ty in another person's arms, in their body, makes me sick to my stomach. He reaches out and gently places a finger over my lips.