The Mountains Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Phoebe Alexander

  Sarah watched the look of concentration on his face as he waited for Felicity to finish and then pushed her up on the bed so that he could move in between her legs. I’m impressed, Sarah thought. Some guys have performance issues the first time they do a group thing, but he’s taken to this like a duck to water. As if he felt her mind shift onto thoughts of him, he looked down at her and smiled, reaching for her hand. He laced his fingers through hers and she watched his ass cheeks clench as he thrusted his manhood into the very beautiful redhead beneath him. They locked eyes and suddenly Sarah felt like they were sharing something very deep, very intense, and very rare. Something she knew was called compersion.

  ***

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t get to celebrate your birthday with you,” Pawel apologized as he handed Sarah a beautifully wrapped rectangular package.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” she smiled, ripping into the gold paper and setting aside the green velvet ribbon it was tied with. She held up a copy of a small, leather bound book. “Oh my god, Pawel, is this a first edition?”

  He nodded, a wide grin spread across his cheeks. “I picked it up when I was in Europe,” he explained, and I knew you had to have it.”

  “This must have been very expensive!” Sarah worried. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you might have paid for it.” She was thinking, based on her knowledge of the literary masterpiece, in the upper three digits, possibly four.

  Pawel shook his head and drew his finger to her lips. “Don’t say another word. I’ll be returning to Poland soon, and I want you to have something special to remember me by.”

  “First off,” Sarah retorted, “This isn’t special, it’s practically priceless, and secondly, don’t act like I will never see you again.”

  Pawel kissed the top of her head. “Tell me what you did on your birthday,” he said, masterfully changing the subject.

  “Oh,” Sarah replied, already distracted, “my friends Rachel and Jack threw me a birthday party.”

  Pawel tried to brush off a little shrug of disappointment at his lack of invitation. “Did you take your army guy?”

  Sarah nodded. “He knows Rachel and Jack already,” she explained, hating the sad look he wore. “Oh, Pawel, don’t be jealous!” She added in a whisper, “Please?”

  He patted her hand and forced his lips into a smile, “You’re right, Princess, so tell me about it.”

  “Well, it’s funny that the word ‘jealousy’ should come up,” she began. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that word.”

  “Is that so?” he responded, leaning toward her with interest. “I’m dying to know what this has to do with your birthday party.” He laughed.

  “Yes,” she explained. “Do you know what the opposite of jealousy is?”

  Pawel scanned his mind and came up blank. He shrugged, “Not in English, anyway” he admitted, still smiling expectantly.

  “Compersion. It’s when you feel joy seeing your partner derive happiness or pleasure from another person,” she elaborated. “I felt it at my party, with James.”

  “Oh. How interesting. So please provide some context for this feeling. What precipitated it?” he asked, sounding academic.

  “Well,” she stalled, wondering how much detail to give. “We were...playing...with another couple. And watching him with her, well, I enjoyed it. I was happy that he was finding pleasure in her body.”

  “That’s wonderful, Sarah, and very enlightened.” He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. “I would like to think, given a similar circumstance, that I would feel the same way if I watched someone else make love to you.”

  “Right,” Sarah sighed, unable to picture that scenario for some reason. “I’m troubled though.”

  “Why?”

  “Despite my best efforts, I’m having a lot of trouble feeling compersion for James as far as Maggie is concerned.” Sarah had already explained the whole situation to Pawel, once shortly after she and James had had their falling out in February, when James had recommended that she be patient while he sorted out his feelings, and then again after she’d returned from Colorado following their reconciliation. Pawel was not only familiar with the details, but he’d also been a good sounding board and source of support.

  His angle was also remarkably different than Rachel’s, which consisted of, “Get him to dump that bitch and devote himself to you.” Pawel understood why someone would want to maintain multiple relationships; after all, he had an agreement with his wife to do that very thing. And he understood how James’s age and life experiences had led him to feel confused about what he felt and what he wanted.

  “You’re frightened,” Pawel observed, “and insecure.”

  Sarah didn’t enjoy being called either of those things. “How am I insecure?” she questioned, feeling negativity swiftly bubble up against her carefully constructed shield.

  “You feel insecure in the relationship,” Pawel assessed. “He hasn’t done enough to make you feel like he’s fully invested in you. There’s too much unknown, too much risk of heartbreak.”

  Much to her dismay, she found his position inarguable. “He’s in Ohio this week for his mother’s 50th birthday. He could be with her right now,” she conjectured.

  She hadn’t seen an actual picture of Maggie yet, but her mind had already formulated an image of a tall, leggy blonde. I could be totally off, she thought, who knows? The thought of a beautiful young woman hanging onto his arm as they greeted all of his family members, them fondly remembering her from their high school days, from prom pictures and yearbook photos, it stabbed at Sarah’s heart. I don’t like it, she decided. No, scratch that, I absolutely loathe it.

  “When does he leave for Afghanistan?” Pawel asked, exuding empathy from his dark, bespectacled eyes.

  “June,” Sarah replied. “I know I shouldn’t expect him to have this figured out. It’s not fair to force him into figuring out what he wants to do with the rest of his life when he’s getting ready to go off to war. But I just feel...this pressure... a sense of urgency...” She sighed as her mind scrambled for the right words. “I don’t know how to say it. I feel like I’m on the verge of losing him, and I’m angry at myself because I wish just knowing he loves me was good enough.”

  “Have you told him what you actually want?” Pawel asked.

  Sarah shook her head. “I’m afraid to. I don’t want to scare him.” She gripped Pawel’s hands with her own as she let her voice finally give words to what her heart had been feeling for months. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this strongly about anyone. I’m just crazy about him. Meaning, he makes me crazy.” She percolated a little, sparkling laugh, as she fully admitted how irrational her mind could be when it came to James.

  “Oh, Sarah, I’m trying to feel compersion too,” Pawel admitted, taking her into his arms. His voice had cracked a little, and Sarah realized how hard he was clinging to his sensibilities, and how hard he had fallen for her, despite trying to downplay it for the benefit of their friendship. The words were unspoken between them, and she knew it was because he didn’t know if she could return the sentiments.

  Not in the same way that he does, Sarah considered, but I do love him. He’s a beautiful man, so thoughtful, so sincere. He is deliberate and eloquent, so impassioned about his work. He listens and really hears what I’m saying, better than perhaps any friend I’ve ever had. I do love him, Sarah thought, and I want to make sure he knows before he goes how much I care for him.

  Then her thoughts turned darker: but what if James only loves me in the way I love Pawel? What if it’s just a deep, intense friendship and nothing romantic? She shook her head to drive away the marching tears that threatened to flood her eyes at any time as she clung to Pawel’s wiry frame.

  But how do you explain the sexual chemistry? she wondered. How do you explain the fact that our bodies seem to be viscerally magnetized toward each other? She lost the battle and broke into sobs against Pawel’s shoulder.

  It all seems so unf
air, she whimpered. Why do we have to have such deep, irrational, uncontrollable feelings when they can’t be returned? It seems a cruel trick of nature that we’re biologically wired to have these intense and profound desires. All I want is James, and I don’t think I will ever truly be able to have him. I feel like my whole body, not just my poor heart, is breaking over him.

  ***

  Sarah was restless and desperately missing James by the end of his trip. She’d tenaciously avoided making contact, trying her best to give him space and not expect much, if any, communication. As the days that her phone was silent passed one by one, all she could do was imagine the conversations, touches, embraces, and kisses that he and Maggie were exchanging. I’m driving myself crazy with these thoughts, she scolded herself, feeling stupid for dwelling on something so out of her control. Finally, it was the day he was scheduled to return to Maryland, and she could resist no longer, dialing his number early in the morning after a night of endless tossing and turning.

  Her heart was pounding as she heard each ring in succession, only half expecting to hear his voice. She’d almost forgotten what it sounded like; it seemed like it’d been so long. He seemed so far removed from Maryland. What if he found what he was looking for in Ohio? What if he isn’t coming back to me?

  “Hello?” his suddenly familiar velvety sound smoothed its way across the line.

  “Hi...” Her voice trailed off, her mind frozen and empty of words, her heart too constricted to beat.

  “Sarah? Everything okay?” He sounded concerned.

  She cleared the choke back down her throat. “Yeah, I...just miss you...needed to hear your voice. I wanted to know if you were coming home.”

  “Of course I am,” he laughed. “I’m on my way now. I miss you too.” There was a little drag of silence, a bit of static on the line where she tried to read more meaning into those few words.

  “Things are fine, nothing has changed. I’ll be home soon.”

  He’d offered the tiniest pearl of reassurance. That’s all she needed to hear. At least for the moment.

  ***

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Accident

  The wounds pulsate with pain along multiple points, but I can’t determine where the injuries originated. I feel the impact everywhere, the sudden jarring which knocked the wind out of my lungs. The sky is menacing with thick dark layers surrounding the peaks like a charcoal gray cape. Despite the height I’d climbed, everything feels flat and two-dimensional, as if I’d fallen right off the edge of the earth. My head is woozy and spinning, something wet tickling at the base of my skull. I swipe my gloved finger against the nape of my neck, right below my hairline, bringing it to my barely-focusing eyes. It’s covered in blood.

  Sarah awoke with a start, struggling to get her bearings. Immediately she felt his arm around her, his reassuring voice in her ear. “Come here,” he soothed, pulling her into his body, smoothing her hair away from her face and cradling her in the nook of his arm, her cheek on his chest. Yes...this...here...she stumbled over her thoughts as he wrapped his leg over her hip and pulled her thigh through his so they were crisscrossed together.

  That was a bad dream, she told herself. Just a dream. I’m safe in James’s arms and nothing else matters. Her brain slowly woke up even as her body relaxed. She listened to his breathing slow and deepen, feeling the rising and falling of his chest gently moving her cheek up and down as she rode the waves his lungs made. She reviewed their reunion as if watching it on a film reel, as if it were two characters in a movie and not her and James.

  First there was the embrace and the moment where their lips met. Wow, they really seem to be in love, she observed, examining the characters acting out the roles. There was the small talk, the “how was your drive,” and “how are the kids?” All the usual pleasantries were perfunctorily exchanged. They walked inside and found their spots on the sofa next to each other, surrounded by books. Whoever blocked this scene wasn’t too imaginative, she complained.

  Brass tacks, Sarah remembered thinking as she sat down, as in: let’s get down to. “How’s your family?” she asked him, studying his face, feeling like she was administering a polygraph. She needed answers. His body would give them.

  He was relaxed, legs spread, back reclined against the cushion, eyes wide, pupils dilated in the dim light. “Great,” he shared, “Mom was really surprised to see me. No one told her I was coming. I couldn’t believe Patty and Allie could keep a secret that long.”

  Sarah smiled, envisioning her own 50th birthday...only 13 years away now, she sighed. Could she even imagine Owen not being there? She thought about what it would be like to see Owen go off to war. She couldn’t fathom the worry that James’s mother had endured throughout her son’s military career. She envisioned it creeping onto her face and furrowing fine lines into her once pristine skin. And now she’d have to say goodbye again.

  “Did you take Maggie to the party?” she asked, distracting herself from feeling Mrs. McAllister’s pain.

  James nodded, and she watched his face grow a little tighter. “Yeah, my family remembered her from when we used to date...back in the day.”

  “Right,” Sarah replied a little more curtly than she intended. Compersion, compersion, compersion, she chided herself. “So, did you guys have a good visit?”

  “Yes, we did,” he answered, his whole frame stiffening. “We talked a lot about what we both want.”

  He isn’t going to just give it away; I’m going to have to earn it. She felt like a paleontologist, taking months to patiently extract one tiny fossil. “And what is that?”

  “Well,” James replied, “just the normal everyday stuff: a house, kids, good jobs, a happy family.”

  “And you think you can have that together?” Sarah questioned, hating the way her tone sounded so condescending when she’d tried so hard to pull back and be objective. She was unable to divorce her feelings from this no matter how hard she tried.

  James shrugged, “Maybe.” His eyes narrowed, “What do you want to hear, Sarah?”

  “The truth,” Sarah replied without hesitation. “I want to know if you’re planning to marry her, to start a family with her. I want to know if she has any idea you have a girlfriend in Maryland you’re spending every weekend with. I want to know what the hell all this means for you and me.”

  So much for playing it cool, she thought, rolling her eyes at herself. Patience was never my strong suit, and I would have made a terrible paleontologist.

  He took her hands into his own, like he had done so many times before. “Look, Sarah, she knows about you. And the only thing I’m planning is to go to Afghanistan in June. Will I come home next spring and marry Maggie? Maybe. Will I come home and want to marry you? I don’t know. Anything is possible.”

  Did he just say he might want to marry me?

  He got up and moved across the room, clearly agitated. She wished it wasn’t so difficult for him to talk about this. If he is going to love two women, it comes with a responsibility to keep the lines of communication open, to make both of us feel secure. He can’t shut down every time I want to know what he’s feeling. Does she ask him questions about what he’s doing here? About what he feels for me?

  “What does she know about me?” Sarah asked softly. “And please don’t get mad, James, just tell me the truth. I need to know where I stand.”

  He nodded stiffly and returned to the sofa. “She knows your first name, that you’re a professor, and that you have kids. That’s about it. She really doesn’t want to know anything else.”

  “But she knows you’re sleeping with me?” Why is that so important to me?

  He nodded. “She’s not wild about the idea, but she realizes that I met you before she and I got back in contact.”

  Sarah grew a bit inflamed. “Plus there’s the whole, you live here and she lives in Ohio.”

  James placed a hand on her knee, “Don’t get defensive, Sarah, you are the one wanting to know all this stuff.”
>
  She cooled under his touch. “You’re right.” She scanned his face searching for clues about what he wasn’t saying, but she found nothing. “How’s the sex?”

  He looked down as if he couldn’t believe those words had come out of her mouth, “Seriously?”

  “Just tell me,” Sarah coaxed him.

  “It’s pretty good,” James responded, shaking his head in disbelief that he was sharing an evaluation of his sex life with one partner with his other partner. “She doesn’t have the...appetite that you have,” he admitted. “And she isn’t as responsive.”

  I can read between the lines there. She’s not me, Sarah gloated. She suddenly felt pacified. I’m not going to get any more useful information, she concluded, I’ve pushed him a little too far already. She suggested they grab some dinner and his entire demeanor transformed as if the conversation about Maggie had never happened.

  Sarah was careful not to mention her name again that night. After returning from dinner, they’d made love on the couch while a movie played, Sarah straddling James’ thighs and bobbing up and down on his cock until she squirted all over him. He dragged her off to the shower to clean himself, pushing her against the wall and taking her from behind while the hot water pelted their flesh.

  Thinking about how intense their sex was sent chills up her spine. How could it be any better? It’s me and James. It’s pure magic. She nestled into his arms and fell back asleep, mentally instructing her mind to create sweet dreams for her this time, rather than nightmares.