“No,” I mumble into the sheet, suddenly extremely horny and shy. “I’m trying to get you to fuck me already.”
A pained laugh escapes him. “Yeah, I’ll be dead before this is over.”
Now that I hold myself open for him, he lets go and palms his cock. It hits my ass, the heat of it seeping into my skin. He spits again, this time on his head, and rubs the saliva all over his shaft. The view of it is hidden behind my raised ass but I can imagine his rod shining, the foreskin sliding up and down, creating the magnificent friction I feel when he flicks my clit.
The flex of his biceps relaxes as he halts the movement and looks up at me. I bite my lip, my chest fluttering up and down with anticipatory breaths.
With his eyes, he tells me he is ready to take me. No words pass between us. This moment is too big for words. It can only be described in actions. He is going to claim the last part of me now.
Thomas grips my waist with one hand, keeping me in one place, and with the other, nudges the head of his cock against my dark, tiny entrance. He pushes in, trying to breach the compact ring of muscles. It’s hard, a struggle, during which I squirm and scrunch my eyes shut, and he breathes in loud pants. Then a pop sounds and he is in.
The sting of it. The pressure of it. I feel it fanning over my entire ass and spine. Hissing, I buck my hips, almost dislodging him, but he tightens his grip around my waist and keeps me steady.
He keeps sliding his cock in, and I swear I hear the muscles stretching, peeling away from each other. Oh God. Tears form as I breathe through my nose, trembling with pain.
This was a bad idea. Bad. Bad. Bad.
“Shh…” Thomas caresses my spine with his other arm, trying to soothe my skittish body. “It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. I’ll take care of you.”
“Is it…all in?” I whimper.
“No, baby, not yet.” He whooshes out a long breath. His strong thighs vibrate against the back of mine, telling the tale of his control and exertion.
That slip of his tongue, that casually thrown in endearment makes me open my eyes and look at him. Every hollow and crevice of his body stands taut and highlighted. He appears to be made of stone. My fire-breather. My stone god.
And I’m his baby. Baby.
His head is dipped as if in prayer, his brow furrowed as if he can’t afford to lose control and hurt me in the process, but I don’t care anymore. I want him however I can get him.
“It hurts,” I tell him in a small voice.
His body jerks and his hazy eyes lift up. I pop my thumb into my mouth and suck on it, imagining it’s his cock that I’m using as a sucker, like a good girl.
I play his favorite game one last time and his nostrils flare. He suddenly grows larger, bigger, tenser. I smile on the inside when his sweat-slicked palms grab both sides of my hips and he pushes through. I bite my thumb, moan around it, and close my eyes. The pain is excruciating but as I surrender to it, I realize it ebbs in slow measures.
Thomas grunts as he bottoms out, the coarse hair around his cock prickling the smooth skin of my ass. I imagine him watching me suck on my thumb, being still, being good for him. My heart pounds as I picture him gathering himself once again to pull out so he can push back in, smoothing his way through my tight chamber.
He unclenches one hand and brings it to my clit, strumming the bundled-up button. My hips buck again, but as always, Thomas keeps me balanced. While playing with my clit and making my pussy bleed cream for him, he withdraws almost fully then pushes back in. He huffs and I grunt.
Sweat pools on my back, skates down to my neck, tickling me. Moaning, I rub my heavy breasts on the soft bed, seeking friction for my engorged nipples as Thomas finds his slow but confident rhythm. The pain is there, but it’s bearable, pleasurable even.
One last time, he tells me a story, dirty and pornographic. He tells me how tight I am, how amazing I feel. He tells me men would kill to get inside my pussy, my ass—it doesn’t matter which.
As I listen to him and lose my mind, I know I don’t care about any other men. I only care about him.
Our flesh is sliding together, oiled with sweat and my own juices. Then Thomas shifts onto his knees to bring his leg out and around my hips, changing his angle. Weirdly, I feel his cock in my spine. I feel it bumping against the ridges of my bones, and I explode.
Spurts of cum burst out of me, drenching my thighs and his, too, I’m sure. My body is tight and loose at the same time, bucking and shivering, a beast I can’t control. For a second, I’m scared it won’t ever be over, that I’ll never regain control of my own body. A shriek echoes in my throat but his hand over my mouth tamps it down. I put my own hand over his and grab on to it.
Behind me, Thomas jerks. He rotates his hips in a telltale sign of his climax, and I squeeze his palm over my mouth to tell him I’m here, that it’s okay to let go.
He falls over me as his cock pushes out hot cum. I sigh under his delicious weight and we lie in the puddle of our orgasms. His shuddering chest bumps with my back, his arm thrown over my shoulder. I smell his skin, nuzzle my face in the coarse hair of his forearm. His sighs scatter the hair on my neck.
For the first time in a long time, I feel sleepy on my bed. I don’t need the hard surface of the bathtub. My eyes are on the verge of falling shut when I hear him whisper, almost distractedly, “You bring them back…my words.”
It’s so soft and thin that it could almost be a dream. In that dream, I could almost imagine that he came here not to say goodbye, but to tell me he loves me.
I fall asleep in the wake of those three imagined words.
When I woke up this morning, Thomas had left. I’d expected him to, but I wasn’t expecting to find myself tucked under my purple blanket, sleeping soundly on the bed. At some point during the night he moved me, put me under the covers, and crept out silently. For some reason, that hurts me more than anything we’ve ever done.
My coffee sits on the kitchen counter, untouched and cold. I had all the plans of holding my head up and moving on, but everything hurts.
Hurts. Like I’ve been run over by a car.
Emma’s door opens and I quickly wipe away all the tears. Turning, I greet her with a fake smile. “Ready to go?”
“No, class is canceled. I just got an email.”
Relief is my body’s first reaction. I don’t want to go. I don’t even have a plan in place as to how to face Thomas, how to be normal around him after everything. Then my brain catches on. “What? Why?”
Her expression is both horrified and confused. “I…got a text from Samantha, who got a text from Brian. He says he actually saw it or maybe heard it from somewhere. It-It doesn’t matter. But Professor Abrams… His wife’s in the hospital. She-She tried to kill herself.”
A buzz enters my mind.
A constant sound of static that invades my ears, and it doesn’t stop there. It floods over my body. I see Emma. I see her lips moving. I see the frown on her face, the agitated lines around her mouth. But it doesn’t register.
Nothing does.
Thomas.
He needs me. I know he does. I need to go to him. I need to find Thomas. This…This can’t be happening. I saw her yesterday and she was fine. I saw her with my own eyes and oh my God, he loves her. He loves her so much and… Did I do this? Was it me? Did-Did my going there bring this on? Maybe she realized how much I love him too. Maybe she found out about us. It’s my fault, isn’t it?
My world screeches to a halt and then shakes, shakes violently.
“Layla? What the hell are you talking about?” Emma is closer to me than before. How did she get here? I look down and see coffee spilled all over the floor, some of it splashed over my bare feet with shards of my broken mug scattered around.
“I need to go see him,” I tell Emma.
“I don’t understand. When did you see his wife? Why is it your fault?”
I realize I was saying it all out loud. I don’t have time to explain things right now. I need
to go find Thomas.
“Do you know where…” I take a puff of breath, trying to make sense of words, which are failing me right now.
“She’s at the hospital. She’s fine. At least, that’s what I heard. It’s all over campus.”
“Okay. Okay.” I walk around her. “I need to go to the hospital. Right now.”
Emma stops me then. “Layla, there’s more.”
Her tone sends a chill down my spine. Cold curls around my bones and hunkers down. “What? What is it?”
She is wringing her hands, agitated. “I-I heard that their baby, the one we met at Crème and Beans all those weeks ago?” She is shaking her head.
Why is she shaking her head?
“Layla, he’s in the hospital too.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know… I heard he’s in the ICU or something.”
“Nicky?” I shake my head at Emma’s sympathetic, pitying face. “Why? I mean, what happened. How can he be in the ICU? Isn’t that...Isn’t that serious?”
She puts her hand on my shoulders and rubs my skin in circles. “Shit, Layla, you’re shivering. You need to sit down for a sec, okay?”
“No.” I stop her from pushing me down on the barstool. “No. Tell me where Nicky is.”
“Layla, I really don’t know, honey. I told you what I heard. I’ve got no idea how any of this happened.”
I break out of her hold, numb and charged at the same time, ready to stride over to the front door. “I need to go. I need to find Thomas, okay? I n-need to tell him Nicky is fine. He must be freaking out right now.”
“Layla, you need to listen to me. Just please, listen to me.” She goes to grab my arm and I spin around.
“No,” I shout. “No. I don’t need to do anything but find Thomas, okay? He needs...” My voice breaks and I take in another breath. “I just need to get to the hospital. Right now.”
Emma nods. “Okay. I’ll take you. I’ll find out what hospital they were taken to and then we’ll go.”
I nod, and then my legs give out and I crumple to the ground.
________________
Lay-la. La-laaa.
Yes. I’m Layla…or Lala. Whatever. I sip my coffee and he chews on his tiny fists, staring at me in fascination. His eyes are big, wide pools of blue water. He’s adorable.
You wanna drink my coffee, little guy? He gurgles. Okay, tell you what, I’ll give this to you if you say coffee. Say, co-ffee.
Thomas sends me an exasperated look. What? I’m teaching him a new word. I look at Nicky. Come on, Nicky, don’t let me down. Say, coffee. Co-ffee.
He chortles. Thomas is pursing his lips, holding back a laugh. Oh, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you? You wait and see, the day will come when Nicky’s going to say coffee and love me more than he loves you.
“We’re here, Layla.” Emma’s voice brings me to the moment. We’re at the parking lot of the university hospital, and I’m surprised to find tears tracking down my cheeks.
I don’t know why I’m crying. They told Emma that Hadley is going to be okay, and... I know Nicky is going to be fine. I know it. Even though they said that he’s in the PICU and chances are he won’t survive the night. I mean, what do they know. They said chances are. Right? Chances could mean anything.
So my tears are stupid.
I jump out of the car and make my way toward the front entrance. When I see Thomas, everything is going to be okay. I chant it to myself, over and over. Emma talks to the lady at reception but she is refusing to give us anything. We’re not family.
A movement in the periphery catches my eye, and I turn to find Susan walking down the hallway to the left of the reception desk.
“Susan.”
She is startled to see me walking toward her. “Layla.”
“Why are you crying?” Her cheeks are tear-stained, similar to mine. It makes me feel…panicky. “No. Don’t cry. There’s nothing to cry about. Everything is gonna be okay. They told Emma…” I turn to point her out at the desk. “Hadley’s gonna be fine.”
She covers her mouth to muffle a broken sob. “Nicky—”
“He’s fine.” My shrill voice surprises her and she looks at me like I’m crazy. “Nicky’s fine. Nothing’s going to happen to him. He’s fine.”
“You know he likes to put all his toys in his playpen. Every night he makes me gather them up and put them in one corner.” She hiccups. “He looked like an angel this morning, playing with his little elephant.” She looks like she’s going to fall so I put my arm around her shoulders.
“Then Hadley woke up early and I-I asked her to watch Nicky while I ran to the store to get the formula. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to leave him alone but I don’t know h-how I forgot to stock up on it and he needed it. I thought I’d be back soon, but the store didn’t have it so I had to drive a little farther.”
Susan is full-on crying now. I want to snap at her but just then Emma walks over to us, puts her hand on my shoulders, and shakes her head once, telling me to rein it in.
“B-By the time I got back, he was almost…gone. I called 911 and then I looked for Hadley. She was in the bathroom unconscious.” Susan’s sobs are dislodging something inside me—my stern, stark belief that Nicky is okay—and I don’t like that. I don’t like it one bit.
I move away from her. “Where’s Thomas?”
Susan takes a while to answer, a while that stretches thin and brittle. She tells me he’s on the third floor where the PICU wards are located, in the waiting room. I dash upstairs, unseeing, barely conscious myself.
My feet stop when I catch sight of him. His back is to me. The wide berth of his shoulders is the only thing I see. He’s standing in the middle of the empty waiting room, facing the glass doors that lead to the hallway containing the wards.
It reminds me of the night I saw him through his window. Even through his grey shirt, I see the bunched-up muscles, the tensed patterns on his back. That night I couldn’t console him. I couldn’t touch him or tell him everything was going to be okay.
But I’m going to do it now.
I walk toward him, slowly, my steps quiet like a flickering, dying breath.
“Thomas?”
He doesn’t move. I don’t think he even heard me. I walk around and come face to face with him.
Or something that looks like him. Something that’s as tall and as wide but somehow shrunken. A husk of a man, pale and haggard with barren eyes.
“Thomas,” I call again, this time louder than before. His gaze snaps away from whatever tortured vision he’s been having and settles on me. “Everything is going to be okay,” I repeat for the millionth time. The more I say it, the more dusty and scraping it feels in my mouth, as though I’ve swallowed a sandstorm and my body is filled with crunchy grains of the desert. But, I push on. He needs me. “I’m here now. Everything is gonna be fine. Hadley’s fine.”
I swallow and get close to him. My neck strains as I look at his face, immobile and dead. “Thomas, d-don’t worry. They’re all lying about Nicky, I know it. Trust me, okay. I—”
I’m shocked at the release of a shattered sob. It sounds so much like Susan’s, the woman who thinks Nicky is almost gone. I’m not that woman. My sob shouldn’t sound like hers. I know Nicky is gonna be okay. He has to be. There’s no other option.
The sound of my pain wakes Thomas up, but he still doesn’t see me. He’s too occupied in his own head, too overcome with his grief. I never thought sadness could be violent and savage, but on Thomas it is. His devastation is brutal. I’m readying myself for it to rain down on me. It never comes, however.
He walks away.
His legs eat up the distance and he’s opening the door to the stairwell. I run after him. I snatch his arm and stop his progress just as he reaches the edge of the greenish stairs. “Thomas, wait. Just look at me, please. It’s going to be fine. I’m telling you. Just please, look at me,” I beg, and then he does.
He looks at me, and fury blazes
through his eyes. He grabs my bicep and shakes me, jarring every single one of my bones in the process. “My son’s dying, Layla.” He spits out my name like a toxic curse. “They won’t even let me in. They won’t even let me see him. He almost choked to death on a fucking button, and they won’t even let me see my own son.”
He’s at a stage where everything looks like food and drool-worthy. I sob again and it is broken and strangled, with enough power to destroy me.
“Do you know why no one was there to stop him?” His grip tightens on my arm and he pushes me, walks me backward, thumping my back and my head to the cold wall. I bite my lip to stop from crying out in pain. “Because my wife was busy killing herself,” he snarls. “She was busy swallowing down a bottle of sleeping pills.” By the time he finishes, his snarl has become a roar as he belts out his pain. He slaps his palm on the wall beside me.
But then the fight is leached out of his body as if that one slap to the wall was all he had in him. His voice loses its violent quality and is now fraught with torture. “I thought everything was fine. I thought if she let me touch her, then she must’ve forgiven me. She asked me to hold her a-and I thought she must love me back. Maybe not a lot – God knows, I don’t deserve that, now more than ever – but at least a little. And now…everything is broken. My entire family is torn apart when I just got it back.”
There’s a crack in his voice, right in the middle of it. It breaks my heart, crushes it into a pulp. I’m bleeding on the inside.
I remember the odd glow I saw on her yesterday. She was tired but...peaceful. She was happy, and I fucked it all up.
“It was me.” I swallow. “I-I did that. It’s my fault. I went to your house to see Nicky. I wanted to tell him I’d back off, that I broke all the rules and fell in love with you, and I saw Hadley and I—”
“You fell in love with me,” he says. It’s a flat statement. I would’ve been fooled by the calmness of it if not for his pulsating cheek.
“Thomas, I –”
“My family is dying because you love me,” he says matter-of-factly, and I go speechless at the inferno bursting through his red-rimmed eyes.
The Unrequited Page 26
