by R. A. Rock
I tried to breathe slowly but I knew I was hyperventilating. Every other time I had had this feeling, I had been able to move and get out of whatever place had been bringing up the old memories. But this time I couldn’t.
And it was too much for me.
I was going to scream.
And they would find us.
I could hear their physical bodies now, as they approached the passageway. Chad watched me, his eyes worried at my uncharacteristic distress. My body was tight with fear — my jaw clenched and every muscle tensed.
Then they were at the end of the corridor, peering down at us.
They were going to see us.
“No, they’re not,” Chad sent in response to my wild thoughts that I was making no attempt to control.
I felt the link slipping as I flipped out. I caught sight of their guns and my thoughts went nuts.
They were going to shoot us here and leave our bodies to decompose forever. I would die for good this time. No one would ever find us. Shiv and Grace and Audrey wouldn’t know what had happened. Maybe they would tell them some fake story. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die. And Red didn’t deserve to die because I had been so damn stupid…
Chad leaned forward so that our foreheads touched and that unexpected movement surprised me enough that it shocked me out of my nightmare for a moment. I stared into his eyes, confused.
“I love you,” he whispered and pressed his lips to mine. The kiss was so unexpected that I couldn’t help but respond. I felt a rush of positive brain chemicals enter my blood stream — serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine, no doubt — calming me and sending me straight from terror to bliss.
Chad still loved me.
I was aware of the people with the guns at the end of the passage but it didn’t seem to matter as Chad kissed me till my knees would have buckled if I hadn’t been pinned between him and the wall.
“Nothing down there,” I heard one of them say as Chad’s lips possessed mine.
“We should go down and check,” the other suggested.
“Nah, we’ll just go watch the trap door. If they don’t come out in a couple minutes, we’ll know they didn’t take this passage.”
I couldn’t help but think this was the flawed logic of someone who really didn’t want to go down a dark, narrow passageway after armed criminals who had already attacked and knocked out two other people.
“Okay,” the other voice readily agreed, probably not wanting to go into the corridor after us, either.
There was the sound of their footsteps retreating as Chad pulled away from me, breathing hard.
“Brilliant idea to squeeze past me, Tanaka,” he said, as if he hadn’t just kissed me till my bones melted and I practically forgot my name. “What are we going to do now?”
Stuck
Yumi
“What are we going to do now?” Chad said, his eyes avoiding mine. I couldn’t answer his question, still feeling the residual fear from my panic attack and the dazed feeling of being thoroughly kissed by the man I clearly still loved as much as he loved me.
Would we never be free from each other?
We were stuck in the passageway that held the brick that we had come to see. And at this point I didn’t give a shit if I never saw that stupid thing. I just wanted to get out of here before the morning shift came on and someone thought to do a thorough search of the sub basement, discovering us. Though I didn’t see how they would get us out, we were really jammed in here tight.
“And what was that?” he said, finally meeting my eyes and giving me a jolt of energy that went through my entire body. “I’ve never seen you like that.”
Finally I found my voice.
“You have. I’ve just hidden it. And the other times I could get out of the place that was causing it.”
He tipped his head to the side, bewildered.
“I occasionally get panic attacks when I’m in tight spaces,” I said. “It’s not usually a problem because I can just leave.”
“From when you were a kid? Before you came to live with us?” His eyes were distressed at the thought.
I nodded a few times, looking away, embarrassed by this show of weakness. But I owed him. If he hadn’t kissed me, we would probably both be dead right now, knowing how trigger-happy those two scared guards had likely been.
“Thanks for…” I paused not sure how to phrase it. “Calming me down.”
“My pleasure,” he said, meeting my eyes, his own like glowing sapphires. Another burst of electricity exploded inside me.
“But seriously, how are we going to get out of here?”
“Call in the Kinetic?” I said, loathe to have Gracie find us in this ridiculous situation. “She can teleport one of us at a time out of here.”
“And how is she going to do that when she’s sleeping?”
“I could visit in a dream?”
“It may take her hours to wake up,” he protested.
“Any other waking technique I know would be too unpleasant to do to a friend, Chad. I’ll go tell her in a dream and we’ll just have to wait.”
“Fine.”
I went to Grace and was disappointed that it only took a few minutes. We could be stuck here till morning before Grace could get us out.
We stood in silence but the effect of being in such close proximity was too much. The pheromones were everywhere and soon I felt Chad’s body responding as much as I knew my own was. He wasn’t even doing anything and my breath was coming faster.
“Your cheeks are flushed,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, well I think your…” I cleared my throat. “… is flushed, too. It’s definitely filling with blood.”
“That’s none of your business,” he said, seeming annoyed by his reaction to me.
“Right. Well, it happens to be right up in my business at the moment,” I said, wiggling a little.
“Stop that,” he said, his voice sounding strained.
“We should have just done it when we were in the Survivor community,” I said. “It would have relieved the pressure.”
“I disagree. It would have stoked the fire and made it impossible to focus for… basically… well, forever.”
I tilted my head back and sighed, which had the unintended effect of pushing my breasts tight against his chest.
“Yumi,” he groaned.
“How do we always end up in situations like this?” I said, feeling my body heating up against his.
“Because you’re a rash, unthinking…”
“Okay, okay,” I interrupted, lifting my hands as he repeated the words he had said when I had messed up back at Matt and Nessa’s.
“I get it. But you’re the one who’s cocky this time.”
He stifled a smile, somehow managing to keep a straight face and I counted that as a win.
“So, what are we supposed to do till Grace arrives?” I said, meeting his eyes.
We gazed at each other for a long moment.
“Want to tell me about that kiss with Jeff?” he said.
“What? No.” I said scandalized at the thought of telling him about my generally disagreeable experience with the other man. “How do you know I kissed him?”
“I walked in on you two in the alcove.”
Oh. Crap. He had seen me kissing another guy. That had to have been unpleasant. I remembered how upset I had been when I had only seen the memory of him kissing Natasha.
“I don’t really want to talk about that,” I said.
“What else are we going to talk about?”
“Are you trying to torture yourself?” I said, incredulous.
“What makes you think it would be torture?”
“Are we just going to keep asking each other questions?”
He laughed, unable to hold back this time, and I couldn’t help laughing with him. It was a beautiful thing to hear. I couldn’t remember the last time we had shared a joke together.
“Fine,” I said, giving in
because he was right. What the hell were we going to talk about till morning, anyway? “Might as well get right to the most controversial topic right away.”
Still Stuck
Yumi
“So?”
Chad was waiting for me to start talking. I heaved a sigh, which pushed my chest against his again, since we were ridiculously pinned in the narrow passage. The corridor where we were stuck led to the brick that we had been coming to see to find out when the city had been built.
We had to hang out here till early morning, when Grace would move into light sleep, get my dream message, and wake up. Then she would teleport us out of here before we could be discovered by the morning shift.
We hoped anyway.
Chad lifted his eyebrows and gave me an impatient look.
“Well, the guy is pretty hot,” I admitted. “He’s really tall.”
I looked up at Chad, who was only about five or six inches taller than me.
“You wench,” he said, knowing I was messing with him.
“And he’s got this dark hair. Straight.”
“Right,” he was keeping a stoic expression on his face.
I tried not to look at Chad’s red curls that always tantalize me… but I couldn’t help myself. I itched to touch them and twist them around my fingers. I squeezed my hands into fists to keep from reaching out.
I love those damn curls.
“I caught that thought,” he said and I could tell that he was trying not to smile again but there was a smugness coming off of him that was overwhelming me.
“He’s very handsome,” I said, not meeting his gaze.
“Look at me,” he said and I lifted my eyes to his. “Do you think I’m handsome?”
“Why are you asking me that?” I said, squinting at him. “You know the answer.”
“Tell me.”
“Yes, I think you’re handsome. Guys with blue eyes and curly red hair really turn me on. Okay? Is that what you want me to say?”
“Yes,” he said with satisfaction. “Now, enough about him. I know how good looking he is. What was it like to kiss him?”
“You want to know?” I said, wiggling my eyebrows and he knew what I was suggesting.
“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head vehemently. “Do not send me your memories. I do not want to experience that. It was bad enough seeing it from the outside.”
“Fine,” I said. “It started out okay. His lips were soft. His body’s really good. Hard, muscular…”
“Okay, don’t tell me about his body.”
“You want me to tell you this or not?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop interrupting.”
He scowled but remained silent.
“I had a hard time reaching around his shoulders and he really had to crane his neck down to kiss me. So that was awkward. He’s really tall.”
“Oh?” It seemed to please him that I had something to complain about.
“And then when he put his tongue in my mouth… I was thinking…”
Chad winced and closed his eyes.
“What?”
“That it was kind of gross,” I admitted.
“Really?”
Those sexy blue eyes opened and he plastered a huge grin across his face.
“Really. Don’t smile. It seriously pisses me off that you’ve ruined me for other men.”
He put his hands on my hips and I frowned.
“What are you doing?”
“I really want to kiss you right now.”
“No way,” I said, turning my head to the side. “You haven’t told me what you did with Natasha tonight after you left the party with her.”
His face fell.
“Oh shit.”
***
Chad
This situation was the worst.
Why did she and I always get ourselves into such stupid circumstances?
It wasn’t only because she was rash and unthinking.
The feeling of her soft body against mine was doing terrible things to me. And hearing about her kiss had been awful and then great because she hadn’t liked it.
But now I had to tell her about Natasha and I. And I didn’t want to do that.
But I had to.
And she knew it.
Because I was that kind of guy.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, after we left the party she showed me the North End of the city which is actually pretty cool…”
“Chad,” she said, probably sensing that I was about to go off into a description of the statues.
“And then she invited me back to her apartment.”
Yumi lifted her eyebrows.
“Yes, it was pretty clear that she wanted to have sex with me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Oh God. I fucking hate that bitch.” Then she frowned and rephrased. “I mean, I greatly dislike Natasha.”
“You want to hear this or not?” I said, echoing her words from earlier.
“Yes,” she said, faintly, not opening her eyes.
“Well, she kissed me.”
Yumi was silent.
“And it turned me on.”
She breathed in deeply through her nose.
“She has these big soft breasts,” I said, thinking about them with regret.
“I noticed,” she said, her tone curt. “Definitely not Bs.” She was referring to her own small, perky breasts that were pressing into me right now.
“Not Bs,” I agreed.
Those breasts had almost been my undoing.
“Almost?” Yumi said, opening her eyes.
“Well, things were getting pretty hot.”
She groaned.
“Maybe I don’t want to hear this.”
“Want me to send my memories?” I teased her the way she had done to me.
“No!” She practically yelled.
“Okay,” I said. “You want me to finish telling?”
She was quiet for a long time.
“Yes,” she finally said.
“I did get my hands on her breasts…”
“And?” She was holding her breath.
“Practically sprained a thumb,” I said and her eyes flew to mine. “I like my breasts smaller.”
“Red, just tell me,” she begged.
“I couldn’t do it,” I said, with a shrug. “I tried. And the body was willing but the mind was… not.”
“Why not?” she whispered.
“Because there’s only one woman I want.”
“Damn it, Red.”
She leaned her head on my chest.
“So, I’ve been thinking about us. About our situation.”
Yumi lifted her head again, her eyes hopeless.
“What were you thinking?”
“I’ve been thinking that I can’t do this anymore. These ups and downs, hot and cold, getting along then fighting. It’s tearing me up.”
“Me too,” she said, pressing her forehead into my chest again.
And it occurred to me that our situation was maybe starting to get to Yumi. I had seen her afraid more in the past month than in all the rest of the time I had known her.
I tried to get my thoughts straight so that I could communicate my idea to her.
“So, if we really want to have a chance at someday getting back together, then we can’t just do what we’ve done in the past because that’s what got us here. And this is not…” All of a sudden I got choked up. But I swallowed the lump in my throat and went on. “This is not where I imagined we’d be a year after getting married, Tanaka.”
“Me neither.” She sounded like she was going to cry. “I thought nothing could break us up.”
“So, what I thought was that we need to be different — individually and together. Because the people we were are the ones who created this. So, we have to change. We have to become the kind of people who can be happy together… forever.”
“How do we do that?” she said a desperate hope in her eyes, as if she
had been drowning and I had thrown her a life preserver.
I shook my head.
“I have no idea. But I think if we just want it badly enough, then we’ll figure it out.”
“That doesn’t sound very promising, Dvorski,” she said, but I could tell she was thinking about it.
“But it’s better than no hope at all, I think, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I want to be better.”
I kissed her forehead.
“Me too.”
She frowned.
“You don’t need to be better,” she said. “You’re the golden boy. You can do no wrong.”
“Jealousy, bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, anger, rage, violence, pride…” I began listing all the faults I had been guilty of in the past year. “Need I go on? You’re not the only person who has to change, Yumi.”
She looked troubled.
“It takes two people to screw up a relationship.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that,” she said, relenting.
“So, we work on ourselves. Being better people.”
“I want that but I don’t know how to do it,” she said, frustrated. “I keep messing it up.”
“How bad to you want to get back together?” I asked.
“More than anything,” she whispered as if it was hard to say.
“Then you’ll figure it out. You’ll keep trying. You’ll get it.”
Her eyes got determined.
“Okay. I fight for us.”
I gave her a half-smile, trust Yumi to turn it into a fight.
“Pretty much.”
“Got it.”
“But that’s not all. Like I said, I can’t stand the rollercoaster ride we’ve been on for the past year. We have to stop all that.”
She visibly sagged.
“What does that mean?”
“No flirting.”
“Seriously?”
“And no sex.”
“God damn it, Dvorski, you’re killing me here.”
The thought of another year not having sex with Yumi was killing me too. But we needed to change things, not just keeping running the same old patterns that had us stuck. I was pretty sure arguing, hurting each other, and then making up by sleeping together was an old pattern that wouldn’t help us in the least.
“We also stop fighting. We stick to being friends.”
