by Unknown
“Tea heals the soul.” Tommy cut off my thoughts making me look up into his eyes.
“You remember.”
“I remember everything about you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I just looked away and poured myself a big cup.
“Do you want to tell me what you were dreaming about?”
“Not particularly because then I would just be thinking about it and I’d really just like to forget it.”
“Okay.”
I looked back up at him mildly astonished at his retreat but was not going to question it.
We spent the rest of the night in silence and when I was ready to try sleeping again Tommy informed me that he would be in the rocking chair if I needed anything more.
His words still hurt so deeply but in my heart of hearts, I knew he was just saying them out of anger. Some people believed that you only spoke truth when drunk or angry but I truly felt that fear and anger incited nasty and weak things inside of us that caused us to speak things we never thought or felt before. Then again, sometimes the people we loved and trusted who knew us inside and out knew exactly what we needed to hear to see action. There was no science to my beliefs but I knew Tommy and that was enough for me. I knew I could forgive him and in all actuality, I probably already had.
The next few days were spent in the same fashion as the night I had that first nightmare, total silence. There had been very few, and I mean one or two, times when Tommy and I were not so close as to be attached. Matt, who I still wasn’t able to talk with, was always acting funky and I had decided today was the day I was going to break the silence, come hell or high water. Apparently hell was how the universe wanted to play it.
“We are getting out of the house today. Normally, I wouldn’t mind it and I spend a lot of time inside writing but I am beginning to go stir crazy and we are going to do something about it. No arguments.” I stated matter of factly as if there was no room to discuss it. Tommy thought that was cute.
He smiled a rye little smirk and for that, I wanted to throw a book at his face. Sitting in the library a foot from me while I hid my face in papers, writing, he read and drank. At my announcement Tommy set his drink and his book down after marking his page and looked over at me.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, that is so.” I pursed my lips.
“And where do you think we are going to go?”
“I don’t care where we go, so long as it ain’t here.”
“Town is non-negotiable. Too many people and too little security.”
“Please, like anyone would be dumb enough to try something in Devine.” I rolled my eyes and he made a noise that rubbed me the wrong way. “You’re an idiot.”
“Like I said time and again, non-negotiable.”
“Whatever.”
“You sound like a teenager again.”
I wanted to say whatever again and then I wanted to punch him in the face but all I could do was stare at him like he was an infectious sore.
“If you want to leave this house you better go put on some clothes.”
I looked down at my body because quite frankly I hadn’t even looked at what I put on that morning. Noting my regular yoga pants and tank top I looked back over at him and threw my arms up, “What is wrong with what I’m wearing. I just need a sweater.”
“The hell you do. Go put some pants on. Every man for miles can see your ass in those.”
Mmhmm.
“And you propose I wear, what, a potato sack?”
He just stared at me, daring me to fight him. I was very easily lured and he ought to know that by now.
“I happen to have a great ass, thank you.”
“I never said you didn’t. I happen to think you have the greatest ass I’ve ever seen but that doesn’t mean every other man in Bradley County needs to see it.”
“If it’s so great, maybe every man for the next twelve counties should see it.”
“Don’t make me lock you in the safe room forever, stalker or no stalker.”
“Jealous is a very sexy color on you. Have I ever told you that?”
I knew I had, I just liked the dumbfounded look on his face, un-matching the strain in his pants.
This was where I took my leave and left him with that. Standing to walk away, I bent to grab my papers and pen and turned to the door. When I reached the stairs I noticed that Tommy wasn’t following me, yet, and I moved a little faster up each step when I heard him sigh and turned to see him staring after me.
That was my first mistake. My second was when I began to fall backwards or rather, sideways and I didn’t drop my things but clutched them tighter to me bracing for the tumble, instead of reaching out.
It wouldn’t be the first time I fell down the stairs and if a hospital visit was necessary, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d have to sign a sworn statement that truly, I wasn’t pushed or the victim of domestic abuse. It was comforting to know they were taking that more seriously, but also a pain in the ass to have them push so hard when I was just plain clumsy. When the air left my lungs and I felt a firmness that had nothing to do with the ground, I opened one eye and saw his broad, muscular chest stretched under his tight t-shirt, right in front of my face and holding me up were his taut, sensuous, purely lickable arms, wrapped around me.
“That’s it, I’m buying you a bubble and locking you in it.” He huffed into my hair.
“Yeah, that’s not gonna work for me, either.” I remarked like the smart ass I was, as he pushed me back to vertical.
“Knowing you, you’d still hurt yourself in it.” Tommy scoffed.
“Don’t be jelly. It takes skill to be this clumsy.” I remarked turning away again. “Honestly, what is it with the men in my life, constantly chastising me for my...awesomeness?”
Without actually seeing him, I turned back around holding up a finger and quickly stated, “THAT is rhetorical, I really don’t need nor do I want to know.”
He was really trying hard, not, to hide a slight chuckle and I decided to ignore it. I really wasn’t a fan of playing ‘pick-apart-Taylor’, not especially. He skipped up the stairs two at a time and was pushed up against my front before I could blink, wrapping his arms around me to rest on my lower back, enclosing me. Lazily and without much effort I walked backwards toward the door of the master suite, begging my brain to function properly, if only long enough to ask him a few questions.
“Damnit he’s so sexy, I can’t even talk. I just want to jump him all the time like a rabbit!”
He laughed a hearty belly laugh that tickled my sweet spot, deep down.
Doh.
“I did not just say that out loud…?”
“You did.” He nodded with a smug smile of intense satisfaction.
Hello, mortification.
“I’ll just be going to slam my head through the wall now.” I began to pull away, into the master bedroom but he tugged me back to him, connecting his groin to my center.
His smile did funny and very fierce things to my…everything. Never mind that our relationship was like a freakin’ yo-yo at this point. Up, down, up, down. One minute we are chasing after each other like dogs in heat and the next we’re frostier than an Alaskan winter’s night. Even then, we were still clearly insane for one another. If I knew nothing else in this whole entire, wide world, I knew that we had chemistry and it was electrifying, sometimes terrifying, but an all-encompassing need.
Standing before me, clutching me tightly to him, Tommy took a deep breath and visibly relaxed.
“Go get a sports bra and a real t-shirt. One that isn’t see-through or flimsy enough to break when anyone looks at you.”
“Um… okay, but why?”
“You never could just do what someone tells you.”
He wasn’t even asking.
I turned away pretending to be angry by stringing together a bunch of mumbled curses and headed for the walk-in closet. After reaching for a black ribbed tank top and extra supportive sports
bra, I took my sweet time dawdling back to him.
“Now, what are we doing?”
“I actually meant that you were supposed to put them on, not carry them around.”
“Har, har genius.”
“A little run never hurt nobody.” He shrugged indifferently.
“Running?” I exclaimed, most obviously appalled.
“Cardio is good for the body and helps with the tension.”
“Cardio is the devil.”
“Okay, calm down Mrs. Boucher.”
“What did you just call me?”
He stared at me like he hoped I wasn’t serious and he scratched his head for some dumb effect.
“The Waterboy.”
“You mean the guy who hands out water at the football games?”
“The movie.”
When I stayed quiet he shook his head with what was possibly annoyance. I could do that to people.
“Just put it on and let’s go.”
“But I don’t wanna!” I whined.
Fat lot of good the whining did. Tommy grinned at me and turned back to the stairs, reciting some stupid statement I may or may not have just made about getting out of the house no matter what we were doing and no arguing to it. Damn my lack of short term memory and ability to specify what I actually wanted to do or rather, did not want to do. Damn it to hell.
I could see there was no stopping him and I really did want to get out of the house, so I followed and began stripping as I descended the stairs. Considering my most recent act, I probably should have thought better against the stripping and moving. But would I be me if I had?
As I pulled the tank top over my face, the view before me became one of white cotton but the feeling was heat wrapping around me before his fingers even touched my bare belly. The rough, rugged strength when put to the soft, silky texture of my skin was shocking and sublime.
My father always told me, ‘Never trust a man with soft hands, Annie-Girl.’
He was right, of course.
The thought of my father made my heart stop a second too long and I struggled to breathe as the tears began to run down my cheeks absent-mindedly. This crying crap had to stop.
“What’s wrong?” Tommy’s eyebrows scrunched together in an impossibly adorable expression.
“I was just thinking of my dad.” I told him, truthfully.
It would do me no good to try and lie to him now. Over hundreds of miles it seemed doable, but straight to his face was like nailing jello to a tree.
“Tay…” He seemed to struggle with the right words but eventually looked back to my eyes and grabbed the black shirt from my hands; I had begun to ring it around my hands, maybe a little too hard. “Your dad is a fighter and I’ll be damned if he lets some heart attack stop him from doing what he has always done. Nothing in this world can take him away from y’all and certainly not before he is ready to let it do so.”
“I can’t really help it, Tommy.”
Great, now I was blubbering like a baby. Did this bother anyone else, how unstable I had become?
“Here.”
He pulled the bra and then the ‘wife-beater’ over my head and down my torso with his gentle force. I gave him a weak smile as I slid my arms through the holes awkwardly.
Tommy slid his forefinger under my chin and lifted my face up until my gaze met his again.
“D’you want to go and see him?”
Weakly, I shook my head and answered, “No. Charlie will be by tomorrow to take me back. It’s the only time I get with him right now and I don’t want to risk seeing mama.”
He grabbed my recently shucked tank top, tossed it onto the top landing near the bedroom doors and replaced the emptiness of the shirt with one of his hands.
“Come.”
The things that that one word from those lips did to my lady bits was remarkable and indescribable.
My inner voice screamed, “Whatever you say!”
My actual voice asked, “What are we doing, Tommy?”
“I haven’t figured that one out yet.”
“I meant right now.”
“Yeah, that too.” Tommy sighed heavily.
Despite the fact that it seemed immature and silly, I was partly giddy that the idea of ‘us’ was still in his head. It was no secret that there was no intention of my staying, but the thought of us never being us again, hurt in places of my heart and head that were otherwise never known to exist. To say our relationship and feelings were complicated would be the understatement of the year and quite frankly, they could give anyone whiplash. The upside though, in my opinion, is that all the best romances in history and fiction, were no different. Love sucks sometimes.
Eventually, we were going to have to figure out what was going to happen between us, but the mind-blowing, euphoric, adrenaline inducing, make-ya-wanna-smack-somebody, sex was pretty great and I didn’t want it to end. Selfish or not.
He stopped at the coat rack and thrust an overly large sweater at me that swallowed me whole. We walked out of the French doors at the back of the house which opened to a stone pathway, guided to a detached three car garage. Being so put back you didn’t notice it when you pulled up in front of the house.
Opening the side entrance of the garage, we passed a smaller car with a cover on it and went to the middle spot where what looked like a brand spanking new, jacked up, black Silverado was waiting for us, already running. Tommy led me to the passenger door, helped me up into the truck and then needlessly buckled me in while he was at it.
“I can do that, you know?”
“Yes, but it’s a great excuse to touch you.”
“We aren’t fifteen anymore, you don’t need an excuse.”
“If I recall, I didn’t really need one then either.”
“Never stopped you from using one.” I laughed, shaking my head at him amused at the flashback of fifteen year old Tommy.
“Well, I was and am, a gentleman.”
“Mostly.”
His grin lit the inside of the truck as he climbed in behind the wheel.
After driving only a few short miles deeper into the property, Tommy pulled the truck over and put it in park.
“This is gonna be fun.”
Those were the only words he spoke before he proceeded to jump out of the truck and disappear behind thick growth, leaving me to wait for either him or some crazed killer. Considering that the latter was entirely possible at this point in time, I grew all the more nervous with every half second that passed. After ninety mcbillion heartbeats, a semi-loud roar hit my ears and right where Tommy had disappeared, he shot back out of the tree line riding a ridiculously bright, yellow four wheeler.
Lord help me.
* * *
“I know you’re not serious.” Taylor started on Tommy as soon as he opened her door.
“Come on, that was so long ago.” He retorted, fighting like hell to hide his shit eatin’ grin.
“It’s still fresh to me!”
“Then you won’t drive.”
“YOU were the one driving when it happened!” She shrieked at Tommy, trying her damnedest to be angry.
“I still haven’t figured out how you moved from behind me and got your head wedged between the handlebars and that tree we hit.” He had the cajones to snigger like a little school boy.
“WE?! I repeat, YOU were the one driving! I nearly died.”
“Oh, stop it. Now you’re just acting like a big ole’ baby.”
“I will cut you.”
Her threats were pretty cute sometimes. It was like a baby kitten hissing at its own shadow.
Tommy chuckled to himself picturing the image and then reached out for Taylor.
“Get your ass out here.”
“If you crash again, I’ll kill you dead.”
“That’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”
“You should be worried.”
“I’m shaking in my boots, don’t you worry it none.”
She reached over and
punched him in the chest with all of the power of a marshmallow, making Tommy laugh even harder.
“I’m never talking to you again. I want a divorce.”
That made Tommy stop and nearly climb into the cab to pull her taught little body right up his chest, into his own face.
“Don’t even think those words again.”
“So that’s what gets you serious?”
“Of course it does and your safety is my top concern. It always has been and always will be. And divorce is not something that I care to ever discuss with you, so you can just forget that word all together.”
That had Taylor quiet for at least forty five seconds; long enough to haul her out of the seat and over to the quad.
“Put this helmet on.”
“Do you have a hair tie?”
Tommy eyed her unamused.
“Do I look like I have a hair tie?”
She smiled at him, lightening up and grabbed the helmet out of his hands.
“Safety first.” She mumbled and then instantly froze, staring at Tommy nearly stupefied.
“What’s wrong?” He asked, reaching for the second helmet.
“Tommy- um…” She twisted her fingers around the helmet strap and kicked the tire a few times. When she bit her bottom lip, Tommy knew she was really struggling with what she needed to say.
“Spit it out Tay. There isn’t a whole lot we haven’t done or seen with each other.”
“That’s kind of it.”
“What?” Now he was concerned.
“Tommy, I told you that I haven’t been with anyone since you and well… I don’t really know how to say this because it seems so damn stupid.”
“The best way to say anything is just to say it.”
“We didn’t use any protection and I’m not – I’m not on the pill or anything.”
Tommy couldn’t help but just look at her. Of all the things that could have come out of her mouth, that was the last thing he expected.
“Say something, damnit.”
“What would you like me to say?”
“It takes two to tango, Tommy. Surely you can’t be mad at me about this.”
