by Zoey Parker
“Not in particular,” she said.
“Want to see something?”
“Yeah, sure.” She sounded confused but I could hear her smile.
“It’s a bit of a ride, just warning you.”
“That’s fine, Ben. I like riding with you.” She adjusted her grip on my sides.
I nodded, settled back into the seat, and swung the bike to the right. We took off, headed for the highway.
Twenty minutes of open throttle later, we edged off the road underneath a big sign for the state park. The asphalt turned into hard-packed dirt that got gradually less and less smooth as we rode deeper into the grounds. The landscape on either side of us was lush with late summer flowers blooming in the light of the setting sun. Yellows, purples, and faded greens were swept across the ground as far as the eye could see, like big, messy brushes of paint.
We approached the foothills and slowly the road died out altogether, leaving me to weave the bike around the bigger potholes. I tried to go as carefully as I could, since I was worried about jolting Carmen around too much. The idea of the baby was constantly gnawing at the back of my head. Until now, it had been just a theoretical thing, not a real one. But it was happening, whether I liked it or not. I hadn’t yet decided if I did.
Soon, we were cruising between the rolling hills. We reached a point where the terra cotta clay gave way to gravel. I brought the bike to a halt and killed the engine. Silence took over. I sat still for a second, listening to nothing but the hush of the window in the tall grasses. I could feel Carmen tensing behind me, wondering what was going on.
I climbed off and then helped her off as well. “Come on,” I said. “Not much farther.”
She followed me as I wound my way confidently behind one hill, towards where two massive boulders were nestled against each other. I turned to face her. “This is the last part,” I said, “but it’s the hardest. Think you can handle it?”
She screwed up her face in a pouty scowl. “Of course I can,” she said.
I grinned. “Let’s go, then.” I walked up to the boulders and found the familiar handholds. Even after all these years, I remembered exactly where they were. “Watch how I do it,” I instructed over my shoulder. I began to climb. It was easy. My body knew the path. Right hand up, right foot followed, left hand, right hand, then swing over the top. Before I knew it, I was ten feet off the ground. I spun back around to look down at Carmen where she stood below me. “There’s not enough room for you to get up if I’m up here, too, so I’m going to drop off the other side,” I said. “But I’ll still be right here. Don’t worry.” She nodded.
I tried to ignore my nervousness as she got ready to climb. From this angle, the belly she was growing was even more obvious than it was when I looked at her straight on. I couldn’t believe that there was a baby in there. My baby. It was too crazy to comprehend. I never thought I’d see the day when I became a father. On the other hand, I still wasn’t sure I would.
I turned around and looked below. The ground dropped off sharply, and a thin patina of high branches hid the ground from view. It was a completely blind jump. But it was one I knew. I slid off the rock and landed with a gentle thump on the other side.
When I’d regained my feet, I dusted off my hands on my pants and turned to look back up at the way I’d come. Then I held my breath and listened close as I waited for this girl—my wife and the mother of my child—to come careening through the treetops.
Chapter Twenty-One
Carmen
I bit my lip as I climbed up the boulders. Ben had disappeared on the other side, but I was too focused on the climb to feel nervous now that I couldn’t see or hear him. I dug my fingers into one little outcropping of rock, then lunged up to grab the next. I found a good rhythm as I moved inch by inch up the face of the dusty stone.
My legs were aching from holding me up by the time I reached the top. I sat down with a satisfied sigh. When I looked back over to see how far I’d come, I was pretty impressed with myself. It’d been a while since I’d done something so adventurous and outdoorsy. I’d forgotten how good it felt to tackle a physical challenge like that.
Turning to the other side, though, was a whole different story. Thin, flat tree branches with broad leaves crisscrossed over each other, forming a canopy I couldn’t see through even a little bit. “Ben!” I called.
His voice came back muffled. It didn’t sound like it was that far below me, but I felt nervousness start to creep its way into my system nonetheless. “I’m right here, Carmen,” he said.
“How do I get down there?”
“You have to jump.”
“Jump? Are you crazy? I have no idea where I’m landing!”
“I’m right here. I’ll catch you.”
I swallowed. My throat was dry all of the sudden and I noticed my hands were shaking. I couldn’t remember why I’d agreed to go on this crazy walkabout in the first place. Ben hadn’t even told me what it was he was showing me, for crying out loud. This was the last time I’d be following him blindly into the wild, I was sure of that. Never again.
I squinted and tried to find a gap in the leaves to peer through, but there was nothing. They didn’t look too strong or thick and I wasn’t afraid of getting whacked in the head with a stiff branch. But the nervousness pumped through me anyway. This was miles outside of my comfort zone.
“I don’t know,” I said fretfully.
“Carmen,” Ben called back. “Do you trust me?”
That was a serious humdinger of a question. Did I trust him? There was more baggage attached to that than I could wrap my head around. Who knew four little words could have so many implications?
I trusted him not to murder me in my sleep. I guessed that was a start. We’d spent enough nights under the same roof for me to feel pretty certain that he wasn’t about to slip a knife between my ribs when I wasn’t looking, just to get rid of me. He’d even taken to sharing the bed with me after I’d called him out for complaining about the kink in his neck he’d earned from too many consecutive nights on the couch. After that, he’d agreed to sleep alongside me, though he still refused to even come close to making physical contact.
I trusted him to make me laugh, too. There was something about that wild grin of his that made me feel a little wild myself. It felt good to relax in his presence, to let him sweep me away in the little eddies of conversation I loved getting lost in with him. He knew how to poke and prod until I was almost annoyed with him, but then he’d look at a new piece of furniture or a dish I was cooking for the first time, and turn on me with such a look of wide-eyed surprise and amazement that I couldn’t help but flush with pride. It wasn’t the kind of look I was used to receiving. My mother had made me feel that way, but she’d been gone for long enough that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have someone be impressed with something I’d done or made.
But did I trust him? It was more than those things. It was more than safety or giggles. It was the way I found him staring at me sometimes. Like I was a mythical creature he’d never seen before, only heard about. It was a bizarre look, and if anyone else had looked at me that way, I might’ve called the cops and reported a stalker or a psychopath. But on Ben, it was the opposite. I wanted to curl up inside that look, bathe in it, let it rinse over me and nestle me in its warmth. I couldn’t explain why I felt that way or what it was about him that made it feel so special. I just knew it did.
I knew I was falling for him, even though I tried not to admit it. When I woke up before him or when he fell asleep while I was still up, sometimes I’d taken to glancing at his face and seeing a sense of calm confidence there, even when he was deep into his dreams. It made me melt in weird, unexpected ways.
So did I trust him? I took a deep breath and answered his question the only way I could think of.
I jumped.
# # #
I broke through the treetops heels first. Little branches snapped under my weight as I plummeted downwards. I kept my e
yes squeezed shut and my arms crossed over my chest. I couldn’t help but screech just a tiny bit.
I opened my eyes just after I’d passed through the leaves, only to see the ground hurtling up at me. But there, right below me, with his arms spread wide and waiting, was Ben. I slammed into him, but he gauged my speed perfectly, squatting low to make my landing as soft as possible. He caught me around the hips, snatching away all my momentum at once, and then gradually set me back on my feet.
“Told you,” he said.
I was too out of breath from the excitement to answer, but smiled and nodded. He had told me. I’d trusted him. He’d been there. Funny how such a simple little thing could feel so big and overwhelming.
He kept his hands lightly on my waist for a moment longer than he needed to. I didn’t mind, though. After soaring through the air, I liked being grounded by him, connected to him, knowing I was here and he was there and neither of us was going anywhere without the other.
“That was the hard part. Just around this corner, and you’ll see,” he told me. He grabbed my hand. I twined my fingers between his and let myself be led onto a path that sloped down and away around an ancient, craggy-looking tree.
The second we stepped around it, my jaw dropped.
It was hands down the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in nature. A waterfall off to our right splashed gently down onto wet, mossy rocks, collecting at the bottom in a clear little pool that in turn fed a winding, playful brook. The water churned past our feet and disappeared into the foliage a few dozen yards down towards the right. Both sides of the river were festooned with lush green trees and bushes, birds twittering from branch to branch, and flowers springing up underfoot. It was like a postcard come to life. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I felt Ben looking at me and I turned to face him, still stunned.
“Like it?” he asked with an impish grin.
“Like it? I love it. It’s unbelievable. I literally don’t know what to say.”
He ran a hand through his hair and laughed. “It really is something else, isn’t it?”
“How’d you find this place?” I gushed.
“Jay and I used to come here when we were kids. We had these little dirt bikes—real pieces of shit looking back on it, but back then, we thought we were the baddest dudes on two wheels on the whole face of the earth.” He shook his head as he chuckled at the memory. “We used to go ripping around all over this park, trying to pop wheelies off the top of the hills. You know, dumb stuff. The kind of thing teenagers with too much testosterone and free time do. It’s a dangerous combo.”
I kept looking around in amazement as he talked. Everywhere I looked, something new bloomed or peered out at me. I thought I caught the eyes of a little woodland creature, a fox or something like that, sneaking a glance from the underbrush. I felt like Pocahontas, though I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have arrived here on a motorcycle.
It was amusing to imagine Jay and Ben ripping around the park on their whiny motorized bikes. I could easily picture them getting into all kinds of trouble, playing pranks on the park rangers and tourists, generally up to no good.
“Here, there’s a great little seat up here,” he said, gesturing for me to follow him.
I kept ahold of his hand as we walked towards the waterfall. A natural staircase had formed in the rock, leading up to a big, scooped-out stone sitting right up on the edge of the stream where it tumbled downwards to the pool. Ben held on tightly to my hand and watched cautiously as I mounted the steps ahead of him, taking them carefully one by one.
“Easy,” he said with a warning tone in his voice. “These can be slippery. Don’t want you to fall and bust that pretty little ass of yours.”
His tone was gruff, but underneath it was a genuine concern. It made my heart wriggle in my chest. He could be cute without even knowing he was doing it.
I scooted across the stone bench. Ben settled down next to me. His thigh came to rest lightly against mine, sending heat oozing even through the fabric of our jeans. Together, we looked out over the lush alcove. Neither of us said a word for a while, but we didn’t need to. Just being here next to each other felt like it said everything on its own.
“What were you like as a kid?” I asked softly after a while.
“Oh, I was trouble. Bad trouble. You wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me.”
“So nothing has changed, then, I guess?”
He grinned. “My mom would have agreed with you.”
“Would have?”
“She’s dead now. Although I guess there’s no saying for sure whether that stops her from scolding me. Wherever she is, I’m sure she’s disappointed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay; it’s been a long time. I’m only kidding anyway. She did the best she could have with a punk kid like me. It took a while to straighten myself out, figure out what kind of man I wanted to be.”
“And what kind of man is that?”
Ben looked at me curiously, his head tilted to the side. “You know, I’m not quite as sure about that as I was a few months ago,” he said after a while. “Before I met you, I would have said I wanted to be the toughest man in the state, the guy nobody dared fuck with. I don’t think that’s changed. But the way I think about that has changed. The reasons I want it.”
I bit my lip, unsure of what to say. There was so much I wanted to ask him about it, but I still felt the thinnest membrane between us, separating us. Almost all of me was tumbling head over heels for the man to my right. But the tiniest little portion sat back. Still unsure. Waiting. Watching. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry? Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry, Carmen. I don’t say things like this often, but I’ll make an exception: I’m glad I met you.”
My eyes and heart were equally full as I looked up at him. Something about the nature around us made everything Ben said seem so much more profound, like there was an extra force of gravity working hard here to give his words more depth and weight.
“I’m glad I met you, too, Ben.” I felt like my words were pressing hard at that last layer left between us, poking at it to find the structural flaws and make it give way. So much tension, so close to the breaking point.
“Are you?” he asked. He was studying my face closely. His eyes tracked from my lips to meet my gaze and back down again, roving in search of some sign that would tell him whether I meant what I said.
I tried to put as much confidence as I could into my response. “Yes,” I said firmly. “I am. I thought this was going to be, like, my last thing, you know? All doors closed? My daddy had worked so hard to keep me pinned down that I was sure he was using you to make it permanent. Maybe he thought that, too. But it hasn’t been like that, not at all.”
“What do you mean, pinned down?”
“I mean, ever since my mom died, I could barely go five minutes without him checking on me, keeping close tabs, like I was on a leash and he was never going to let any slack out on it. He made me live at home while I was going to school, never let me go out to parties, or have very many friends. Definitely never any boyfriends. The only tastes of freedom I ever got were behind his back. And every time he found out I’d done something he didn’t approve of, his stranglehold just got a little bit tighter. I guess I just assumed that’s how my life would always go.”
The more I talked, the more the words seemed to pour out of my mouth, just like the waterfall at our feet. I didn’t realize how much I’d wanted to say, or how good it would feel to say all this to Ben. He watched, not saying anything or interrupting, but taking it all in with a serious smolder in his eyes. His frown deepened the more I spoke. By the time I finished, he looked angry. Furious, even. Like he wanted to break something badly.
“Listen to me, Carmen,” he said. His voice didn’t rise above a whisper, but it was taut with a dark, pulsing energy that gave me no choice but to offer him every ounce of my attention. He drew me in with his tone alone. �
��As long as you’re with me, no one will ever do anything like that to you again. Not your father, not me. You’re mine, but you’re your own person, too. If you want something, you go get it. I’ll do everything I can to help you. I’m your husband, Carmen. Not your prison guard.”
Our eyes were locked together. Ben was all I could see. His jaw was stiff with pent-up anger and passion. His mouth a straight pink slash among the furrows of his dark beard. His neck ringed with veins and tendons stretched tight like cables on a bridge. He was my warrior, my guardian. My husband.
“I need you to tell me you understand, Carmen. It’s not enough for me to see you nod. I have to hear it come out of your mouth.”
“I understand, Ben.”
“Again,” he commanded. “Make me believe you.”
“I understand.”
“Again.”
