by Liz Gavin
She went quiet for a moment, still burying her face in the crook of his neck, clawing her fingers on his shoulders. He thought she had calmed down. Her voice sounded muffled by his body when she told him, “I haven’t cried since I lost my baby. I guess I was too happy escaping from hell.”
A punch to his stomach wouldn’t have hurt so much. The woman he loved had gone through hell and survived, but he wasn’t anywhere near to help her. He wished he could turn back time, meet the young Ana and whisk her away before the darkness descended on her life. That would never happen, but he could build a future with her, where she would be free to be herself and he would love her all the more for it.
He hugged her tighter and whispered in her ear, “I’ve got you, babe. Whatever you want to do, I’m here for you. You want to punch someone, I’ll hold them down. You want the moon, I’ll pluck it from the sky. You want kids, we’ll have a fucking soccer team.”
It started as a chuckle, but soon turned to sobs. As if a dam had broken inside her, Ana cried her eyes out for a long time. With her draped around his neck, Noah didn’t mind the tears rolling down his chest. He relished the fact that she felt safe enough with him to let her vulnerability get the best of her. A woman as strong as Ana, her courage forged in the worst kind of fire, wouldn’t open herself to just anyone. He felt honored to have gained her trust. She deserved a man who admired her strength and respected her limits. As he ran his fingers through her long red hair, he prayed he would be up to the challenge.
When the sobbing and the tears stopped, he tried to pull her hands from behind his neck, but she held them tighter together. “No, I’m embarrassed.”
“You’re aware we’ll have to eventually get out of this bed.”
Imitating a brat she was far from becoming, she whined, “Why?”
Why indeed? He would gladly spend the rest of his days in bed with her. Not feasible, though. Also, not the appropriate thing to say at that moment.
“Here’s an idea. Jump in the shower, make yourself presentable, then meet me in the kitchen. I’ll fix us breakfast.”
Ana disentangled herself from him and hid her face in her hands, nodding her agreement. He kissed the back of her hands, making an effort not to pry her hands open. Apparently, learning to respect her limits would be an uphill battle. He was a persistent man.
“Go! Get out of here, so I can take that fucking shower.”
Her spunk was back and his lips curved in a welcome.
“Yes, ma’am.” He grabbed a t-shirt from an armchair by the door and closed it behind him. Feeling like maybe, just maybe, they had passed the eye of the storm, he whistled the new song he had composed all the way to the kitchen.
* * *
“Catchy tune,” Tristan’s voice startled him, as Noah flipped a pancake on the skillet he held over their ceramic stove top. “Care to share?”
Glancing over his shoulder, Noah found his roommate and best friend perched on a stool by the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room. “I haven’t seen you in over a week and you waltz in as if nothing is going on in your little world. I know you, Big T. Spill.”
“I know you just as well. You avoid stuff when you’re not comfortable about it. What’s wrong with the song?”
“Nothing wrong with it. It’s just that for this once, I feel like writing the lyrics myself instead of working with you.”
He kept his focus on the meal he was cooking, but Tristan’s silence persisted for too long. He turned off the stove so the pancake wouldn’t burn and swirled around to study his friend’s expression. He didn’t seem mad, happy or otherwise.
Ana came in before either could speak, her hair up in a careless bun, wearing a large t-shirt he had forgotten was hanging from a hook behind the bathroom door and a pair of his bike shorts. The musky scent of his soap wafted through the air and filled his nostrils. She wore it much better.
“Morning, Tristan. Hope you like burnt pancakes to start the day?” She teased, but nodded towards the food behind his back. Dark smoke puffed from the charcoal disc on the skillet.
He dropped his shoulders. “But I turned off the thingy.”
“The other thingy will continue cooking if the chef doesn’t take it away from the source of heat,” she scolded him, but added a wink and a bright smile.
Relieved to see she had bounced back, Noah replied with his widest grin. For a moment, eyes locked, it seemed as if the world had faded to nothing.
Tristan cleared his throat, not trying to be discreet and jumped off the stool. “I’d better leave you two lovebirds.”
Noah dismissed him with a flick of his wrist. “Nonsense. I’ve made enough food to feed an army. Don’t be antisocial. Have breakfast with us.”
Pretty sure Ana wouldn’t want to discuss their marriage with Tristan, Noah kept the information to himself. There would be plenty of time to share the news with Big T, after he had straightened out a few last things with his wife.
“These are surprisingly good,” Tristan observed between bites.
“Your mom’s recipe. How’s Lilly doing?”
“Health-wise, same thing. She’s ecstatic that Izzie is in town.”
“Whoa, how is that going?”
Tristan glanced briefly at Ana and Noah understood that for some reason, his friend didn’t want to share something. He probably thought this was the morning after a one-night-stand. His next words put that doubt to rest, “I don’t want to sound enigmatic, but it’s a long and depressing story. I don’t want to spoil your bliss.”
“That obvious?”
“Dude, you cooked her breakfast and wrote a song.” Ana’s cheeks got a healthy touch of pink. Tristan misread the sign. “I hope I didn’t spoil the surprise.”
“Noah told me he had composed a song.” She flipped her head to face Noah. “You wrote the lyrics too, babe?”
The simple term of endearment made him lightheaded like a freaking hormone-filled teen. He shook his head.
“But he will,” Tristan slapped his back, then squeezed his shoulder, leaving his hand there as he completed, “See? That’s the bliss I don’t want to meddle with. I will tell you this, though. A ton of shit happened fifteen years ago and you and I had no clue. I was totally blindsided by Izzie’s story. I’m glad I gave her a chance to tell it to me.”
“You mean after your mom and I threatened to twist your neck if you didn’t, right?”
Big T had the decency to look embarrassed. Good. Noah had spent the best part of a day in the previous week listening to Tristan go back and forth about the reasons he should never see Izzie again. At the time, due to his own soul searching about a certain redhead that sat beside him at his breakfast table at the moment, Noah gave his friend an earful. He reminded Tristan that life was too short and he had already spent a decade and a half pretending he had move on, when he hadn’t. He owed it to himself to try to set the record straight.
“Something like that.”
“Glad to help, bro. In fact, I’ll take my own advice and take care of some things before I waste more time. If you don’t mind it, Ana and I will go back to my room.”
“Eww, too much information.”
Noah didn’t fall for Tristan’s fake disgust. “Don’t be an ass.”
He laced his fingers through Ana’s and pulled her out of the kitchen towards the bedroom. As they stepped inside, he confessed, “I don’t want to rush you into anything you’re not ready to face. Just know that.”
She didn’t say a word until they locked the door and sat in the middle of his king-size bed facing each other. “I never doubted that. And just know that your strength gives me courage.”
Hearing that from the woman he admired for her resilience made him warm and fuzzy inside. He brushed her lips with his in the briefest of kisses. Her attitude had changed from sunny to gloomy, so he braced himself for more gory details. It seemed to Noah that each time Ana revisited her past with him, he was introduced to a new ring of horrors, much like Dante’s ni
ne circles of hell. He squeezed her hands to show his support, but felt like she needed to say whatever she still needed to tell him in her own time. So, he waited.
With their joined fingers, she fidgeted with the hem of his t-shirt that hid her round thighs from his hungry eyes. Even in a solemn moment like that, he wanted her with a strength that was overwhelming. He believed he would never get over that hunger for Ana. It might eventually morph into another feeling, but it would always be there driving him to her.
Ana opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, before dropping her chin to her chest and whispering, “I’m terrified of disappointing you.”
Noah felt like vermin. He was the reason she was distressed, not the slimy bastard. “Sweetie, nothing you tell me will make me think less of you.” Out of words to make his case, he squeezed her arms and let her read his sincerity in his eyes.
“You put me on a pedestal, but I’m no saint.”
“Neither am I. I’ve got no interest in saints or even in righteousness.”
“Still, seeing my dark side will shatter the illusion. I don’t want to deal with the pain of losing you to my own mistakes.”
Knowing the answer, he posed the question, “You killed someone?”
“No!” She sounded pissed.
Good. That whiny person of a moment ago wasn’t his Ana.
“That’s maybe, just maybe, the only line I wouldn’t cross for you. Still, depending on the mitigating circumstances, I could be so inclined to show leniency.”
It took Ana a moment to see through his charade, but she did and swatted his arm. The light returning to her eyes was all that mattered.
Sobering up, Ana stared into his eyes and sighed. “At this point, I told you bits and pieces of my past with Paulo, but putting together the jigsaw should have given you an accurate idea.”
Noah nodded.
“I left out the part where I escaped him. Both Paulo and my father had friends in high places in the judicial system and with the police. They frequented the same society that defended archaic values, such as women’s subservience to their husbands and fathers. They would have stonewalled any legal action I might have taken against Paulo. In my house, some topics were taboo, never to be discussed. Sex, or marital duties as mom would call it, being the top of the list. I didn’t feel comfortable telling her what was going on in my house, but I tried. Maybe I was too vague. Maybe she didn’t want to hear me. The fact is that she didn’t lift a finger to help me, even when she accompanied me to my obgyn’s appointment and saw the old greenish stains under my skin. The doctor played golf with Paulo every Thursday, so no queries were made. At all.”
She paused as if to think what to say next, but this time her narrative flowed with coherency as opposed to the verbiage of a couple of hours ago.
“Paulo allowed me to do therapy once a week because his mom tormented him that I was funereal. That was the term she used. She wasn’t concerned for me. She told him, as if I weren’t in the same room, she feared I was mentally unfit to have a child. She wasn’t too off, even though she had gained her knowledge of psychology volunteering at fundraisers for hospitals rather than actively studying the subject. Anyway, following her suggestion, I began my sessions. I made good use of those fifty minutes per week. Not fast enough. I got pregnant before I had devised a plan to regain my identity and my freedom.”
Her eyes glazed over and Noah held his breath, getting ready for the blow he felt was coming to his midriff. He told himself he had heard the worst of Paulo’s atrocities. After all, Ana had told him she felt ashamed of whatever she had done. He was wrong. His skin crawled as she resumed her story.
“One day, he got home too drunk, reeking of cheap perfume and crawled into my bed. I couldn’t care less where he stuck his dick. I was sick of him at that point. But, strong smells triggered my nausea, regardless if they were good or bad. So, I pushed him off me and his drunk state sent him flying to the floor. When he caught his breath, he pounced on me.”
She closed her eyes and Noah felt sick to his stomach. “Ana, please, don’t go there. I’m sure reliving this isn’t good for you. And, honestly, I’m not ready to hear the details. I don’t want to end up in jail if my path ever crosses this man’s.”
She nodded a couple of times and mouthed a thank you, before wrapping up her story, “I was almost in my twenty-seventh week. The doctors did their best to induce labor, but she never had a chance. I lost a lot of blood before and during surgery, so it was touch and go there. I stuck around, but I had lost the only good that had happened to me. Besides, I feared for my life. Paulo had invested a lot in my family’s business and he wouldn’t give up his shares before he made a profit. My father wouldn’t sell them. They were Paulo’s through the marriage because he had power of attorney over my finances. It was clear he didn’t care what happened to me and I had become a burden.” She sighed and cast her stare down. Noah’s impulse was to tip her chin up, but he sat on it, trying to respect her boundaries. She looked into his eyes again. “I had saved money in a bank account an American friend from the Swiss school helped me open. After one month living here, Nessa navigated the Brazilian bank system better than I. I used part of the money to pay off people to help me commit a crime. They forged a death certificate for me, as well as a new identity using my grandma’s maiden name. I snuck out of the hospital and used the rest of the money to come to Floripa, to start a new life.”
He was aware that complicated their situation and Ana could face criminal charges. His feelings for her remained the same. “Ana, thank you for trusting me. You did what you had to do and it’s in the past. Now, we’ll deal with it and build our future, moving forward and none of this will matter.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. Come here.” He folded his arms around her, kissed her forehead, then tumbled them sideways onto the pillows. He held her close, insinuating a leg between hers, but not initiating a sexual contact. That was about trust and love. She needed to hear his words, so he played with a strand of her hair, twisting it around his finger many times, before confessing, “I love you. Not sure if I’ve felt it since we first met or when you kicked that jock’s ass on the dance floor. Either way, I’ve wasted too much time. I want to be with you. I’ll do anything to make you my lawful wife.”
“I love you, too. I love that you make me laugh. I like the person I become when you are around. I don’t change to please you, that’s not what I mean. You give me courage to dare to dream.”
She kissed him and Noah returned it with the same intensity, but pulled back, rubbing his nose along hers. “You’ve had too much to deal with today. I want you to rest. We’ve got the day to ourselves. I’ll call the restaurant to let them know we’re not coming in.”
“Stay with me?”
“I’m calling them from bed,” he kissed the top of her head. “Now, go to sleep. I’m the boss of you.”
Her wicked smile made his insides melt and his cock stiff. “You may be my boss, but you’re not the boss of me.”
“That’s my girl,” his palm caressed her round ass, then he swatted it. Hard. “Now, do as I say.”
She rolled to her other side, turning her back to him and wiggled her ass a couple of times as if to ask for more. He didn’t buy it. Snaking one arm around her waist, he pulled her against him and she stopped teasing him. In no time, her breathing turned even and he was glad he did the right thing. She was exhausted.
He wasn’t tired. Conflicting thoughts and emotions chased each other around his mind. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave her side. He snoozed off and woke with a start. When he found Ana on her stomach in his bed, he remembered that his life was perfect, that he loved a woman whose imperfections made her perfect.
The muse started shouting verses in his head; he couldn’t ignore her any longer. He snuck out of the bed and the room, tiptoeing to his studio next door. He sat at the digital piano and lost track of time as he played with words, moved verses around, until they tol
d his story with the emotions he wanted to convey.
He didn’t hear Ana until she whispered in his ear, her fingers running through his hair, “If I ever doubted that you loved me, this would be my proof. Thank you.”
Still reeling from the roller coaster of emotions he lived while writing the lyrics, Noah crushed her mouth in a forceful kiss. For sure, this was the hardest he had ever kissed her, but he lost control over his hunger. Instead of being spooked, she got aroused, tearing at his hair, straddling him and rubbing her body on his.
“I don’t want Tristan walking in on us,” he managed to say in between kisses. “Let’s go back.”
Noah didn’t know if it was the song she had just heard, some dream she had had or the conversation before she fell asleep. Something had loosened inside Ana, in a good way. She seemed freer and bolder. She wrestled for the lead and he gladly ceded the reins.
He laid his head on the pillows, tucked his hands under them and relaxed, watching Ana crawl down his body wearing nothing more than a wicked grin. He could come just looking at her move, but the gorgeous woman had other plans. She fisted his erection, pumping it a couple of times, as if he needed the extra stimuli. She pulled her lips over her teeth, then swallowed his head, eyes locked with his, and he had never seen anything so enticing. As she bobbed her head, he wanted to keep eye contact, but the feeling overwhelmed him and he buried his own in the pillows, tangled his hands in her hair and guided her to his sensitive spots. She was a quick study, so she had him arching his back and begging for mercy in no time.
“Please, stop. I don’t want to come in your mouth.”
“I don’t want you to either.”
When he reached for a condom inside the nearest drawer, she sat on his thighs and wrapped her fingers around his wrist. “If you agree, I also don’t want to use those.”
He froze and in a flash, a multitude of different scenarios played out in his head. The common denominator being his happiness raising kids with her. The variables, how many they had. In real life, he needed to make sure. “I agree, but are you positive about this, Ana?”
