by Nicole Casey
I nodded and stared blankly at her. “I just might. I just might.”
I had come this far with a specific goal: to look for my birth family. It was a fantasy unlikely to come true. I knew that. But hearing that there was a band of brothers that I looked remarkably similar to cast that fantasy in a whole new, more plausible light.
On the other hand, after spending a few days with Holly, I found myself living a different fantasy, one equally as unlikely to lead to anything real.
She fluttered her eyebrows and smiled mischievously at me. I wondered, if I were out here chasing fantasies, my past or my future, was I really chasing after the right one?
Am I really going to let her go so I can chase after this crazy notion that I’ll be able to discover my birth parents? And if I do find out who they are, then what? They probably passed away years ago. And even if they hadn’t, they didn’t want me in their lives twenty-two years ago; why would they want me in their lives now? Am I really going to let Holly get away to chase down that pipedream?
Say goodbye to Holly here, likely never seeing her again or give up on trying to find out more about where I came from and focus more on where I’m going. Which pipedream am I going to chase?
The dilemma was eating away at me, and I’d always been bad at hiding my feelings. She must have seen the conflict of emotions on my face. She said, “Something on your mind?”
I nodded.
“Care to share?”
I thought about it, wondering where to begin, how to come out with it. Instead, I pivoted to another conflict that had been eating away at me. Before saying goodbye to her, before separating, I had to have an answer to that one question that had been on my mind.
“Holly?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me why you don’t wear a wedding ring?”
She cocked her head to the side and furrowed her brow. “Because I’m not married.”
“That makes sense.” I looked out the window of the restaurant onto the quiet street, immediately lost in thought, and muttered to myself, “I guess Dr. Raskin was wrong.”
“What did you say?” Holly had dropped her fork and stared at me wide-eyed.
I put my hands up defensively. “Nothing. I just said, ‘I guess Dr. Raskin was wrong.’”
“Dr. Raskin!” She grabbed my hand and leaned over the table. “Who are you?”
The question and her reaction to Dr. Raskin’s name took me by surprise. “You mean, my name? You want to know my name?”
She nodded.
“My name’s Ryker.”
“No!” She pulled back and threw her hands to her face. “Oh, my goodness. I read the bio you wrote for Dr. Raskin.”
“The bio.” I shook my head and drummed on the table. “Why would you read the bio?”
“Because you wrote it for me!” she shouted, then glanced around the restaurant and sank in her seat. Then she whispered, “So I could write about your charity work with ‘Medicine on the Trail.’”
I shook my head. “I’m not affiliated with ‘Medicine on the Trail.’ Never heard of them. I know Dr. Raskin from ‘The Health Wagon.’”
She shook her head, vigorously. “Same difference. ‘Medicine on the Trail’ raises money for charities like ‘The Health Wagon.’ They purchase medicine and hospital equipment.”
“Oh. Okay. So, you read my bio. Interesting.” Then I remembered exactly what I had put in my bio: the search for my birth parents. “Oh, you read my bio!”
“Yes.” She laughed. “You’re Ryker!” She said it like it was cause for celebration, and then she leaned back over the table and grabbed my hands again. “You’re part of the charity mission here on the trail! Why didn’t you tell me?”
I laughed. “I tried to, but you didn’t want to know.”
The waitress came over to our table to take our empty plates. “Everything all right, here?”
Holly turned to her. “Everything’s great.” She pointed to me. “He’s Ryker!”
The waitress simply smiled and nodded and slowly backed away from the table.
Then Holly turned back to me and said excitedly, “You’re Ryker!”
I laughed nervously. “I’m Ryker. Why does that matter?”
She shared how my testimony had moved her, how she was also adopted, and that she had felt a connection with me through my story, felt we had a lot in common. She’d hoped to catch up to me—catch up to Ryker—and when she had met me, she held on to the fantasy that I might be him, as unlikely as that was. That was why she didn’t want me to tell her my name; she didn’t want her fantasy spoiled.
Holly has also been chasing fantasies. We do have a lot in common!
We laughed together.
“I am so relieved,” I said. “I was embarrassed to tell you why I was here. I don’t know; I thought you wouldn’t understand.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I shrugged. “Well, it sounds stupid now, but I thought, you know, because of your background.”
She cocked her head to the side and furrowed her brow. “My background? Wait, who do you think I am?”
“Well, Dr. Raskin told me about you. He said you were a celebrity socialite from California who often did fundraising drives for charities.”
Holly got wide-eyed and covered her gaping mouth with her hand.
“He also said you were married to a politician. But you’re not, right?”
Holly busted out laughing. “That’s Mrs. Freedman! You thought I was Mrs. Freedman!” She was laughing so hard, everyone in the diner turned to stare at us.
I waited a moment to let her laughter settle, then I asked, “Who’s Mrs. Freedman?”
She laughed some more, then gathered herself enough to answer, “A celebrity socialite from California who often does fundraising drives for charities, and who’s also married to a politician.”
“And you’re not Mrs. Freedman.”
She collected herself, wiped the smile from her face, and said, “No. I’m her dentist.”
We were still laughing when we left the diner. “What a relief,” I said. “I can be myself. I don’t have to be shy about what I’m doing here.”
“No, you don’t have to be shy about that.”
“And I don’t have to be worried about falling for a married woman.”
“Not unless the waitress from the diner is married,” she said. She stopped cold, turned to me, and grabbed me by the shoulders. “The waitress!”
I looked at her confused.
“She said you look just like a group of people she’s seen before at her diner. Maybe that’s it! Maybe you’re related to them!”
“The thought had occurred to me.”
She turned me around, took my arm in hers, and started walking us back the way we’d come. “We have to go back there. We have to find your family.”
11
Holly
For a relatively straight path, the Appalachian Trail sure provided its share of twists and turns, and my next stop, Franklin, was no different.
For the past two days, I had been with a man who I had hoped was somebody he actually was. And he had been with me, hoping I wasn’t somebody who I wasn’t. “We should just be ourselves,” I said to him, “and everything will work out.”
He didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know,” he said. “There are some things about me, some unorthodox things.”
“Well, I hope so!” I said enthusiastically. “I’m starting to like you. There’d better be some unorthodox things about you.”
“Starting to like me?” he chided.
I nodded. “Starting, yes. The day’s still young.”
A waitress had mistaken Ryker for someone else, perhaps a relative. It was our first lead; however, she couldn’t really give us any more details about this other person—a group of people, nine, in fact. We left her the number for the motel we were staying at, just in case the group came in again while we were there. She did say that she thought one of the men in the grou
p was a paramedic. She remembered seeing him in what she thought was a paramedic uniform though she could have been mistaken.
Nevertheless, we had a lead!
We had also had a big lunch. I was simultaneously feeling reinvigorated and sleepy.
“I propose we go back to the motel, take a nap, then we go try to find this lookalike paramedic,” I said.
Ryker took my arm in his and smiled. “Great minds think alike.”
After four days of hiking by day and sleeping in a tent at night, then arriving in Franklin to a proper meal and a proper shower, I lay down on the most comfortable bed I’d ever lain on in all my life. My aching muscles relaxed to such an extent that it felt like my whole body, but not my mind, was asleep. I was unable to move, nor did I want to.
Ryker was in the shower singing Frank Sinatra—badly. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the comfort of being well-fed and well-tired lying in a warm bed.
I heard Ryker leave the shower and come into the room. I smiled, hopefully at him, but my eyelids were too heavy for me to lift them open.
A hand touched my foot. A thumb ran from my toes, down my sole to my heel. Ryker kissed me on the back of my foot. The stubble on his face tickled somewhat. I giggled and pulled my foot away.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said, and he grabbed my foot and pulled it back to him. “I’m not done with you yet.” He took my feet in his strong hands and rubbed them with his fingers and the heel of his palm.
“Hmm,” I murmured. “You’re talented.”
“Doctor in residency,” he said, and he planted another soft kiss on the back of my foot.
He worked with firm hands, followed by soft kisses from my feet up to my calves. My feet and calves were grateful for his touch. The rest of my body was jealous. I wanted to touch myself badly, but, instead, I gripped the sheets and balled them in my hands. I quivered and spread my legs.
He trailed his hands up the back of my thighs while his lips ran up the inside. Just as he was about to come to my wet pussy, he ran his hands and his mouth back down my legs.
I lifted my hips and gyrated, searching for his nearby mouth. “You’re such a tease,” I murmured.
With rough and unexpected force, he pulled my legs apart and dragged his body up against mine. His hard chest brushed my exposed sex while his chin and jaw brushed against the side of my breasts. He slid up and kissed me on the cheek. “Mmm. Your body feels so good.”
His stiff cock pressed against my pelvis. I squirmed and shifted, trying to bring my yearning pussy to meet it.
I wrapped my arms around him. His mouth met mine in a fevered embrace.
He seized the back of my head and pinned me farther against the bed. His lips brushed over my lips, tasting them, wetting them with the tip of his exploring tongue.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and tried to pull him to me. But he resisted. He seized the inside of my legs, just under my crotch, and pinned them down.
Yet, I twisted and writhed, trying to bring my sex in contact with his. “You’re such a—”
He kissed me with a strong, possessive kiss. I belonged to him, and he was taking what was his. He teased me with the tip of his cock. Running it up and down and inside my thirsting labia, imitating the motion with his mouth and his tongue possessing my lips.
I turned my head and let a moan and a whimper escape. He pulled my head back to him and possessed me again. This time his cock entered me, though just a bit. Not enough. And I bucked and writhed, trying to bring Ryker deeper into me.
Suddenly, he let go. He ran his hands down my sides and grabbed my waist. His mouth nipped at my neck and shoulder. I lifted my chest and squirmed, my heaving bosom searching for his lips. He slid his firm hands down to rub my thighs, then ran them back up to my crotch. He pushed my legs apart and brought my pussy to his mouth like a famished castaway who’d discovered a coconut open and juicy.
With one hand on the back of his head, I grabbed his hair. My other hand reached behind me to grab hold of the headboard.
He entered me with his tongue. He explored then possessed my pussy just as he had done with my mouth.
I threw my head back and cried out, “Oh, Ryker!”
He pulled away.
I didn’t have the chance to catch my breath before he yanked me to him, lifted me off the bed, and guided me onto his long, stiff cock. My hand slapped against his chest. My fingers dug for something to hold onto, but his muscles were rock hard and impenetrable. I wrapped my leg around his waist.
He grabbed my ass with one hand, the back of my head with the other, and he laid me down onto the bed, entering me deeper and deeper still. His body pressed tightly against mine.
I wrapped my arms around him. My hands gripped the muscles of his back.
He thrust. He cried out, and I clawed.
“Ouch.”
“Am I hurting you?” I kissed him on the cheek.
He lifted my leg and pulled it across my body. He plunged into me, now from the side, and I threw my head back and moaned.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve been hurt before. Do your worst.”
I lay on the bed, too spent to move though my hips continued undulating slightly as I felt his phantom movements still on me and in me. Ryker sat up, his back leaning against the headboard. He put a pillow on his lap and eased my head onto it.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
I murmured. My hands moved about, searching for his.
He took my hand, locked his fingers in mine, then brought my hand up to his lips, and planted a kiss on the palm. “Maybe now we should take that nap we talked about.”
I pulled his arm down to rest over me. He took the hint and laid himself down beside me, wrapping his arm around me and holding me tightly while my head nestled comfortably between his chin and his chest. “A short nap,” I said, “but then we need to go out and find your family.”
There was only one hospital in the area, Harris Regional, so our search had already been narrowed down considerably.
“What are we going to do,” Ryker asked, “just walk up to the receptionist and say, ‘Hello, is there a paramedic working here who looks a lot like me?’”
“That sounds like as good a plan as any.”
It was a short walk to the hospital, but it was a fruitless one. Though cordial enough, the receptionist did not know of any paramedic fitting our description, nor did a nurse we came across, who was outside the front entrance on a smoke break.
“Minor setback,” I said as we left the hospital to go back into town.
He took my hand in his. “What about the charity?” he asked. “Don’t you have some clinics to check up with?”
“Angel clinic,” I said. “I’m meeting with Dr. Spellinger tomorrow morning at eight.”
“What do we do till then?”
I pulled him closer to me and nudged him with my shoulder. “I can think of a thing or two to pass the time.”
12
Ryker
I was doing it, really doing it! After years of dreaming about going off to the mountains to look for my family, I was actually making it happen! And I wasn’t doing it alone. Holly was amazing. Unlike others I’d shared my dream with, my fantasy of finding my birth family, Holly didn’t try to temper my enthusiasm. She didn’t insinuate I had unrealistic goals. She didn’t recommend I set “more reasonable expectations.”
With Holly, I felt that my goals were no longer fantasies; I could actually set about achieving them. With Holly, I felt that anything was possible, and I knew that she felt it, too.
Plus, and not for nothing, she was a spectacular lover.
It wasn’t all sunshine and happy thoughts, though. On more than one occasion since meeting Holly, I’d closed my eyes and thought of her, only to have my daydream commandeered by Lucy and that guy I’d walked in on her with; however, the image of Lucy didn’t stay in my mind’s eye long. Instead, it was Holly I saw; it was Holly I’d walked in on with another man. And like with Lucy,
somehow, I didn’t much mind. Like with Lucy, I even felt myself getting aroused by the thought of watching her with another man.
I need to find my birth parents and maybe a good therapist while I’m at it.
I went with Holly to the clinic, where she interviewed the staff and took photos for her blog. Emboldened by how direct and unabashed she’d been at Harris Regional Hospital, asking the receptionist and the nurses if there was a paramedic fitting our description who worked there, I did the same thing with the staff at Angel Clinic.
They were a walk-in clinic and had no paramedics on staff. When a nurse asked why I was looking for this man, I told her. She was so taken by my story that she offered to call around for me to other hospitals in the area.
While she sat at reception and made her calls, I paced in the waiting area.
A few seemingly interminable minutes later, Holly came for me. “Getting bored of waiting for me yet?”
“Not at all,” I said. “A nurse is actually helping me find our mystery paramedic. She’s calling hospitals in the area right now.”
“If you want to stay here and follow up on that”—she looked at the reception desk, then back at me— “we can meet up tomorrow.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go out with one of the volunteers into some isolated communities in the mountains,” she said. “We’re heading out now; should be back late in the evening.”
“Oh.” I’d never considered myself much the possessive guy, but at that moment, the thought of separating from her for the day—perhaps mixed with the anticipation I was feeling waiting for the nurse to make her phone calls—had me quite anxious.
Holly must have seen it on my face. “Or you could come with us. Your choice.”
Choosing to spend the day with her or without her wasn’t a choice I needed to ponder.
We rode with Dr. Hicks—Claire—a woman who claimed she was in her sixties though her youthful appearance matched her energy and vigor more so than it did her age. Her car was crammed with medical supplies, and while Holly rode up front in the passenger seat, I had to squish into the back between boxes with more boxes piled on my lap.
