by Kane, Jessa
The roar of an engine breaks into my thoughts and I stand so quickly, my head swims. I jog toward the door, only to slow when the odd chugging registers. That’s not a motorcycle engine. Nothing about the sound is familiar. Holding the flare gun to my chest, I tiptoe to the closest window and peek out, frowning when I see my guidance counselor climb out of the car. Moore’s aunt.
My heart sinks into my stomach.
My body starts to quake ominously.
Where is Moore?
What is happening?
“Allie James?” calls Moore’s aunt cautiously from the bottom of the cabin steps. “I have your paperwork here. I’m just dropping it off, along with—”
I throw open the door, causing her to jump back.
“Miss James.” She flattens the folder to her breast. “You scared me.”
“Why are you here?” My words are tripping over themselves, the terrible sensation in my stomach beginning to creep higher, into my throat. “Where is Moore? My father…my father didn’t—”
“Moore is fine,” she says calmingly. “He explained some of the situation to me and…” She winces. “I can see from the bruise on your face that he wasn’t exaggerating. I’m sorry you didn’t feel like you could come to me, sweetie. I’m sorry about it all.”
For some reason, having a woman’s sympathy opens a floodgate of feeling. Maybe it has been dammed up inside of me since my mother left. Tears leak from my eyes, trickling into the corners of my mouth.
“I’m very happy to inform you that you were accepted to all of the colleges you applied to. And I’ve got the loan applications here for all of them.”
Accepted. To all of the colleges.
Relief and pride trickle in my bloodstream. I want to lie down and cry. Because I accomplished what I set out to do. Because I miss Moore. So many reasons. But right now, I need answers. “Why didn’t Moore come back himself?”
When she hedges, my knees get so weak, I have to sit down on the top step.
“I don’t know, sweetie,” says the guidance counselor, slowly approaching until she can sit down next to me. She settles the folder in my lap, then lays a thick white envelope down on top of it, a stack of hundred-dollar bills spilling out just slightly. “He sold his bike this morning—this is the money from the sale. Moore said you would need the cash. He said letting you go is the right thing to do.”
“No.” I try to stand and can’t, my legs refusing to support me. There has to be three thousand dollars in that envelope. “No…no.”
“Why don’t we focus on the schools you have to choose from?”
My whole body is shaking. “But…”
I need him.
Don’t I?
I’m too overwrought to know up from down. I’m in love with Moore. I’ve been in love with him for so long, the feeling has become a part of me. I don’t know who I am without it. And maybe that’s the problem. I need to know who I am when I’m not living in fear. Hiding from a monstrous father. Ignoring the boy I love so he won’t become a target, too. Living to get by.
I need to know I love Moore because he’s good for me.
Last night, the final time we made love, I asked him to bully me. I enjoyed it. It excited me the most out of everything we’ve done—and that’s saying a lot, because the last two days have been non-stop pleasure. But my hunger for that treatment scared me a little. Made me wonder if I’m seeking out something familiar.
Something bad.
Something that isn’t good for me.
I want to go find him right now. Throw myself into his arms and beg him to come with me to wherever I land, but if I do…I’ll never be able to think clearly. To define myself and what I want, what I need. I’m so tangled up in the strife of the last several years, my head is like a shaken snow globe. I have to let it settle. I have to take a deep breath and let the path in front of me unfold.
Moore saved me, brought me here.
Now I need to save myself.
And the only way to do that is to move forward alone.
* * *
Five months later
It’s a quiet storm tonight.
One that trickles from the sky in slow motion, gently caressing blades of grass and creating a fine mist that rolls along the valley in front of my window.
I’m attending college now. Far from home in Wyoming.
When I arrived in town with nothing but a duffel bag, I found a listing for this small, detached garage that doubles as an apartment. An elderly woman seeking a student to rent the space. The price was reasonable because whoever took the apartment would be asked to help with yard work, some light landscaping. I had no experience with either, but I learned. It allowed me to be outdoors. And there is something therapeutic about putting life in the ground. Cleaning up the old leaves and preparing for more to grow. New beginnings.
The house overlooks a grove of trees and the valley beyond. Breathtaking and scenic and moody. But storms never fail to make me think of Moore.
The boy I left behind.
The boy it still hurts to breathe without.
My college classes are nothing like high school. They’re held in lecture halls, instead of cramped quarters. They smell of coffee and textbooks, rather than floral body wash and cafeteria food. But I still turn around, hoping to find him sitting behind me. It feels odd not to have him at my back, watching me in that intense way. Loving and wanting me so badly that he hates me for it.
The noise in my mind has settled.
And Moore remains.
As large and dominant and vital as the day I left town on a bus, my ticket purchased with the money he gave me. I attend classes during the day and work in a small, independent bookstore in the evenings. It’s so quiet that I’m able to study while working and even do assignments, the rows of books to keep me company. On the weekends, I do yard work and God, oh God, I think of him. To the point of distraction. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe because I don’t know where he is.
His body is supposed to be flush to mine.
His eyes are meant to hold my stare.
I need his voice like I need to live.
My love for Moore is a little gnarled. A little bent and unusual. It’s cloudy like the sky I adore so much. Volatile. But it’s mine. I miss it. I want and need and crave it. I can say that now with the confidence of someone who is walking her own path. I’ve created a life for myself. I’m free of pain and violence. I’m at peace.
I’m incomplete, though. My other half is missing and the more time that passes, the more I limp along. The more my heart feels like a hollowed out husk. This love isn’t going away. It’s growing heavier, like weight being added to my chest, making it harder and harder to breathe.
I turn from the window and look at my small apartment, raindrops on the window creating moving shadows over the bed, desk and dresser. I picture Moore walking in the door and wiping his boots off, shaking droplets out of his pitch-black hair, taking off his leather jacket. Smiling at me slowly, knowingly, well aware I’ve been waiting for him to come take me. Come drown in me.
He’s with me every second of the day and sometimes, like now, the only way to breathe with any degree of success is to go outside. So I put on the big, white wool sweater I found at a thrift shop and head for the door. At the last second, I reach my hand into the duffel bag hanging from the coat rack, my grip closing around the flare gun. I don’t know why I take it with me. Maybe because it’s the last thing Moore gave me and I need to have him close.
The mist dances around me a few minutes later when I meander through the valley, my toes sliding through wet grass. Trees sway gently to the tune of wind, dampness finding a home on my cheeks. I close my eyes and search my mind, seeking the peace I’ve found—and it’s there. But it’s disrupted by pain. Missing him. The feeling erupts down my fingertips and I raise the flare gun over my head, firing it into the foggy evening sky, the effort taking everything out of me.
For long mo
ments, I hear my breath and nothing else.
I wish I could rip the flare back down out of the sky, because it felt like I was saying goodbye to him and that’s not what I want. That’s not what I want. But I have no way of reaching him. No phone number. I called his aunt at the school and she hasn’t seen him since the morning he sold his bike. He’s gone. Vanished. It’s not fair. I know he’s good for me now. I know I can’t be without him and that the need is permanent, but it’s too late to take back my choices. I’ve made this bed and I’ll be lying in it forever, without him.
Knowing it will be dark soon and I won’t be able to find my way back, I gather my remaining strength and turn for home—
And I run smack into a hard chest.
The scent of leather and citrus fills my nose and I wail brokenly, my heart flying into a gallop, life spreading back through my numb limbs.
Moore.
He’s here?
He’s here.
His beautiful, beloved eyes bore down into mine, trying to read me in that way I remember like yesterday. Desperate to read me. Hesitantly, his hands lift and cup my face, his thumbs brushing away the tears that are dripping from my eyes. “The flare. Was that goodbye, Allie?” His swallow is audible, his gaze nearly deranged with fear, hope, obsession. “Or do you need me?”
“I need you,” I wheeze, launching myself at him. Wrapping my arms around his neck, absorbing the hoarse prayers passing his lips, dizzy with happiness. Dizzy with relief. He’s here. He came back to me. “I love you, Moore. I love you. I don’t want to be without you anymore.”
“You were never without me, Allie,” he growls.
A sob rips free of my throat.
Of course I wasn’t without him. It was silly to think so.
He’s been close this whole time, waiting for a sign. A signal that I’d found my way well enough to know we’re right. We’re inevitable.
“I love you,” I chant, over and over, laying kisses on his face.
“I love you, too. I love you. I love you,” he says, passion vibrating his voice. We sink down to the ground, mouths joining and moaning, reuniting, hearts booming louder than any thunder I’ve ever heard. I wrap my legs around his hips, he lowers his zipper without taking those intense eyes from mine, filling me in one violent drive. And down in the valley, we come back to each other, making promises forever with our bodies and mouths and words, the future writing itself on our hearts.
Epilogue
Moore
Five Years Later
She’s always loved storms.
I’m her wildest one of all.
I’ve been let out from my pen, my love for Allie allowed to run free. It was tempered back in the days we lived in Perryville. Even the weekend we spent in the cabin, I was trying not to overwhelm her with the depth of my attachment. Love. Obsession. But in the last five years, I’ve learned how badly she needs overwhelming.
She needs to be taken outdoors and ridden roughly on her back while the rain fires like liquid bullets from the clouds. She needs to be watched, protected, possessed. Needs to know I’m there, even when she can’t see me.
Yeah, the obsession runs free now. Never to be corralled.
I watch from the shed on the edge of our property as she climbs out of her car, dressed for work in a long, black skirt, a heather gray, tucked-in blouse. High heels. My ring on her finger.
God, I’m so proud of my wife.
My Allie.
She’s working at a small news station now, an apprentice to the local meteorologist. Just like she dreamed, she is making a career out of studying the weather. Its patterns and moods. She comes home exhilarated from the work. Excited. Eager to tell me everything. Now that she’s been away from her father for five years, she’s become more animated, quicker to smile, and it makes my heart go fucking wild every single time.
Five years ago, I moved into the small, detached garage with Allie, the landlord charmed by the pair of lovebirds who couldn’t take their eyes off each other. The older woman believed we were college sweethearts in the first blush of love, when in reality, there was nothing innocent about what we engaged in after I moved in. Allie missed a week of classes because I couldn’t keep my cock out of her. We were even more uninhibited than we were at the cabin, because we’d admitted our love. We’d learned that life was a sham without each other. Nothing to hide anymore. Nowhere to hide—and no desire to try.
And nothing has changed.
If anything, we’re much wilder now.
Constantly gut starved for each other.
We’re saved from being co-dependent by our commitment to being emotionally healthy, as much as we can when we’re nursing a constantly deepening infatuation for one another. Allie goes to work for eight hours a day. So do I. The forced separation was excruciating in the beginning, but we’ve learned that it’s worth the pain once we reach this time of day, when we’re both back home, the night spread out in front of us.
I step out of the shed and she sees me, dropping her purse to run in my direction. My heart is locked in my throat, my fingers balling and flexing with the urgency to touch her. My wife. The other half of my soul.
Every piece of lumber I saw, every nail I pound is for her. The construction company I’ve built from the ground up is so she’ll be proud of me. So she’ll be glad she fired that flare gun in the valley one evening, calling me back to her.
I meant what I said.
She was never without me.
I tried. I tried to give her space, so she could recover from her father’s abuse. So she could come to terms with having feelings for me, the boy who bullied her for two torturous years. But in reality, I only made it one day before I found her again. I called my aunt, sick out of my mind, begging to know where Allie decided to attend college. I sold my trailer and followed. Lived in a motel for five months, watching her come and go from classes, the bookstore. Watched her plant flowers in the ground. Keeping my distance was the most painful brand of torture, but I deserved it for those two years of bullying. I’d earned the pain for what I did to the girl I love. So I endured it. I waited.
There’s no more waiting now, though, as my wife crashes into my arms, both of us stumbling a little under the relief of being back together.
“Moore,” she whispers into my neck, her fingers already yanking at my belt buckle, whipping leather through the loops. “Moore.”
“I know, baby.” I hiss a breath when she slides her touch into my jeans, stroking my erection through my briefs. “I know. I know.”
My impatient hands yank up her skirt to her waist, tugging her tight, little thong to one side, drawing her left knee up my hip and pumping home. We stagger, groaning, melting into each other, the act of joining like a balm to our frenzied minds. Taking her mouth in a wet kiss, I bend my knees slightly so she can climb me, wrapping her gorgeous legs right where they belong, around my waist.
And I walk us toward the house I built for her.
Nudging the front door open with my foot, I climb the stairs slowly and she knows, she knows I’m taking her to her favorite room. The room at the very top of the three-story, cabin-style home. The anticipation is there in her sigh, the way she smiles into my kiss and starts to roll her hips.
I have to stop to pump into her perfect heat a few times, no choice, no choice, but finally we make it upstairs to the room and step inside. I lay her down on the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. Just a king-sized mattress with a fitted white sheet positioned below the double-paned glass ceiling. From her back, she can see directly up to the sky. She can experience the storms while I’m storming inside of her. There has been cloud cover moving in all day. She has anticipated this—and as the lightning show starts overhead, I don’t let her down, my wife’s screams filling the house, the woods that surround us.
“I love you,” I grit into her ear, my sweat dripping onto her skin.
Her eyes go blind, breath catching. “I love you, too. I love you, I love you…”
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Greta Welding does not date basketball players. Considering I have plans to make her my wife, I have a serious objection to that rule. Unfortunately, my future wife is as stubborn as she is beautiful and if I want her forever, I’ll have to get creative. Her father is my new coach, but that’s not going to stop me, either. If he wants a championship, he’ll give me Greta first.
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