Bess
Lane was asleep like a baby, his head in my lap. I didn’t know what to do, so I rubbed his back like Camper had done just a couple of weeks ago for me. I watched his even breaths puff out of his mouth, his back rising and falling. Taking in the death grip he had on my thigh, I felt something I’d never felt in my whole life.
Worry. This foreign emotion burned in my gut forsomeone else, another living and breathing human being, and it simultaneously terrified me and empowered me.
For the first time, I pushed all my ridiculouspoor mefantasiesdown, forcing them to remain dormant in the bottom of my heart. The man in my lap, whose behavior mimicked a small child, was pained—tortured, really—and it was over more than just ditching me in Fizzle Fitness all those years ago. More than anything, I wanted to take all the pain and suffering from him, ball it up, stick it in my backpack, and carry it away.
He shifted a little in my lap, and I looked down to see Lane staring at me.
“Hey,” I said, running my hand through his damp hair.
“Hey,” he croaked out. “I’m sorry I drank myself silly, and crashed like that. Crap, I’m such a fucker.” He grabbed his forehead, nearly pulling the hair out of his head.
“Lane, what’s going on?” I asked, but didn’t expect an answer.
Whatever this was, it was so deeply buried in his mind, it wasn’t going to be easy to extract. I’d seen this in rehab and AA meetings, people with such deep-seated secrets. It took time, patience, and often a military-grade deconditioning to get that shit out.
He shook his head, not meeting my eyes. “Not now.”
“Lane, we all have pain, misunderstandings we’re harboring. I was there during one of your nightmares, remember? You’ve got to let it go. I can absorb it.” As I spoke, my hands smoothed figure eights on his back. I had no idea where this compassion was coming from, but I was going with it.
“No. It’s nothing,” he said into my lap.
“Maybe you’ll change your mind if you say it out loud. It definitely issomethingif it has you so twisted up. Like me, the minute the drugs were out of my system, the shakes were gone and I was left alone in my sterile hospital bed. I cried like a baby for my past losses, for seeing my mom leave and mentally begging her to stay. I’d carried that with me for years, and when it was out, I was relieved. I felt okay with moving forward.”
Lane looked up at me, the blue of his eyes swirling with affection and fear.
I brushed his hair away from his forehead. “Look, I didn’t make the best choices after that. I insulated myself in a lonely life where I could never be left again. And I led AJ on because I believed he was the best chance I’d ever have. But you changed all that. You, Lane. You made me want to forgive and forget what’s been long done and gone, and when I did that, I could see a future for myself. Something different, something better.”
He sat up and pulled me in close, his arms trapping my chest to his. We sat on the cool floor with only heat traveling between the two of us, unknown feelings burning my body up, and then Lane kissed me.
I knew this response was an escape for him, but I couldn’t deny him. For him it was another defense mechanism, something he used instead of talking. I’d done that for years—pushed emotions back for sex, substances, waitressing.
His tongue sought entrance and I was a goner. I didn’t care. If Lane needed someone to seek refuge in, it would be me. When he was ready, he would find redemption inside me.Me.
On the way to Florida this time, somewhere while flying over the Carolinas, I realized I was ready to care. The path my life was heading down was self-destructive in its loneliness, barren of all emotion. And I didn’t want that.
When I felt him bite down on my lower lip, hunger and desire raged through my veins. Lane wrapped an arm around my back and started to lay me down on the Persian rug in the hallway.
We were falling. Together. Running first and jumping into the deep end.
Our legs twined, Lane used his knee to push my legs wide open. Settling between them, he rubbed himself against my core, his hard length finding the right spot immediately. I moaned, almost begged, despite knowing there was nothing romantic or sweet about this encounter.
As our mouths refused to come apart, our hands explored, pulling and tugging sweaters and dress shirts off. And then, with my chest and my heart exposed in the middle of Lane’s palatial foyer, we fucked. This time I was the drug, and Lane had so many open veins, he was filling them all with me.
The hollow look in his eyes, the urgency to get me naked, and the rush that came over him when he finally sank deep inside me were pretty much dead giveaways. Even to someone like me who was new at this relationship stuff.
