Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
HE HEARS EVERYTHING I DON’T SAY
Gretchen
Sunlight peeks through curtains, slowly stirring me to consciousness. I grab my glasses from the nightstand and when my eyes come into focus, so do the rest of my senses.
A solid chest pressed up against me. A bare leg hiked over my hip. Warm, lazy breaths coasting over my collarbone. A forehead wedged in the crook of my neck. A giant man hand smack dab on top of my left boob.
Wait, what?
Connor’s everything draped all over me.
Shifting my leg the slightest bit, I confirm he’s still wearing boxers which is at least one mercy from above. However, he’s definitely shirtless.
And, oh my God , he was right—his body is a furnace.
I assess the situation. One, his body on mine brings all kinds of memories flooding back that I should not be focusing on right now. Two, Connor warned me this could happen. Three, I hate it when he’s right .
I could wake him, be cavalier about the whole thing and move onto another subject as quickly as possible. Or I could sneak out of the bed and he’d never have to know.
Option two is risky, but it’s the only way to spare him the humiliation and salvage my pride.
Connor’s fingers twitch, grazing my rapidly hardening nipple and I briefly consider secret option number three: offer my body as a willing sacrifice in his unconscious grope fest.
Stop, Gretchen. Pride. Do it for your pride!
Holding in a deep breath, I shift my head toward the edge of the bed—one inch, then two—my torso following suit. With the trunk of my body separated from his chest, I use the arm trapped between our bodies to press up on my elbow.
My head is barely off the pillow when Connor squeezes my boob like his own personal stress ball, pulls me back down, and tucks me even tighter to his body than I was before. “Five more minutes,” he mumbles in a sleepy haze, totally oblivious to reality.
Void of ideas and motivation to try again— thank you, boob hand —I close my eyes and pray for sleep to find me once more.
I’ve only begun to drift off when Connor stirs, head burrowing in my neck. His contented hum vibrates against my throat.
Then, he stills.
I hold my breath, braced for impact, as he slowly— slowly —raises his head.
Cloudy with sleep, his gaze runs up and down the bed, pausing momentarily here and there—his hands, his position, his empty side of the mattress.
The wheels of his brain crank and turn and I can’t do anything but wait for him to catch up.
I certainly can’t move with him damn near on top of me.
Cavalier, Gretchen. Look alive.
Something like six days later, he finally swivels his head, meeting my calm, composed eyes. See, everything’s fine. Connor blinks as reality hits him and he bolts from the bed in a frenzy. “Shit!”
It’s not the time to notice how his boxers hug his muscular thighs or the very obvious hard-on tucked behind the cotton material. Nope, definitely don’t see that. “Connor, calm down. It’s fine.”
“Fine?” he shrieks. “No. It’s not fine, Gretch! My hand was—” He doesn’t finish that thought but the dramatic gesticulating toward my chest finishes it for him.
I pull myself to a seated position. “Yes, your hand was here, your leg was there,” I gesture accordingly, “and guess what? I’m fine. We’re fine. I’m not mad. Nobody died. The world goes on.”
He hears nothing. Fingers rake through his hair, yanking on the ends until they stand at full attention. He lowers his hands to his hips and sighs at the ceiling. I try to hold it in, I really do, but a disheveled, discombobulated Connor is too funny not to laugh at.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“I am absolutely laughing at you.”
“This isn’t funny,” he says, but I do spy with my little eye the smirk tugging at his mouth.
“For the record, I tried to climb out of bed earlier to save you this embarrassment, but you weren’t having it.”
“How kind of you,” he says. “Wait, what do you mean I ‘wasn’t having it’?”
“Well, you squeezed my boob and asked for five more minutes.”
I think he stops breathing. With his wide eyes and slacked jaw, I have to bite my lip to keep a straight face. “I squeezed…your boob.”
That is where I lose it. Loud, from-the-belly, howling laughter roars out of me. “That you did, old man.”
“I’m so sorry, Gretch,” he says with a look of genuine concern that should sober me, but I’m too far gone.
“Connor,” I wheeze, “would you stop already? I said it’s fine.”
“I just can’t believe you’re laughing.”
I temper my amusement just enough to reply. “You’re standing in front of me with unhinged electrocution hair having some sort of existential crisis in nothing but boxer briefs shielding your erection.”
Instantly, awareness takes over as his chin drops and he finally sees what I’ve been looking at for the past thirty seconds.
Before his panic wins again, I continue, “If it’s not funny, it’s awkward.” I pause, something shifting when he meets my gaze, humor smothered under the weight of his stare. “It has to be funny,” I whisper .
Please, let it be funny.
Silence lingers, our eyes locked. Jaw tensing with every passing second, I can tell he’s holding something back. Words. Actions. Maybe both.
He finally looks away, lungs swelling on a long breath. With a smug grin, he finally says, “I guess I should go take care of this then.”
I snort. “You probably should. It looks painful.” Falling back onto the bed, I drape an arm over my face and laugh some more. Connor hurls a pillow at me before closing the bathroom door. “You need some help?” I taunt.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Fish,” he hollers back as the shower jets roar to life.
“I’m sorry, I think I want to change. I’ll be right back.”
Connor only smiles, twirling the car keys in his hand, as I head back to the bedroom. I shut the door behind me and kick off my white Keds before tossing my denim shorts and white fitted tee on the bed.
I change into a coral and white gingham print shorts romper and grab my white sandals. I’m sliding my sandals onto my feet when my phone pings from the vanity.
Mom
Hope you and your brother are having a great time. Dad and I can’t wait to hear all about it. Send us pics. Love you!
Guilt pricks at my fingertips as I type out my reply.
Me
Sedona is beautiful. Love you, too!
I haven’t heard from Drew since yesterday morning and, clearly, he hasn’t spoken to our parents either. Rather than dwell on everything he and I are keeping from them—I’m nervous enough as it is—I send over a few scenic pictures from yesterday’s hike and tuck my phone away.
When I step back into the living room, Connor looks up from where he was fiddling with his watch.
“How’s this?” I brush my hands down the front of the romper, pulling at the hem of the shorts.
“I thought maybe what I had on earlier was too casual. I mean, I’m not even sure I’ll meet her today, but I wanna be ready, you know?
The first outfit didn’t feel like the best outfit for first impressions. ”
I puff out my cheeks, letting out a slow breath.
Connor closes the distance between us and merely the proximity of him eases my nerves.
His hands come to my shoulders as he says, “You’re beautiful, Gretch.
In this and the other and…anything, really.
It doesn’t matter what you wear, she’d be a fool not to love you. ”
My heart soars, the thump of my pulse telling my head to believe his words.
“Big day,” he says.
“Big day.”
He extends a hand toward the door. “Shall we?”
Aside from the three times I make Connor stop to accommodate my nervous bladder, the drive to Flagstaff is mostly uneventful.
We stopped for gas and he bought me a Diet Coke and peanut butter M&Ms while I ran to the restroom. “For your nerves,” he’d said.
He caught me chewing my nails, stopped me, and held my hand the rest of the way like it was the most natural thing in the world. Even when I made him stop again , when I got back in the car, I reached for his hand like a ship finding its anchor.
As our destination draws closer, the scenery noticeably changes around us.
Where Sedona is a stone and stucco town painted in fifty shades of red, the closer we get to Flagstaff, the landscape shifts from desert to mountainous.
Behind us are the desert mesas and unrelenting sun.
Here, the sun shines through slivers of dense forests made up of towering pines, lush with green foliage.
In the distance, a mountain pierces the horizon with a single, snow-capped peak.
The GPS voice commands us to take the next exit into Flagstaff, sending my nerves into the rafters.
The culmination of all that I’ve done to get here over the past fifteen months rushes in: the DNA test, the adoption detective, the money spent, the lies I’ve told and the secrets I’ve kept.
Not to mention the countless years prior that I spent dreaming about it all.
“It’s okay, Gretch. I’m right here with you.” Connor squeezes my hand, matching my white-knuckle grip on his.
I blink, it seems, and we’re pulling into a neighborhood on the edge of town.
We pass streets chocked full of quaint, mid-sized homes.
Life bustles down each avenue. A group of preteen girls, heads thrown back in laughter, ride their bikes side by side.
Two young boys play catch across their yard.
A woman pushes a stroller on the sidewalk.
The final turn tucked at the back of the neighborhood is ours. The abundance of mature trees creates a canopy over the street, bringing a coziness that’s in direct odds to the flutters in my stomach.
“I think that’s it.” Connor jerks his head toward a house a few doors down.
I lean forward to investigate just as a minivan backs out of the driveway and drives off ahead of us. Red brake lights flash as it disappears around the corner at the end of the street.
We come to a stop on the curb across the street. “I think we missed her.”
I hear his voice, but not his words. Everything going in my ears a muffled, hazy mess, I can’t hear beyond what my eyes see.
He jiggles our held hands. “Gretch.”
“Huh?” I turn, tearing the mental cobwebs away as his words finally register. “Yeah, I guess so.” My gaze lands back on the house and anxiety rises like bile in my throat .
A gentle hand on my cheek turns my face until we’re eye to eye. “Tell me what’s going on up here, Fish,” he murmurs, softly tapping my temple.
The urge to go home overtakes me. I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t be here. A tear breaks from the corner of my eye and Connor’s thumb catches it before it hits my cheek.
“I’m not going anywhere. I promise. You can tell me.”
Every self-preservation instinct I have disappears.
Sobs bubble up from my chest as the words tumble out of me.
“I’m thinking there’s a tricycle in the yard and sidewalk chalk on the driveway and a basketball net above the garage and she has this whole life here…
with kids. I want to meet them but what if they don’t know about me?
What if she never told them I exist and I just show up on her doorstep?
” I pause to catch my breath and a sob escapes.
“Before, when I imagined her, I knew it was possible she had other kids, but they were only in my head. They didn’t feel real. But now I’m here and they’re real and what if me showing up messes everything up for her family? I can’t do that to them.”
Connor pulls my forehead to his, both hands on my cheeks, swiping tears as quickly as they fall. “Shhh,” he breathes. Forehead to forehead, he waits, urging me to match my breaths to his. I grip his forearms, hands trembling, until my lungs find a steady rhythm.
“I’m sorry,” I say for the hundredth time. “I thought I would get here and know what to do, but I don’t.”
“Stop apologizing. You are so incredibly brave. Everything you’ve done to get yourself here?” He huffs out a sharp breath while his thumb caresses my cheek. Tilting my head up to meet his gaze, he adds, “I am in awe of you.”
I savor his words even if I find them hard to believe. I’m so thankful he’s here.
“I am so absurdly proud of you.”
The pressures eases in my chest. “Absurdly?”
He grins. “Yeah, like it’s stupid silly how proud I am of you right now.”
Our eyes catch. Pools of glacier blue delicately tether me—it’s impossible to look away. Our positions haven’t changed. His hands still rest softly on my cheeks while my hands clutch his forearms like they’re life rafts at high tide.
“I have an idea for you to consider,” he says.
“I’m listening.”
“What if we left a note?”
“A note?”
“We leave a note letting her know you were here and that you’d like to meet her.
We say you plan to come back at noon tomorrow and if she doesn’t want that then she can leave a message with the front desk at the hotel.
No exchange of phone numbers and no awkward face to face conversations until you know that she wants to see you. ”
“Okay,” is the only word I manage, but my heart shouts so much more.
Yes! Thank you. How do you do that? This is why I never wanted to do this with anyone except you. You’ve always been my first choice.
Two hearts in sync, it’s as though he hears everything I don’t say. His thumb continues its back-and-forth path over my cheek as his eyes clamp shut, like his restraint could snap any minute.
This man .
I’m tired of overthinking it. I don’t want to think at all.
Slowly, I close the small gap between us and lightly press my lips to his. His fingertips hitch along my cheekbones.
A single kiss tasting of salty tears and then and now and best friend and my person . It’s not enough and I want so much more, but I pull back.
The tormented look, the anguished lines of his jaw, his brows, the pain that radiates off him in waves—it wrecks me. My heart sputters to a stop.
Terrified that I’ve ruined everything, I open my mouth to speak, but he beats me to it.
“Don’t you dare apologize to me.” He drops his chin, the words landing on his chest as he presses his forehead into mine.
“I’ll keep waiting until you’re ready. Just…
don’t apologize, okay? My heart won’t survive it. ”
I nod because what else is there to say except every single thing—all the things and all the words.
My words and his words, fighting to the finish.
Past hurts on display like exposed nerves, a full-on assault in the form of explanations, defenses and apologies.
Unspoken thoughts and feelings bubbling to the surface, finally getting the air they’ve craved for too many years.
No. My heart won’t survive that.
But I’m also not sorry that I kissed him.