Chapter 8 #3
“I wish that we had just stayed friends,” I say without turning around.
“I don’t know that it would have been possible for him, but it would have been for me.
I’ve been thinking so much about it, and I can see that I left him alone in the relationship in some aspects.
I think maybe we both knew it wasn’t right, but we were too afraid to talk about it.
If we had, I would have called it off, and I’m not sure he would have been all that heartbroken.
He would have been okay, at any rate. I’m not sure that he was even into my mom, or if he just did what he did because he was trapped and didn’t know what else to do.
Or if he thinks romantically about her. I don’t know.
I think I need to go back to LA and talk to them to understand.
We all need to move on. I want to forgive them both, even if they don’t ask for it, because that’s what I need to get past this. ”
The weight of all of that settles on the clearing like a black cloud overhead.
Not a raincloud promising cold, cleansing renewal, but a depressing grouping that blocks out the sun.
The weight of it all settles back down on me.
I had forgotten it since this morning. I did exactly what I didn’t want to do and bring all the trouble and fatigue of the past and future straight to this moment. I pressed on my own bruise.
I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to ruin this day…
I want to breathe, I want to laugh, I want to dance.
I spread my arms overhead, dispelling my sadness like droplets of water flung into the air.
I whip around, spinning in place and then dancing closer to the stream.
I yell and cry out, and I laugh at the air rushing past my face, at the forest floor underfoot, and then at the splashes of water as I charge into the stream and soak half my dress because it’s deeper than it looks and I go straight in past my knees.
I squeal as mud squelches between my toes.
The bottom isn’t solid like I thought it would be.
Of course it’s not rocky. Every step I take stirs up muck and dead leaves. It’s not gross. It’s awesome.
I wheel around after a few moments of tearing my feet out of the silt just to hear and feel the strange suction, remembering with a jolt that I was supposed to be posing for photos.
I asked and then I just unloaded a bunch of trauma on Odin, then dashed off like a crazy person.
He probably thinks I’m totally unhinged.
I turn, shy and worried, mortified at my own ridiculous behavior, only to find Odin standing stock still, the camera pointed right at me.
I suck in a breath and try to make a joke of it to steady myself. “Ouch. Good thing I had already planned on laughing at myself.” I strike a pose, jutting out a hip and setting my hand on it, giving my best pout. “Isn’t this how all the models do it?”
He lowers the camera slowly, an expression on his face so deep and true that I have no way to describe it.
I only know that no one has ever looked at me that way before.
Like… like I’m the only thing that matters in this moment.
Like time and space and fucking gravity don’t even exist. Like it’s just the two of us out here.
I mean, it is, but like we’re the only people in the world, but this isn’t one of those twisted games of survival and there are no zombies or anything coming at us.
Just this moment.
So damn real. So charged.
He quickly turns and walks back to the blanket. He silently pats the spot beside him. It’s a call that I can’t ignore. A summons that spikes through my bloodstream as adrenaline but also wraps around me like a tight embrace.
I lift one foot from the muck, then the other. It’s not hard to climb out of the stream because it’s so narrow, but if it was any wider, I might have had some trouble. I stand back on the moss and rinse my feet off in the flowing water, then creep soundlessly back to the blanket.
Odin already has the screen set to the first photo, when I lifted my hands and charged towards the water.
It’s just my back, but the photo is still so powerful, framing me surrounded by the woods, dashing like my life depended on it for the sheer joy of that simplicity and peace beyond.
It’s what my life was missing in LA. I was rarely able to take a few minutes and stop.
Stop working. Stop studying. Stop worrying.
I flip through photo after photo, enraptured at the way that Odin captured me.
There are almost no shots where I’m facing the camera, but my body is one joyous length.
When I have my hands thrown up in the air, it’s like I’m reaching for the sky, trying to cup the sun and gather up the moon and the stars even though they’re hidden.
Each photo is better and better.
Photos of my hair covering my entire face in a wild mass.
Water droplets splashed through the air when I lifted my foot.
One with mud stuck between my toes at the very same instant a leaf blew down from one of the trees around us and hovers in the background.
One photo is dappled with sunspots, another captures the water glinting at either side of me.
The last burst are all of my face as I turn around, bewildered for a second, until I remembered the camera.
His photos aren’t just a lovely form of artistry.
They make me feel seen. He brought me to life. My soul. My body. My spirit and personality. He saw all the bits of me that I didn’t even know existed.
He photographed me like he’s known me for a lifetime and cherished me for a good portion of those years. Even if he doesn’t know that about himself, he is the kind of man who could fully know another person.
I inhale sharp and deep, trying to drag air past my constricted throat, into my burning lungs.
One gasp and I realize that it’s not my lungs at all.
It’s the rest of me that’s on fire. My chest. My stomach.
One more breath, and it’s all him. Chrome and leather, oil and spice, fresh air, trees, moss, and grass.
Words scorch the back of my tongue, but I bite them back. What could I possibly say that would encapsulate the depth of my feeling?
My hands shake so badly that the camera starts to vibrate.
I tilt my head, turning to take in Odin’s face.
I find him watching me with that same intense look, only this time, it’s not filtered through the camera’s lens.
There’s nothing blocking his face. Just his gorgeous dark brown eye and that patch with the scarring that juts out into his brow and zigzags across his cheek to disappear into the fullness of his beard as it climbs far past his jawline.
I know the science behind eye color, but his deep brown is so much more beautiful than just a lot of melanin in the front and back of the iris.
It’s more than just the way the light hits.
He wears the vestiges of a hard life scarred into his skin, but the wisdom of his soul is truly there, in that soft amber.
He strokes a hand burnished to deep caramel, the ink so old it’s almost indistinguishable, over his beard. “If you don’t like them, that’s alright. I can just delete them.”
“Like them?” I’m still struggling to find words. I can’t just leave him at the mercy of my silence because my voice has failed me.
I set the camera aside, taking care that it’s perfectly balanced on the blanket, even though the ground rolls softly beneath it.
I know what I can’t do. I know there are lines and hard boundaries, but they seem to soften and blur, obliterated like a droplet of water evaporating under the hot sun.
There’s none of that right now. There’s only this man and everything he’s done for me.
This man and his incredible gift of sight that has nothing to do with vision.
I lean into him before I can stop. The blanket is small, and I don’t have far to go. My hand acts of its own accord, reaching out to cup the side of his face.
He jerks, but not away. A shudder rips through his body, but he doesn’t move, as though he’s as paralyzed as I am. Except that I’m not. My thumb rubs a path along his beard and cheek. The facial hair is thick, but softer than I thought it would be. It tickles the underside of my wrist, and my palm.
He lets out a strangled animal noise and finally, he can move too.
His hand circles my wrist. It’s obscenely huge against my delicate bones, like a grizzly holding the tender stem of a flower.
He doesn’t squeeze. Doesn’t capture me or press in, but I can still feel the warmth of his chunky metal rings and of his skin.
It’s fire and lightning all the way up from that point of contact, straight into my shoulder.
My heart beats so hard that I can feel it thumping in my throat.
“I…” I try for words, but my throat is so dry. It’s aching with the need to give him all of me, the deepest parts of my soul. He already laid them bare in those photos. I might as well pour myself out to him, but all I have is the unspoken poetry connecting us where we’re touching.
I want to lean into him.
I want to taste him.
I want him to devour me, uncover me, pull the depths of my heart apart and place them back inside of me so they’re ordered in a way I can finally understand.
My hand trembles against his cheek.
“I need…” The throaty words tumble and stick. I’m so scared of telling him what I need. I don’t even know. He’s not mine to touch. I have no right to be this close. I can’t stop. That’s all I know. The only thing that makes sense right now is him. This.
I curl towards him instead of away, tipping my face closer and closer.
I don’t believe in fate or destiny. It was my own actions that set me on this path to him, no big forces out there acting to bring us together.
But we’re still here. I still feel whatever crazy magnetism this is.
I believe in the explainable, and I know that hormones are a real thing.
People are designed biologically to want other people.
It’s how the species carries on. I guess I just never realized that science could feel so much like magic.
He leans in too, like he’s also seeking warmth and goodness and wants to be carried away on that magical tide.
His lips are softer than I ever thought possible.
His beard tickles my chin. I part for mouth for him, eager for the velvet glide of his lips against mine, for the scalding taste of him, for the sensual tangling.
I expected an inferno, but he kisses me softly.
Not without heat, but with impeccable control.
I’ve kept such a careful grasp over myself for years. I want to shatter it and lose myself.
I sweep my hand to his neck, tangling my fingers in his hair, clawing my way to the back of his neck as I draw closer.
There’s no moving a granite pillar, so I churn up against him.
My body crashes into his. I catch myself on his shoulder, but draw myself deeper by sweeping my arm around to his back.
My breasts smash up against the edges of his leather jacket and brush against soft cotton.
I angle my face, sweeping my tongue along his lower lip, begging him to open for me so I can taste him deeply.
“Please,” I whimper, the word so obscured that it’s almost more breath than anything. “I need.” Those two words again.
He groans low enough to shake the earth beneath us.
He brackets the back of my head in one palm, and holds me so tightly that I can feel his rings digging in against my scalp.
His tongue glides into my mouth, tangling hotly with mine.
I can’t get close enough. I rub up against him.
My legs are still on the blanket, but I want to be in his lap.
Straddling him. Rubbing and curling and mashing against all his hard planes.
I want it even more when his hand drops down to cup my neck above my hair before he gathers a fist of the blonde strands and tugs hard enough that my head tilts back. He doesn’t just kiss me. He plunders. He takes. He licks and bites and devours the little whimpers that I can’t keep trapped inside.
I thought I was a rational person, but reason and logic have no place here.
I thought I knew a lot of things about life, but in the end, I was wrong.
If I know nothing at all, and this is my ground zero, then it’s the place I want to start. And end. No matter how wrong it might seem to the outside world, it doesn’t feel wrong to me. And the world isn’t here right now. It’s just us in this beautiful place, and I don’t want it to end.