Chapter 24
24
Liam
T he next day I surprised the girls with an early morning trip on the ferry out to the bird sanctuary. They lost their nerdy science minds.
As had become our rule, we didn’t kiss in front of Tess. I could sometimes put my arm around Kit. Or she’d rest her head on my shoulder. But we didn’t hold hands. We didn’t kiss. We were friendly. Laughing and affectionate, but there was a line in the sand.
After last night, it felt like that line was now a trench.
Kit smiled. She laughed at my bad jokes, but the walls were up between us.
We took pictures of birds. We took pictures of bird tracks. We took pictures of bird shit. An old man with a sun hat and walking sticks recognized me. So we talked about the Stanley Cup while the girls looked at their bird book and made notes in a notebook.
“I didn’t know you had such a beautiful family,” he said, pointing at the girls. “Two peas in a pod, those two.”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “I mean, we’re not official or anything. It’s just casual.”
“Hmmm,” the old man said. “Hard to be casual when it comes to kids.”
“Yeah,” I said, the words falling heavily against my body. Like body shots from Wyatt when he isn’t playing nice anymore.
We took the afternoon ferry back to town, the three of us sitting on the bow, unwilling to give up the sunshine for a calmer trip. Tess curled up between us and almost immediately fell asleep.
“You want to have kids?” I asked Kit, surprising myself.
Startled, she looked at me with wide, panicked eyes. “Calm down. I’m not asking if you want to have them right now with me. I mean in general.”
“Yes,” she said, relaxing a tiny iota. “Someday. I mean, I’ve spent the last few years trying to clean up the past. I haven’t really had a chance to think about the future. What about you?”
“I do,” I said. “I have some fears about the mental health problems my mom dealt with, but I’ve always seen myself with kids.”
“Can I ask about your mom? Her condition?”
“She lived with bipolar disease and some hard-to-treat depression. It was kind of terrifying for a few years, but it got better when she found the right combination of meds. My brother kind of took over as my parent, while Dad focused on Mom. Wyatt became an unmitigated control freak. Still is to this day.”
“And what did you become?” She asked over the wind and waves. She pulled her hair back and held it with one hand but still some escaped her grip and clung to her lips. I pulled them away. The sensation of her lip against my skin brought back a million memories of what we did to each other in bed. What we would do tonight.
“Don’t give me those eyes,” she said with a knowing grin. “What did you become?”
“A clown. A pleaser. Anything to make her smile,” I said. “Make her not so sad.”
“Oh, Liam. That must have been a really hard job.”
“It all worked out,” I said casually. I stretched an arm across the back of the bench, behind her shoulders. She surprised me by leaning up and kissing my cheek.
“I bet you were a cute kid,” she said.
“Nah. I was a menace.”
“A cute menace.”
I laughed, but it got caught on something in my throat. Some thorny lump of emotion. I turned away and looked behind us at the island, the birds filling the air. It was chaos and I found myself glad to be leaving it behind.
After another really good dinner with pasta and mushrooms and some sausage for me, we watched a movie on Netflix about a couple who started a tiny organic farm in California.
“Is this really what you want to watch?” I asked for about the tenth time, and they both shushed me.
“When we get back to Portland maybe I can get Ms. Rene to grow vegetables instead of flowers,” Kit said to Tess.
“I’ll come help! I think the fairies would like their own strawberry patch,” Tess said and I saw the words hit Kit. Hard. Tess turned back to the TV and Kit sat there, staring into the distance. I reached over and tried to put my hand on hers but she stood up.
“I’m going to pop some popcorn,” she said and went and hid in the kitchen.
I put Tess to bed after the movie and I went up to my room to wait for Kit.
An hour passed and I realized she wasn’t going to come.
Right. Because she was in her own bed, building up those walls.
The casual thing would probably be to let her have the space. Give her whatever she needed. Don’t push.
We only had two days left on this vacation and I wasn’t spending a single night without her that I didn’t need to. Quietly, I crept down the stairs and knocked on her door.
She opened it, her face set in stern lines. “Do I really need to tell you no?” she said.
“If that’s what you’re planning on saying, then yeah. You’re going to have to spell it out for me because we have two days left and I want to see how hard I can make you come.”
Oh. Poor Kit. She wanted to say no. She wanted to send me on my way, but this thing between us was a drug neither one of us could get enough of. I pushed open the door and stepped into the room, swept her up in my arms.
She kicked the door shut with her foot and I turned and set her down on the top of the dresser. I spread her thighs out wide and looked down at the cotton panties she wore. Already wet. This woman in her Shrek shirt and her absolutely not sexy underwear. With her walls and her hurt. Her way with Tess. Her way with me.
How did I go back to casual hook ups after having someone as real as her?
Who was I kidding? I didn’t. I was the one ruined. She’d changed my whole life. She’d changed me.
I felt rocked. Angry. Part of me wished I’d never met her. Never gone to that stupid fundraiser. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had and that’s what was happening. I was here. With her. Sliding a condom on my cock so I could fuck her on the dresser – and I was already missing her.
It made me sad. And mean.
I pulled her underwear off and shoved them in the pocket of my shorts. Shorts I’d pulled down under my cock, but hadn’t taken off.
“Liam,” she said and I put my hand over her mouth.
“Shut up,” I said and her eyes over my hand went wide. Blurry.
She loved this. Of course she did. All I’d ever been to her was someone to hurt herself on. Something to punish herself with. I could do that.
I didn’t check if she was ready. I knew she was wet enough. Her underwear was wet and the smell of her desire was thick in the room. In my head.
Roughly, I pulled her to the edge of the dresser and with one hard thrust I was inside of her. Deep. Impossibly deep.
Over my hand her eyes were so wide, I could see white all the way around the silver/gray. Her hands clutched my shoulders, bunching my shirt in her fists. I pressed her back so her head was against the wall. My other hand gripped her ass, holding her still on the dresser.
She made a sound under my hand against my skin. A mewl of something. Pleasure. Surprise. She wanted more, I could feel it in her pussy. The way her hips pulsed against mine. Like she was trying to fuck herself against me but I wasn’t giving her the angle.
I slid out slow and felt like I was being turned inside out and then I thrust in fast and hard. She grunted, her body shaking with the force of it. She spread her legs wider, searching for the right leverage. I knew she wanted me to put my thumb on her clit, apply the pressure she needed, but I didn’t do it.
A long slow retreat. Another hard, almost violent thrust. She lifted her head, trying to shake my hand loose, but I was in control. For the first time ever with her, it felt like.
More. Again.
The blush of her orgasm built up her neck and her eyes were narrowed suspiciously like she knew what I was doing.
“You want to come?” I whispered to her. “Do it yourself.”
Her hand fell off my shoulder and slipped down her body, she used two fingers against her clit and rubbed the way she’d shown me she liked. Tiny circles, faster and faster.
I fucked her faster and when she came, her body squeezing down and clenching, I erupted. My hand came away from her mouth and I clutched her to me like she was all there was between me and drowning. Words poured out of me. Nonsense. I was sorry and she was so good. So good.
She wrapped her arms around me and held on, until the storm passed and we were just two people who knew each other too well to pretend otherwise.
I lifted my head. “Are you okay?” I asked and she nodded. “I’m sorry… that was rough.”
“I think I needed it,” she said, not meeting my eyes.
It didn’t sit quite right with me. The whole night was off. I was off. I took care of my business, but when I got back to her bedroom I stopped, not knowing what to do. Usually, we’d lay in bed and talk some shit, have a laugh, maybe another round. But this night didn’t feel like any other night.
She stood in the middle of her big bedroom. Shrek giving me some massive side-eye. Her freckles stood out against her pale cheeks.
“I think…this is over,” she said, not looking at me. She was fascinated with the floor by her toes. “I mean, it was awesome, but I don’t think we should do it again.”
“Why?” I asked.
Finally, she looked at me and smiled a sad, rueful smile. “I don’t think either one of us is good at casual.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. I was great at it. I made it an art form. I dated beautiful, smart, amazing women and I never broke anyone’s heart. Just ask them.
If that wasn’t being good at casual, what was?
“Fine, I’ll say it first. So it can scare the hell out of you. I’m falling in love with you,” she said, so honest I could barely breathe.
“I don’t…” that was all I could say. Words were beyond me, and it wasn’t bragging to say I’d been here before. Women had told me they loved me and I let them down so easily they didn’t even know it was happening.
But this woman, she’d pulled the rug right out from under my feet.
“Can I tell you another thing?” she asked.
I grunted. Not if it was like the last one. “I don’t want to talk about Tess.”
“It’s not about her. It’s about you. You grew up trying to make an extremely unhappy woman as happy as possible. I think the only way to do that was to never want anything. Or admit that you needed more from her.”
“Yeah, and what about you?” I accused her. “What’s your deal, because you have your issues too?”
“Of course I do. My whole life was a mirage. A lie, a con. The guilt I lived with was everything. So much, I didn’t know who I was. But now I do. Now, I’m a person who knows I want the truth. No matter what it is.”
“I would never lie to you,” I said.
“Except you are right now,” she said. She leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. At the scent of her, my cock reacted. A lazy twitch like when a tired dog smells his owner coming in the door. “I think you should leave.”
“Just like that? We’re over?”
“We were always going to be over. I’m just putting us out of our misery,” she said. She pushed open the door and stood there, making herself impossibly clear. She wanted me gone.
I told myself this was the best outcome. My favorite outcome. Like when Janice broke up with me. That May right after we lost in the second round of the playoffs.
It saved me all the song and dance I usually had to go through.
Convincing Kit that it was me. Not her. That we were better as friends.
All of this was for the best. Exactly the way I liked it. Casual.