Chapter 21
21
Tom
When we’re in my bed, on our sides facing each other, hands intertwined, I decide I want to know the answer to that question. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Would you get married again?”
“In general or to you?”
“Why do you have to torment me this way?” I’m endlessly amused by her, and I realize that the emergence of her playful side is something that’s happened slowly since she moved in.
She laughs. “I’m sorry. I was just wondering.”
“I’m not exactly advocating for you to marry someone else.”
My exasperation makes her lips quiver with more laughter looming. “I loved being married to Jim, and if the right guy came along, I’d probably be willing to do it again.”
“If the right guy comes along…”
“That makes all the difference.”
“How did I not know you were so mean?”
She dissolves into laughter.
I love to see her happy and laughing. She’s such a far cry from the quiet, solemn, wounded woman who first lived with me. I’m not taking any credit for that. She’s brought herself back from that darker place through lots of hard work and determination to make a new life for herself after being widowed. I’m just glad to be here to enjoy the fruits of those labors.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” I whisper, overcome with a million emotions that are all new to me since I’ve loved her.
“I am not.”
“God yes, you are. You always have been.” I love to wrap her curls around my finger. “I also watched a couple of your track meets back in the day.”
“What? You did not!”
“I did.”
“I would’ve died if I’d known Tom Hammett was watching me.”
“Then I’m glad I never let it be known. I would’ve hated for you to die before I could hold you and kiss you and love you the way I wanted to then. And still do now.” I draw her in as close to me as I can get her with my hand on her ass and kiss her neck. “You were so sexy with the way you ran like you were being chased, balls to the wall. No one could catch you.”
“That and the flute were the only things I was good at back then.”
“You were like the wind, and I was mesmerized watching you.”
With her hand on my face, she draws me into the hottest kiss we’ve shared yet, full of longing and heat that leaves me feeling singed. I end up on top of her with her arms and legs wrapped around me as I kiss her with two decades’ worth of desire and yearning for everything I have now with her. I’ve begun to wonder how I survived all this time without her in my arms.
We get carried away… Before my brain catches up to the rest of me, we’re both naked and straining against each other.
“Lex… I want you so badly. I’ve never wanted anything the way I want you.”
“It’s too soon. You shouldn’t…”
“The wanting is more dangerous for my heart than the having.”
“How do you know that?”
I take her hand and place it over the pounding organ in question. “Feel that?”
She licks her lips, and my already-hard cock gets even harder. “Yes.”
“That can’t be healthy.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I love you. I want to make love to you. Right now.”
“If anything happens to you…”
“It won’t. I promise.” I kiss her again and can feel the exact instant when she makes her decision. “Do we need protection?” I bought a box of condoms after cardiac rehab the other day, just in case. The absurdity of that sentence would’ve made me laugh under any other circumstances, but nothing can distract me when I’m about to make love to Lexi Nelson.
Finally.
She shakes her head. “I have an IUD. I haven’t been with anyone since Jim.”
“I know. I haven’t been with anyone since the last time I was tested. And I haven’t been with anyone since the night I found you at that bar.”
She grimaces. “You gotta say it like that?”
“Well… That’s the story of us, right?”
“I guess that’s where it all began.”
I shake my head as I gaze down at her lovely face. “It began decades ago with a crush for the ages that’s turned into the love of my lifetime.”
We kiss again and strain against each other, both of us wanting more, which is exactly how I always hoped it would be if we got to this moment. It had to be on her timeline, not mine, but now that we’ve arrived, I want it to be so good for her.
I kiss my way from her neck to her breasts, teasing both nipples as she drives me crazy with the sounds she makes and the way she nearly pulls the hair out of my head. I love it. I move down, making her quiver with kisses to her abdomen and inner thighs. “Relax, sweetheart. Let me love you.”
With her legs on my shoulders, I lean into her pleasure, using my tongue and fingers to bring her to orgasm twice. She’s gasping and still coming when I move up and push into her, triggering another release for her that has me summoning every ounce of control I can find to keep this dream-come-true encounter from ending too soon.
I keep a close eye on her to make sure she’s handling this first time since her husband died without any trauma. All I see is pleasure, thank goodness.
I make it last as long as I can before I give in to the need that pounds through me like an extra heartbeat.
Every second of this was worth the twenty-year wait to be with her this way. “Holy moly,” I whisper as I kiss her neck and then her lips.
Her eyes are closed, her breathing is choppy, and her cheeks are flushed. “Mmm.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m very okay.”
That’s such a relief to hear.
Her eyes open as if she’s suddenly realized she needs to be worried about me, too. “What about you?”
“Never been better in my entire life.”
Lexi
So that happened. I had sex with Tom Hammett, and it was incredible. I want to raise a toast to teenage Lexi, who picked him out of the crowd in high school and never forgot the heady feelings he inspired in her. She knew what she was doing when she set her heart on him, and she’d be freaking out to know she’d get to have sex—and lots of other things—with him in the future.
I can’t ever regret the time I spent with Jim. I’m beginning to see, however, that I may have a whole other, longer life with Tom. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have wanted that with someone else. But here I am, naked in the arms of another man I love and can see a future with.
“Well,” he says, “now I can die happy.”
My entire body recoils from that statement, even though I just made my own joke about dying over him as a teenager. It hits much differently coming from someone who just had a near-miss.
“Oh shit, Lexi. That was a very bad joke. I take it back.”
I pull away from him and get out of bed, go into the bathroom and slam the door. I’ve gone from bliss to fury so fast, I’m shaking with it.
He knocks on the door. “Lex, honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”
No, you didn’t. And that was the very last thing you should’ve said to me, of all people.
“Please come out and talk to me. Please?”
I put on a robe that belongs to him. It’s huge on me, but I don’t care as I throw open the door and make no attempt to hide my outrage.
“I’m sorry, love. I shouldn’t have said that. I was in the moment—and it’s the truth. Being with you that way made my whole life.”
“I’m happy for you.” I storm past him, gather my clothes and head for the door.
He’s right behind me, gently grasping my arm. “Please don’t go. I’m very sorry. I was in the moment and didn’t think before I spoke. That was the worst possible thing I ever could’ve said.”
“Yes, it was.” I hate how my voice shakes and tears fill my eyes. I want to be strong in my fury, but his words have devastated me.
He puts his arms around me from behind. “I’m not going anywhere as long as I’ve got you to love.”
“That’s what Jim thought, too.”
“I know, sweetheart, and in light of recent events, I never should’ve been flippant about dying.”
“Don’t ever be flippant about that with me again.”
He drops his head to my shoulder. “I won’t. I promise. I’m sorry I ruined our perfect night.”
I start to relax a bit thanks to his sincere regret.
“Come back to bed.”
I let him guide me back to the side of his bed that’s become mine. He helps me out of the robe and tucks me in, leaning over to kiss me before he goes around to his side and snuggles up to me. “I want to tell you something that I hope will make you understand my gallows humor a bit better.”
He slides an arm around me and rests his head on my shoulder. “After my dad died so suddenly, I didn’t believe it for a long time. Even seeing him laid out in the funeral home didn’t convince me that it’d really happened. So I started to make jokes about it with my friends, who laughed like the fools they were. Until one of them repeated some of my jokes in front of my mother, who was horrified by me. She immediately got me into counseling, where I was forced to talk about why I found my father’s death so incredibly funny. Needless to say, it didn’t take long with the counselor before I was sobbing my head off. It took me months to acknowledge what’d happened, and that could be the case now, too. If you joke about it, maybe you can pretend it never happened, you know?”
“I guess…”
“I know it probably sounds batshit crazy to joke about something so traumatic, and maybe it is, but everyone copes differently. Teenage Tom did not cope well with his father’s sudden death. Despite that flimsy excuse for bad humor, it’s something I never should’ve said to you.”
“I know you meant it as a compliment.”
“I truly did. Making love to you was like coming home to the place I’ve always been meant to end up.”
“If only you’d said that instead of the other thing.”
“Let’s erase the other thing and go with that as the first words I said to you after the best thing to ever happen to me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I’d also add, I love you, Lexi.”
“I love you, too.”
After I say that, he seems to breathe a sigh of relief that the crisis has passed. I can’t recall the last time I’ve been that pissed off about anything, and I suppose it’s a healthy thing that he can make me mad like that and we can work it out.
Jim used to make me so mad sometimes, and he sucked at working it out. He’d walk away until I “got over it” or was tired of being mad. It was one of the things we really struggled with, especially as newlyweds.
Tom’s approach in immediately acknowledging his error and profusely apologizing is vastly superior to what I’m accustomed to. I’d like to think that Jim would’ve evolved into that sort of husband if he’d lived long enough, but I’m not sure he would have.
I don’t like to compare them because that’s not fair to either of them, but I want Tom to know that I appreciate his immediate ownership of the situation.
“Thank you for what you did when that happened.”
“You mean after I put my foot firmly in my mouth?”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling, “that. You owned it, and you apologized right away, and that means a lot to me.”
“I never want to say or do anything to upset you or add to your grief. I hate that I did.”
“It’s okay. I suppose we were bound to hit a snag at some point.”
“I wish it hadn’t happened after the best thing ever.”
I squeeze the hand he’s placed on my belly. “It doesn’t take anything away from that.”
“I didn’t even get to ask you how you were feeling about it all before I screwed it up.”
“I’m feeling okay. I’ve heard other widow friends say it’s a relief to get the first time with someone else out of the way, but this didn’t feel like a box being checked or anything like that.”
“That’s good, I suppose.”
“It’s very good. Some of my friends have had casual hookups to check the box, but I never could’ve done that with someone I didn’t care about. I’ve never been casual about sex. Jim was my first, and you’re my second.”
“I wondered if that was the case.”
“Now you know.”
“Does that mean I have to share my history with you?”
“Absolutely not! Dear God, don’t you dare.”
He laughs at my emphatic reaction. “Phew.”
“I’m sure it’s in the high double digits.”
“It’s not even in the teens, so put your claws away, Cujo.” He turns so he’s above me, looking at me like a man in love. “And not a one of them could compare to Lexi Nelson, the ultimate dream girl. Or I should say woman. The beautiful, sexy dream girl grew up to be one hell of an amazing woman.”
“Okay, if you insist. I’ll do it with you again.”
“Is that all it takes?”
“Pretty much.”
He moves so he’s fully on top of me, our bodies aligned as he gazes into my eyes. “That’s good to know.”
We sleep late in the morning as neither of us has anywhere to be since his cardiac rehab is canceled today for staff training. Who said being laid off and in recovery from a heart attack didn’t have a few perks? My ringing phone wakes us shortly after ten.
The caller ID shows Joy’s number, which is odd. We mostly talk by text. I experience a moment of trauma-fueled anxiety as I take the call. Please God, don’t let anything be wrong. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if I could stop by for a minute. I have something for you.”
I’m ridiculously relieved that there’s nothing wrong. “Um, sure. What time?”
“In about thirty minutes?”
“That sounds good.”
“Fantastic. See you then.”
“What’s going on?” Tom is facedown on the bed, his face crushed into the pillow.
“My friend Joy is going to stop by in half an hour. I’m going to take a shower.”
“Want some company?”
Like a lightning bolt summoned from the heavens, I instantly recall showers with Jim.
Because he gets me, Tom says, “Feel free to say no.”
“I’m not saying no. Just taking a second to remember other such showers.”
He reaches for my hand. “If you’ve made enough new memories for a while, that’s totally fine.”
“I’m ready to make some more new memories, but we need to hurry up.”
He pushes himself up with his arms and is off the bed with the speed and agility of a cheetah. “I can do quick.”
I remember when Jim could move like that. It makes me sad that I rarely think of him as he was when he was healthy.
I’ve heard several of my widow friends talk about the insane push-pull of grief, balancing the life we had with the one we’re building now, and how the most innocuous thing, such as a strong, virile man pushing himself up and out of bed, can trigger an avalanche of painful thoughts.
Rather than dwelling on those thoughts, however, I choose to focus on the fact that Tom feels strong enough to push his way out of bed like that, especially after we got busy four days before he was supposed to. I wish I could ignore the pang of worry that has my stomach aching as I join him in the shower.
He insists on washing me while he kisses my neck and gives my breasts extra attention.
By the time he’s finished with me, I’m quivering with desire that I don’t have time to deal with right now.
“Rain check, baby.” He gives me a soft, sweet kiss. “Go see your friend. I’m gonna shave.”