Chapter 27 Stormy
We're in bed and I can't stop talking.
This is new. Tex is the talker, never me. Tex is the one who fills every silence and narrates his own life. I'm the quiet one who has learned to speak again. I'm the one who says what needs to be said in as few words as possible because words were never safe for me.
But tonight, I can't stop.
We're lying in bed after closing, still dressed, still smelling like smoke and barbecue.
Tex is on his back and I'm on my side facing him, my hand on his chest, and I'm talking.
I'm telling him things I've never said out loud, things I've been carrying in the quiet parts of myself for weeks, and they're coming out now like water through a crack in a dam.
"The first day in the truck, I was terrified of you."
He turns his head on the pillow. His brown eyes find mine in the dark. "I know you were. I'm sorry."
"Not just because you were a stranger. Because of your size.
You filled that whole truck. The seat, the space, the air.
Your shoulders were wider than the headrest and your hands on the steering wheel were the biggest hands I'd ever seen and all I could think was if this man wants to hurt me, I can't stop him.
There's no way out of this truck at sixty miles an hour.
I'm trapped in a metal box with the biggest man I've ever met. "
"I'm sorry I was so big and scary looking. I knew you were scared and all I wanted to do was make you feel safe."
The muscle in his neck tightens and I put my hand on his face.
"Don't be sad about it," I say. "I'm telling you because of what came after."
"What was that, baby? I hope it was something good. Because if this story has a sad ending, don't tell me. I cry at sad endings. Or anything with animals."
"I couldn't stop watching you. At first it was survival. I was watching you the way I always watch men, looking for the signs, reading your body language, waiting for the shift. The moment the voice changes or the hands get faster or the eyes go flat. I was watching for danger."
"And what did you see?"
"There wasn't any of that. Never. You just kept being you. Loud and kind and ridiculous. Talking to yourself, singing off-key, making terrible jokes. And I kept watching because I didn't know what to do with a man who wasn't dangerous."
I trace the line of his collarbone through his shirt. My fingers move across his chest, slow, feeling the shape of him.
"At first, I watched you for safety reasons.
And then somewhere in the watching, it stopped being about safety.
You'd be out in the parking lot working with your shirt off and the sweat would be running down your back.
It ran down between your shoulder blades, down that line in the center of your spine, and I'd be standing there with a stack of plates in my hands not moving.
Unable to move or take my eyes off you. I would stand there just watching.
Watching the way your muscles moved when you lifted things.
The way your arms looked when you carried the kegs, the veins standing out, the size of your forearms. I'd tell myself I was assessing threat.
Determining what your arms could do to me if they wanted to. "
"My God, Stormy."
"But that's not what I was doing. Not really.
I was looking at you. All the time. I couldn't take my eyes off you.
The way a person looks at someone they want.
I didn't have a name for it because wanting had never been mine before.
It was always someone else's wanting, pointed at me.
I was the object. I'd never been the one doing the wanting. I've never wanted anyone before you."
He's quiet. His hand finds mine, wrapping around my fingers and holding.
"Then Sheila came," I say. "And you ran out the door and you picked her up.
You hugged her. You wrapped your arms around her and lifted her off the ground.
Your face looked like a kid's face, pure and happy, and I stood in the doorway watching and I thought.
.." I pause to remember. The memory is still vivid.
The sunlight. The parking lot. His laugh.
"I thought I want to know what that feels like.
To be held by your arms. Not grabbed. Not pinned.
Held. The way you held her. Like being inside your arms was the only place I wanted to be. "
"You could have asked. Or given me the slightest hint of any kind. Any time. I would have—"
"I know that now. I knew it then, somewhere underneath all the fear.
That's what made it worse. Knowing that if I asked, you'd do it.
That you were waiting. That you would have held me any time, any day, for any reason.
All I had to do was walk across six feet of parking lot and you would have opened your arms the way you opened them for her. "
I sit up and pull my shirt off because I want to feel the air on my skin while I say this. I want to be uncovered.
"The day I almost drowned," I say. "When the water was over my head and I couldn't breathe and the bar was getting smaller and smaller, I wasn't sad about dying.
I was sad about you. About this." I put my hand on his chest. "About the life I almost had.
I was in the water thinking I'm going to die and I never told you how I felt.
I never let you hold me. I never closed those six feet.
And then you came. You came running into the water like a maniac and you told me to wrap myself around you and I did and you were—"
My voice breaks and I breathe through it.
"You were the steadiest thing I've ever felt. In the middle of a rip current, with the waves crashing over us, I was safer than I'd ever been in my life. Because I was holding onto you and you had me."
Tex sits up to pull his own shirt off. The moonlight through the window catches the planes of his chest, the dark hair, the ink on his shoulders.
"Come here," he says.
"Wait, I need to say one more thing. Actually, two more things.
The first thing is that I stole your shirt and put it under my pillow.
I realize that's weird, but when I couldn't sleep sometimes, I would touch your shirt or smell it.
Then I'd remember that I didn't need to be afraid of you.
You were safe and you smelled good too. When I started sleeping in here with you, I washed the shirt and put it back in your closet. "
He reaches over to push my hair back from my forehead and waits.
"The second thing is that you're so careful with me," I say.
"So gentle. You hold yourself above me in bed like you're afraid of crushing me.
You touch me like I'm breakable. You always give me room to move, room to leave, room to breathe.
And I love you for that. I love you for every inch of space you've given me. But Tex, I need to say something."
I take his face in my hands. Both hands, palms on his beard, fingers behind his ears. I look into his brown eyes.
"You don't have to be careful anymore. I know you would never hurt me. I know you would never force me to do anything. I know that in my body, not just my head. My body knows you're safe. It figured it out before my brain did."
His eyes are wet and he's holding so still like he always does.
"I'm giving you permission to touch me. Really touch me the way you want to.
Not hovering. Not holding back. I want your hands on me, Tex.
All the way. I want to feel how strong you are.
I love knowing how strong and big you are.
I want you to stop treating me like I'll break.
I won't break. I'm the toughest thing you've ever met and we both know it. "
A sound comes out of him. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, you are."
"Show me how you want to touch me."
The leash he's been holding himself on, the restraint he's kept between his desire and his hands since the first day, loosens. I watch it happen. I watch weeks of careful, patient, agonizing control release in a single breath.
He moves fast and his hands come up and grip my waist and he pulls me into his lap, hard, decisive, no hovering, no hesitation.
My legs wrap around him and his hands are on my bare back and his fingers are spread wide.
He's not gentle. He's not rough, he'd never be rough, but he's not gentle.
He's present. He's fully here with his full strength and his full size.
His hands are pressing me against him as if he's finally letting himself.
I grab his face and I kiss him.
I kiss him like the dam is breaking, like everything I've been holding back is pouring through me at once, and he meets me there. His mouth opens under mine, and the kiss is deep and hot and hungry. His tongue finds mine and the taste of him floods my senses until there's nothing else.
His hands move. Up my back, his palms flat, feeling every vertebra, every rib, every inch of skin.
Down to my hips, his fingers pressing into the hollows above my waistband.
He pulls my hips against his and I feel him through the denim, hard and hot.
I grind into him and his head falls back.
The sound he makes from his throat vibrates through his chest into mine.
"God, Stormy." His voice is destroyed. Raw and low and coming from somewhere primal. "You feel so good. You have no idea how long I've wanted to hold you like this."
I push him backward. He goes, falling back on the mattress, and I follow him down, my body on top of his, chest to chest, skin to skin where our shirts are gone and denim to denim where they're not.
I kiss his neck, his jaw, the spot below his ear that makes his hips buck.
I drag my teeth along his shoulder and he hisses.
His hands grab my ass and pull me harder against him.
The friction through the jeans is maddening.
"Off," I say, pulling at his waistband. "These need to be off."