Chapter 36 tidsoptimist #2
It was so poetically unjust that the one place that felt like a balm to me ended up stinging him in ways I couldn’t imagine.
But I also knew how hard it was to let go of a sadness that kept you grounded like an anchor.
After all, who was I if I didn’t mourn Harrie?
What purpose did I have—what was the point of my sadness—if I didn’t grieve every second of my life?
I didn’t know, but here in this garden, I saw glimmers of her, just as I saw glimmers of Cyrus without his scars.
I wondered if they’d fade more in time, if they’d disappear in the sunset, if they’d ripple like ridges in the morning sun.
I wanted to know. I wanted to see him in every season, in every year—
And I was going to find that door. The real one.
Even if I had to dig up every boxwood and knock down every wall—
I would.
He turned my hand over and kissed the soft spot of my wrist. And then he kissed me on the lips. It was deep and intoxicating, his hands sliding down the sides of my torso to my hips. He guided me back against the willow, my shoulder blades pressed against the smooth bark.
He kissed me, one hand cupping my cheek, the other pressed against the willow tree at my back.
The wind sighed softly through the garden, the sweet aroma of flowers and soil settling my staccato heart.
I mirrored my hand on his jaw, gently tracing my fingers down the side of his neck.
His edges were sharp, angular, though while I once imagined him as a thundercloud trapped as a man, I now knew how mistaken I was.
He was sunlight trapped, warm and sharp and vexing.
He slowly, gently, pressed a kiss against my neck, drawing a soft moan out of me as he crushed his body into mine.
My fingers trembled as I began to undo his charcoal shirt.
It had grown rumpled over the course of each golden hour when I visited, as surely as he had, a neatly tucked man coming undone one visit at a time.
Cyrus had quite a nice body underneath his clothes, a tight chest with a patch of almost-blond hair, and soft abs that trailed down below his trousers. He shrugged out of the rest of his shirt as I pressed my palms against his solid chest, feeling his heart hammering beneath my touch.
“That’s so not fair,” I murmured, dragging my eyes back up to his face, settling on his storm-colored eyes.
They darkened by the second, though it might have been because my fingers were slowly—glacially—slipping down his chest and tracing over his muscled torso. “You didn’t tell me you were gorgeous.”
“My face doesn’t give it away?” he mused playfully.
“You have a face?”
He gave me a despondent look. “You’re fun,” he said dryly, then tilted his head.
I found my gaze sinking back toward his ridiculous chest. “Fun?”
He snagged my chin between his thumb and first finger and tilted my head back to look up at him. “Gorgeous,” he replied simply.
I couldn’t get my shirt off fast enough.
He kissed my neck. The birthmark on my shoulder.
The space between my breasts as he undid my cotton bra.
I didn’t have much in the way of breasts—something I’d always been a little self-conscious about—but he rumbled that whoever had said they were lacking were morons.
He bent and planted another kiss between them, his cautious touch exploring my breasts.
With a look that was intoxicated and heavy, he said, “I want you, Sophie. All of you. Every inch, every breath, every second.”
“I want you, too,” I replied.
And instead of rising back up, he went lower, his mouth trailing down my stomach, his hands undoing my jean shorts, his thumbs hooking around my cotton underwear. He planted a kiss against my inner thigh.
And oh—oh.
I wanted nothing more. Everything more.
He undressed me slowly and methodically, one piece of clothing at a time, and there against the willow, he pressed his mouth into me, tongue tasting, his hands gripping my hips, fingers sinking into the plush flesh of my ass.
My body shivered. My breath caught. I grabbed at anything I could—his copper hair, and it was so soft, and so thick—as he lifted one of my legs over his shoulder to burrow deeper.
My body burned with longing, clenching with anticipation—“Stop,” I gasped, fingers tight in his hair. “Stop, I—I want . . .” I panted, looking down at him between my thighs, so perfect, so utterly perfect. “I want to come around you. With you.”
The surprise on his face quickly morphed into something absolutely feral. “As you wish,” he replied, and gently shrugged off my leg from his shoulder.
He pulled me down onto him in the clover, and now it was my turn to finish undressing him, moment by moment, trousers and boxers and socks.
Vines shifted around us, blooming in yellows and pinks, asters in whites, daffodils and cosmos and black-eyed Susans.
The garden beds overgrew, the vines twisted against root and wall, wisteria slithering down the ropes of the swing, blooming in purple.
I traced the ginger hair just below his navel down to his erection, and I took it in my hands to stroke.
Once, then again, until he groaned and snatched my hands away.
“I’m talented but not perfect,” he warned, and kissed me again.
There was something powerful in tasting myself in his mouth.
He guided me down onto the clover, then assured me he had a condom in his wallet, while I told him I had an IUD.
It took a moment to locate said wallet—it was in one of his trouser pockets—and another moment as we fumbled trying to get it open, laughing at the absurdity of it all.
But he finally got it on, and muttered, “Where were we? Oh yes,” and his mouth went to my breasts again, his tongue playing across my nipples in sharp flicks.
“Are you sure?” he murmured, though he already knew I was.
I searched his face. I wasn’t sure if I was in love with a man I had only met a month and a half before, but I was falling, nonetheless. Gently, I brushed the curl of coppery red off his forehead, and he looked so handsome in this golden magical light.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He planted his mouth against my neck and guided himself against me and slipped inside.
I let out a gasp, eyes going wide, my fingers curling tight across the skin on his back.
He waited for me to adjust to him, and then he started, slow.
My back arched involuntarily, wanting to take him deeper, my breath sharp, his murmured affirmations into the nape of my neck.
We didn’t have a rhythm at first as we fumbled, as his hand stretched across my thigh, pulling one of my legs up.
A blush colored his cheeks, bright and lovely with exertion.
I wanted to keep this moment. I wanted to capture it like a snapshot. Our time was wasting away, and I wanted to remember every second of it. Every moment.
Time wasted, well spent.
I snagged his mouth with mine, sharing secrets between our kisses in gasps and sighs, feeling him everywhere, and though it wasn’t the first time I’d kissed Cyrus Beck, it was the first time—the very first time—that I truly saw him.
I felt alive.
And it was good and terrible and wild. Changing and growing and becoming, again and again, as we shucked off our leaves and burrowed our roots and reached for the sky. What a glorious, golden thing to be alive. What a wonderful, awful gift it was to leave things behind.
I’d lived so much of my life trying to keep moving forward, I forgot to pick up the bits people left behind and add them to the fathomless hole in my chest. In my mad dash to run, I’d packed too light. I forgot to carry them with me.
The sun sank lower, and no matter how much I wished for this moment to never end—to last forever—nothing did. That was one thing I knew too well as a gardener. Nothing lasted, especially not anything beautiful.
But nothing bad lasted forever, either.