12. Carrie
— ? —
Carrie
The kiss starts soft.
Tender. Reassuring. A kiss that says I’ve got you, you’re safe, nothing can hurt you here. But it changes, in him, in me, in the space between us, and suddenly soft isn’t enough. Suddenly I need more. I need to feel anything other than the poison Martha poured into my ears.
I pull at his shirt. “Tom.”
“Here?” His voice is rough. “Carrie, we’re on the side of the road.”
“I don’t care.” I climb over the center console, awkward and graceless, until I’m in his lap. The steering wheel digs into my back. “I need you. Please.”
His hands find my hips, steadying me. “Are you sure? After what she said.”
“That’s why.” I kiss him again, harder this time. “I need to feel like I’m real. Like I matter. Please, Tom. Make me feel real.”
A restraint breaks behind his eyes. His hands tighten on my hips, and he pulls me closer, and then we’re not talking anymore.
He pushes my dress up around my waist. His fingers drag my underwear aside, and he groans low when he feels how wet I already am.
“Tell me what you need.”
“You. Just you.”
He works two fingers into me right there in the dark, his thumb circling my clit, and I gasp against his mouth.
He has learned my body over the past month, learned where I am sensitive, where I need more pressure, where the lightest touch wrecks me, and he has me dripping down his wrist in under a minute.
“So wet already.” His voice is a growl against my throat. “So ready for me.”
“Always.”
“Always?” He pulls back enough to look at me, his eyes dark and searching. “You mean that?”
“Yes.” The word comes out of me, a confession. “I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know how. But yes, Tom. Always.”
His expression changes. It softens into what looks close to awe. Then it goes molten.
He works his belt open, shoves his jeans down just enough to free his cock, and pulls me over his lap.
I brace my hands on his shoulders and sink down onto him slow, taking him inch by inch, the stretch of him in the cramped space deeper somehow, more intense, and I cry out as I bottom out, fully seated, stuffed full of him.
“There you go.” His hand slides up my body, over my ribs, between my breasts, until it wraps gently around my throat, not squeezing, just holding, just reminding me that I’m here, that he’s here, that we’re real. “That’s it. Take what you need.”
I start to move. Slow at first, rolling my hips, then faster, riding him hard as the pleasure climbs. His hand on my throat anchors me, and his other hand grips my ass, guiding me down onto him, grinding me against him at the bottom of every stroke so my clit drags where I need it.
“You’re incredible.” His voice is strained. “You know that? Incredible and beautiful and...” He groans as I clench around him. “Fuck, yes. Ride me just like that.”
“Tell me again.” The words spill out before I can stop them. “Tell me I’m enough.”
“You’re enough.” He pulls me down for a kiss, still driving up into me. “You’re everything. You’re warm and real and perfect and-”
“Tom.”
“You’re mine.” His hips snap up to meet me, hitting deep, and I gasp. “Every part of you.”
“Yours.”
“That’s right.” His hand flexes gently at my throat, his eyes locked on mine. “Mine to keep. Mine to take care of. Say you believe it.”
“I believe it.”
He pushes his thumb between us and rubs my clit, and the orgasm crashes through me without warning, so hard I lose track of where I end and he begins.
I clench around his cock and hear myself sobbing his name, and he holds me down onto him and follows me over the edge, spilling into me with a broken sound I feel everywhere our skin meets.
And somewhere in the middle of it, somewhere between the pleasure and the release and the overwhelming intimacy of being held by someone who actually sees me, the truth of it lands on me.
I love him.
I don’t just want him. I don’t just need him. I love him. Fully and completely and terrifyingly.
When did that happen? When did this stop being a deal and start being real?
I don’t know. Maybe it was always real. Maybe I was just too scared to admit it.
We stay tangled together for a long moment, breathing hard, his forehead resting against mine. The windows have fogged over, cocooning us in our own small world.
“Carrie?” Tom’s voice is gentle.
“Hmm?”
“I meant it. Every word.”
I pull back enough to look at him. His eyes are soft in the low light, and there’s a vulnerability in his expression that makes my chest ache.
“I know,” I say. “I meant it too.”
He smiles. It transforms his whole face. “Good.”
We disentangle ourselves slowly, laughing at the awkwardness of it, the cramped space, the fogged windows. By the time we’re decent again, I feel lighter somehow. Martha’s words have lost their grip.
Tom drives us back to the cabin in comfortable silence. When we pull up to the door, I realize my underwear is still twisted in his back pocket, a flash of lace peeking out.
“You know,” he says, catching the direction of my gaze, “you keep leaving these places.”
I grin. “Maybe I’m leaving them on purpose.”
“Minx.”
He backs me against the cabin door, one hand braced above my head, the other fishing the underwear out of his pocket and dangling it between us. “Should I be worried about finding these all over the cabin?”
“Depends. Would you be mad?”
“No.” He leans down, brushes his lips against my ear. “But I might have to do something about it.”
“Promises, promises.”
We stumble inside, laughing, touching, and for a few perfect minutes, everything feels possible.
***
Later, alone in the bathroom while Tom showers, I stand in front of the mirror and study my reflection.
I look different. I can’t pinpoint what exactly, a softness in my face, a brightness in my eyes. Rested. Fed. Loved well. This is what being held does to a person.
My hand drifts to my belly.
I’ve been feeling strange the past few days. Fuller, somehow. Warmer. My breasts ache in a way they haven’t since.
No. Don’t think about it. It’s too early to know anything.
But the thought won’t leave. The hope won’t leave, no matter how hard I try to squash it.
Please, I think, pressing my palm flat against my stomach. Please let this be real. Please let one good thing come out of all this pain.
The shower shuts off. I drop my hand quickly, compose my face, and step out of the bathroom just as Tom emerges with a towel around his waist.
“You okay?” He studies my face. “You look... thoughtful.”
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
“The future.” I cross to him, wrap my arms around his still-damp body. “About what comes next.”
“What comes next is we serve Ulises with divorce papers so airtight he can’t breathe.” Tom presses a kiss to my forehead. “Reyes said the evidence is solid. He won’t be able to fight this.”
“And then?”
“And then you’re free.” His arms tighten around me. “We’re free.”
Free. The word feels foreign. Impossible. I’ve spent so long trapped that I’ve forgotten the shape of freedom.
Tom’s phone buzzes on the nightstand.
He ignores it. Keeps holding me.
It buzzes again. And again.
“You should get that,” I say reluctantly.
He sighs and reaches for the phone. His expression shifts as he reads the screen, a tightness pulling behind his eyes.
“What is it?”
“Reyes.” He’s typing a response, his jaw set. “Ulises’s lawyer caught wind of the evidence. He’s moving to contest the divorce before we can file.”
“Can he do that?”
“He’s going to try.” Tom sets down the phone and turns to me, his expression serious. “We have to serve the papers. Now. Before he can file anything first.”
My heart starts pounding. “How soon is now?”
“The Donnelly cocktail party is in three days. Everyone will be there, Ulises, his family, witnesses.” Tom’s eyes meet mine. “We serve him then. Publicly. Make it impossible for him to spin some story about you being unstable or confused.”
“In front of everyone?”
“In front of everyone.”
I think about my mother’s birthday party. About Martha’s cruelty in the bathroom. About the way Ulises’s name still makes me flinch.
Then I think about the evidence in that manila envelope. Seven affairs. Six years of lies.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
Tom’s phone buzzes again.
This time when he reads it, his face goes hard.
“What?”
He turns the phone so I can see the screen.
A text from an unknown number: She’s mine, baby brother. Always has been. Enjoy her while you can.
My blood runs cold.
“He knows,” I whisper.
“He suspects.” Tom’s voice is ice. “But he doesn’t know anything for certain. Not yet.”
“What do we do?”
Tom sets down the phone and tilts my chin up until I meet his eyes.
“We finish this. Three days, Carrie. Three days, and you’re free of him forever.”
I want to believe him. I want to believe that in three days this will all be over, that Ulises will sign the papers and disappear and I’ll never have to see his face again.
But I’ve been married to him for six years.
I know better than to think he’ll go quietly.