Chapter 29 Sunken Treasure
sunken treasure
Once priceless, now resting at the bottom of the ocean.
All the packing reminds me I left my things in Trent’s truck. I grab them and haul them back to the house. Push through into the bedroom and halt.
I was expecting the room to look exactly as I left it. But it’s not the way I left it. Not by far.
My throat tightens. It feels like I’m walking into the aftermath of something big, something important. Something that happened without me.
I drag my gaze from Trent’s side of the room, untouched, unchanged, to Ika’s.
I recall how it was before: the black and white soccer ball rug; cleats stuffed into the bottom shelf, trophies sitting above.
The old electric piano and stool that ate up most of that wall.
And the dresser, covered in bottles. Hair gel, shaving cream, the same cologne I used to wear until I could bear it no more.
I step into the room and drop my luggage. I scent the cologne, but the bottles are gone. Along with the trophies, the cleats, the rug.
I follow the scent to the corner, where the rug is rolled up and duct-taped in plastic. There’s a hollowness to the room that reminds of me of Trent’s voice the night of his phone call.
I imagine him in here while I was away; I imagine him triggered into a guttural, frustrated shout.
I imagine him knocking down all the bottles in a single sweep.
They broke open on the mat. They had to be binned, tied in plastic and put away.
While he was at it, the cleats could go too.
What use were they anymore? Ika is gone. Stop fooling yourself.
Or maybe the chicken got up to mischief.
But I’m shaking my head.
This is bigger than the chicken. Frustration lingers here. Hurt. Even my bedclothes have been rumpled. The pillow I’ve slept months on cast to the floor.
Why can’t I?
He’d said it the first day I met him. The way he presents himself, so calm and controlled—he’s a bottle, but I’ve seen the cracks; all those feelings stuffed inside, they’re leaking out.
I stare at the room and ball my fist. They’re streaming out.
This moment hurt.
This moment he carried, alone, while I was moping like an idiot, buying replica underpants.
I should have been here for this.
The air shifts, his presence, unmistakable, filling the doorway, stepping through it. He stands behind me, taking in the scene as I see it. I feel him stiffen; hear it in the pause of his breath.
Then the door shuts, the lock snibs. It’s tested with a jiggle.
I don’t turn around.
He releases a long breath at my nape and his arms come around my shoulders. His forehead grinds against the back of my head.
What happened here?
His lips graze my neck, press hotly on one spot. The gentlest nip that has pleasant shivers shooting. I’m suddenly suspended between two feelings: wanting to understand, and wanting to fold.
“Trent . . .”
Another nibbling kiss travels down the curve of my shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he answers.
I turn slowly, facing him. He shuts his eyes. Shakes his head. “You’ll run away.”
I bristle. “I haven’t run yet.”
“I’m afraid.”
“You can talk to me about anything.”
His lips sweep along my cheek to my ear. “Please let me keep this a little while?”
I hear his thick swallow.
I feel the vibration of something painful, something too much for him right now.
“Please let me be wrong. Just . . . just for a while.”
Wrong. Let me be wrong.
Did he mean giving in to these feelings?
Did he mean he must stop them soon but not right away?
Did he mean he just wants to give in to temptation temporarily?
I shiver with a sudden fear. Like under the surface, a big wave is building, awaiting the storm. I’m already losing something I haven’t yet had.
His nose glides over my brow and down mine.
And suddenly I’m grabbing his face, crashing my mouth to his. I’m pressing myself tight. I don’t want him to say it either. Don’t want it to break.
Not today. Let me fold briefly. “Too.”
He inhales sharply, and it sounds like relief. Like breaking the surface after holding breath too long.
His hands slide to the back of my neck, to my jaw, trembling and certain.
The kiss deepens, uneven, a stumble, a gasp, and then like the tapping of his finger to music in his head—a rhythm. Slow, deep, the kind that’s easy to sing over and over.
Salt, the click of teeth. The faint scent of sweat at his collar.
He tastes like I imagined and wanted. Like relief. Like home.
For a heartbeat, there’s no Ika. No Grandpa waiting in the next room. No ghosts.
There’s just us. The soft click of our mouths and the roughness of stubble, and the warm press of skin after so much distance.
I clutch his shirt, pulling him closer until the fabric twists in my hand.
He presses his forehead to mine, both of us rocking, unsteady.
“We have to be quiet,” he whispers, voice raw.
“Then let’s be quiet,” I breathe back.
His laugh patters against my hairline but he doesn’t reconsider, doesn’t pull away. He drops his lips to mine again, a damper, lingering kiss. Like he’s memorising the shape of my mouth. The kind of kiss that feels as much like the end as the beginning.
My stomach sinks, but I still drag him to the bunk, still shakily undress him, still let him undress me.
He presses kisses to my chest, and after a quiet asking look, trails more to my scar. I fist the sheets. I hate that it has to exist here in this moment, that I cannot leave all the past behind, even now. And yet, that it is here . . . I feel his tenderness so much more.
When he’s traced the whole thing, when I’ve swallowed thickly, I urge his face to mine and seek his gaze. Please?
The frame groans once, twice, as he lowers me to his mattress.
We freeze, hot skin inches from pressing, muscles straining. For a moment, I’m afraid he’ll pull back, and I clutch onto his shoulders.
He sinks, and the hot collide of our skin has him folding over me on a muted gasp.
And then, that something else awakens in us. That other part that cleaves through thought . . .
He wraps his hand around us, and we trade hot open kisses. We shift against one another like an itch we’re desperate to satisfy, and as our shaking crescendos I can’t help a fleeting thought. That our bodies are sobbing.