Chapter 13 #3
She wanted him to tell her that it had been good. That he was glad they’d done it. She wanted him to hold her. She wanted him to reassure her. Wrap his arms around her.
The panicky desperation inside of her embarrassed her. But there was nothing she could do about it. It was insistent and very real.
And very virgin of her, she supposed.
So she just stayed where she was lying, and forced herself not to grab onto him, forced herself not to say anything.
He got up off the bed, he still didn’t say anything, and he went into the bathroom and closed the door. Well shit. Was she supposed to get up? Was she supposed to leave? Her car was here. Is that what he wanted her to do? Collect her clothes? Half of them were in the other room.
She wasn’t going to cry. She was not going to cry.
Oh, except she was going to cry, so she bailed out of the bed as quickly as possible, hand over her mouth as the whole last…
Two weeks, really, crashed in on her. Everything.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t cried, but she felt like everything was coming to a head, and she was losing it.
She stood by all of her decisions. From taking the hike to begin with, to taking the classes from Zane, to sleeping with Zane, but it didn’t mean they didn’t leave her feeling bruised and wounded.
She stumbled out of his bedroom and into the living room, where she picked her T-shirt up off the floor, but then couldn’t find her bra.
“Goddamnit,” she muttered as she wandered around the room looking for the bra.
“It’s up there.”
She turned and saw Zane standing in the doorway. She followed where he was pointing, and saw that the bra was hanging on a light fixture in the living room.
“Oh,” she said.
“I can get it,” he said.
“I’m just trying to get out of your hair,” she said.
He met her gaze, and walked across the room, directly toward her, his movements intent and intense. Then he wrapped his hand around the back of her head and pulled her toward him. Kissing her. Deep and hard. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“You didn’t say anything,” she said, her voice sounding small.
“I know. I’m sorry. I fucked that up. I just didn’t know what to say. I don’t usually have conversations afterward.”
“Yeah. Me either,” she said.
He looked at her like she had grown a second head.
Oh, this was just terrible. Her bra was hanging off a light fixture, she was about to have a nervous breakdown, and she was going to have to admit to him that he was her first.
“I’ve never had sex before. I mean, I had never had sex before.”
He didn’t say anything. He nodded. Very, very slowly.
“But I really wanted to be with you. I do understand that you’re not looking for a relationship. I understood that weeks ago. I’ve been trying… I think I felt the same way that you did. I really didn’t want to make things weird here, and this thing… It would be easier if I had slept with Walker.”
“You are not sleeping with Walker,” he said, his voice hard and feral.
“I don’t want to sleep with Walker. But it was intense. I think I’m kind of intense. And I just felt like, given the fact that this can’t be anything other than sex… It was probably going to be a bad idea.”
“Probably,” he grunted.
“But I don’t regret that it happened.”
He sighed, the sound heavy and regretful. She was just waiting for him to turf her out. But instead, he grabbed a hold of her, picked her up, and carried her back toward the bedroom.
She wiggled a little bit as he laid her down in the bed, and wrapped her tightly in the sheet, and then the top blanket.
“Just stay there,” he said.
She blinked rapidly, trying to figure out what on earth he was doing.
Then she heard him making noise in the kitchen.
Slamming things, opening up cupboards, and closing them.
She just stayed in her blankets, because he had wrapped her up so tightly, not that she couldn’t wiggle out, but she… Didn’t want to. His brand of gruff, reluctant care was definitely strange, but it was deeply Zane.
As was the fact that he hadn’t told her what he was doing.
Or given her any idea what he wanted from her.
Annoying man.
She stared up at his ceiling, counted the knots on the different beams, waiting to see what he was going to do next.
And then the last forty-five minutes kept replaying themselves over and over in her mind.
The way that he had kissed her, touched her, consumed her, the way that it had felt for him to be inside of her.
She felt an overwhelming wave of grief that she might never experience it again.
Which was… Not great. That definitely wasn’t great.
Zane appeared in the doorway again, shirtless, holding a tray with food on it. “I thought you might be hungry.”
They had just eaten burgers not two hours ago, and now he was bringing her… A grilled cheese.
Her heart clenched tight. He had wrapped her in a blanket and made her a grilled cheese sandwich.
He was taking care of her.
The only way that he knew how. Making sure she was warm, wrapping her so tightly she didn’t get away, and feeding her.
It was almost cute.
And a little bit sad.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.” He deposited the tray on her lap, and she wiggled herself into a sitting position, extricating her arms from the blanket.
She actually found that she was a little bit hungry. Apparently, sex could really stimulate an appetite.
“This is good,” she said after she took a bite.
For some reason, she found tears prickling her eyes, and she was irritated with how much crying she had done lately.
It was like everything inside of her was being stirred up, brought to the surface, and demanding attention. That meant demanding her emotions.
But she couldn’t remember the last time someone had made a grilled cheese sandwich for her.
She couldn’t really remember the last time anyone had made anything for her.
Other than going out to a restaurant. She and Marlowe had dinner together often enough, but Marlowe wasn’t really a cook and generally relied on the restaurant at the hotel, and why wouldn’t she?
When Marlowe came over to Cara’s house, sometimes Cara cooked, but a lot of the time they went out to dinner in town.
At home, she had been the one to cook for a very long time. She could remember her dad smiling in the kitchen, humming a tune, and making her a plate of nachos or some chicken and instant rice.
She took another bite of her sandwich.
“So,” he said, standing in the corner of the room like he was a little bit afraid to get too close to her. “Why hadn’t you ever done that before?”
“Zane,” she said. “Are you… trying to get to know me?”
“I feel like I should know about this. I… Cara, I am deeply aware of the fact that I’m older than you, and that I am a lot more… Messed up than anyone, really, not just you, but you specifically. That was a big concern that I had about this and…”
“Oh, so you just want to not feel guilty?”
“No. Fuck that. I don’t care about feeling guilty. What’s one more bad feeling?” His gaze was intense, and his logic was… Well, it wasn’t unreasonable. She understood that, all things considered.
“Okay… Then what are you looking for?”
“I just want to know. I just want to know what the situation is and understand it. That’s all.”
“Well… My dad died when I was thirteen. It was horrible. Because he was the one who was really holding everything together. He was the one who was taking care of my mom as she started to have… quirks. That was what he called it. When she would forget what day it was, or my birthday, or other things that started to really stand out and seem alarming. He covered all of that. He helped keep the house clean, and he was so cheerful, because she couldn’t be sometimes.
And then when he was gone, there was just nothing there.
Nothing between my mom and me, and the fact that her health was only going to get worse.
My brother was already out of the house, it was just the two of us.
I fell into taking care of her, because it was something I wanted to do, but also something I had to do. ”
He looked away. “I’m sorry about your dad. I didn’t know about that.”
“It’s okay.” She smiled. Because they already knew what that meant. It’s okay, but no, it’s not. It’s okay, because nobody asked, and you have to keep on living no matter how terrible the thing is, but it’s really not okay, because how could it ever be normal or fine to lose something like that?
“So you… You just took care of your mom from the time you were thirteen years old?”
“You were alone at thirteen.”
“It’s not a contest, Cara.”
“I know.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “But…things were more normal until I was halfway through high school. Then it started to get more difficult. By the time I was a senior, I was home taking care of her. That was when things really started to progress, but if it had been that bad when I was a child, I know that my brother and Marlowe would’ve moved in.
She wasn’t diagnosed with dementia yet, so we didn’t really know what was happening.
I think my dad was scared, and his response to that was to just try to cover up all the signs.
So… That left me with my mom, who was getting steadily worse, and a mystery. ”
“That’s way too much for a kid to handle.”
“Yeah. But you know as well as anybody that nobody asks if you’re old enough to handle tragedy.
It just happens sometimes. Losing my dad was a shock, like what you went through.
Everything was normal, and then he was gone.
It was a heart attack. But I never saw him.
Not after he died. With my mom, it wasn’t a shock.
I had years and years of losing her. Slowly, in increments.
I’ve experienced both things. I don’t recommend either.
I don’t think there’s an easy way to lose a parent. ”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t think there is.”