37. Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Seven
CALEB
We walk back down the ridge in silence. Bear trots ahead of us, weaving between the dogwoods, checking back every few strides. Regan is beside me. Close enough that her shoulder brushes mine on the narrow path, close enough that I can smell her shampoo over the woodsmoke and the October leaves.
She hasn’t let go of the cards. They’re in her jacket pocket, one corner sticking out, the blue lines visible.
The trail drops through the lower meadow toward the creek crossing.
She knows where we’re going. She’s walked this path to the Airstream a dozen times, for Bear’s treatments, for the late nights when his condition spiked and she came running.
But those visits were professional. Clinical.
She was the vet, and I was the difficult client, and the Airstream was just a place she worked.
She’s going to see it now as the place I live. The mat on the floor. The bare walls. The single shelf with two books, a tin mug and a flashlight lined up with military precision.
Except the mat isn’t there anymore.
My pulse picks up. I built the bed three days ago.
Sanded the frame in the workshop, dovetailed the corners the way my uncle taught me.
Carried it piece by piece through the narrow door and assembled it inside, Bear watching from the corner.
A proper bed. A mattress from the hardware store in Macon County, still wrapped in plastic until last night when I made it up with sheets I bought at the same time, standing in the bedding aisle feeling completely out of my depth.
I built a bed because I’m tired of punishing myself. And because if she ever stood in my home, I wanted it to look like a man who was trying.
The Airstream appears through the trees. Silver and rust in the October light, the workshop to the left, the fire pit cold, the clothesline empty. Bear pushes through the door, which I left ajar.
“He thinks he owns the place,” I say.
“He does,” Regan says with a smile.
She’s looking at the Airstream. Taking it in. The outdoor shower, the water tank, the overturned bucket I use as a step. She’s seen it before, but she’s seeing it differently now, and I can tell because her face goes soft, and I can hardly bear to look.
“Come in,” I say.
The door swings open. She steps up, ducks her head, and stops.
She’s looking at the bed.
“Caleb.”
My name in her mouth. Quiet. Not a question.
“I built it,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. “Last week.”
She touches the frame. Runs her fingers along the headboard, the sanded edge, the dovetail joint in the corner. Her hand stops there, on the joint, and she presses her thumb into it the same way I watched her press her thumb into the fold of the card.
She turns and looks at me. Her eyes are wide and searching my face, and she says, “You said you wanted to marry me. That night, before prom. You told me you wanted to marry me.”
The air leaves my lungs. “Yeah,” I say.
“Do you still?”
The Airstream’s eight feet wide. Bear’s curled on the floor between us, his chin on his paws.
The October sun comes through the small window over the stove and catches the dust and turns it gold.
And Regan’s standing in front of me with her hand on the bed I built, asking me the only question that matters, and I have to answer it with the truth because I don’t have anything else left.
“I never stopped,” I say. “Not for a day. Not when I was angry. Not when I thought I hated you. Not in Kandahar, not in the field hospital, not on the mat on the floor of this Airstream staring at a photograph that I was wrong about for ten years.”
My voice breaks, and for once, I let it.
“You are the first thing I see when I close my eyes. You are the last thing I think about before the nightmares come. I wrecked everything, and if you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life earning back the time I stole from us.”
She crosses the two feet between us. Puts both hands on my face. Her palms are warm and steady, and I’m shaking under them.
“You don’t need to earn anything,” she says. “You just need to stay.”
She kisses me, her mouth finding mine with a patience I don’t deserve, the patience I’ve been trying to learn from a dog, for fuck’s sake.
*
REGAN
He kisses me back like he’s scared I’ll disappear. His hands come up to my waist, and there’s a shake in them. Caleb, who rebuilt a tractor engine without flinching, whose hands are the steadiest things on this ranch when he’s working, is trembling against my mouth.
“Hey,” I say, pulling back enough to look at him. “I’m here.”
“I know.” His voice is rough. “Give me a second.”
I give him more than a second. I stay exactly where I am, my hands on his face, his forehead against mine, and I let him breathe.
The Airstream is tiny. I’ve been inside it before, during Bear’s worst night, but I wasn’t looking then.
I was focused on the dog, on the IV drip, on the vital signs.
Now I look. The single shelf. The two books.
The tin mug. Everything squared and precise, a life stripped to necessities by a man who didn’t believe he deserved more than the minimum.
And the bed.
He built a bed. The frame is rough-sanded oak, dovetailed at the corners, and it fits the Airstream like he measured it six times.
The sheets are dark blue and they’re new, still creased from the package.
He made the bed before he pinned the cards to the posts.
He built somewhere for me to be, and then he stood on a ridge and let me decide whether to come.
This man.
“The bed’s nice,” I say.
He makes a sound that’s close to a laugh. “You’re reviewing the furniture.”
“I’m a practical woman.”
“I noticed.”
His mouth is close to mine. His hands are still on my waist, and the shake is easing. His thumbs are moving in slow circles against my ribs. My whole body is tuned to those two points of contact, the warmth of his palms through my shirt, the rough drag of his calluses.
“Caleb.”
“Yeah.”
“Take me to bed.”
He doesn’t move. His eyes search my face. Looking for doubt. Looking for hesitation. Looking for any sign that I’m here for the wrong reasons.
He won’t find one.
“You sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure.”
He picks me up. Not dramatically, not a sweep, just his hands shifting to my hips and lifting me onto the mattress in one clean movement.
The bed creaks once then settles. He looks at me, flat on my back on the sheets he bought, in the bed he built, in the home he’s been punishing himself inside for years, and his face is so open, so wrecked, that I have to reach for him.
“Come here,” I say.
He comes.
His body covers mine, and the weight of him presses me into the new mattress, and it’s good, it’s so good, the solid mass of him, his chest against mine, his hips settling between my thighs. He braces himself on one arm and traces the line of my jaw with his other hand.
“Regan.” He doesn’t need to say more, his dilated pupils are speaking for him.
I pull my shirt over my head, then take my time unbuttoning his. My fingertip traces the line of his scars. A puckered line along his ribs. He goes still as I lean up and press my mouth to the scar on his ribs.
The sound he makes is low and broken. His hand goes to the back of my head and holds me there, his fingers threading through my hair, and I feel his chest expand under my lips. One breath. Two.
“You don’t have to,” he says.
“I know.”
My bra comes off next. His mouth drops to my collarbone, my throat, the curve of my breast, and his hand cups the other one, his thumb dragging across the nipple until I arch up off the mattress. He watches that. Watches my face. Does it again, slower.
“Caleb. Don’t tease. You always tease.” I actually let out a groan.
“I’m not teasing.” His mouth moves lower. “I’m taking my time.”
His jeans get kicked off and mine follow.
I pull down his briefs, letting my fingers wrap around his swollen cock.
He takes my hand off him, tears down my panties, then pulls me closer.
And then it’s just skin, the October air cool on my back and his body warm against my front.
His hand slides between my thighs, and when he finds me wet and ready, his forehead drops to my shoulder.
“Fuck,” he whispers. “Regan.”
His fingers move. Slow. Deliberate. He knows what he’s doing, he’s always known, and my hips lift against his hand. Two fingers inside me, his thumb on my clit, steady and patient until he can’t be patient anymore. The thumb presses down harder, the fingers work faster.
“There,” I say. “Right there. Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t stop. His mouth is at my ear, and his breath is rough, and his fingers are working me toward something that’s building fast, faster than I expected, and I grab his arm and hold on.
“Look at me,” he says.
I look at him. His face is inches from mine. His pupils are blown wide, his jaw is tight, and he’s watching me with an expression that makes me more turned on than seems humanly possible. When I come my pussy squeezes his fingers so tight he gasps.
He kisses me through it.
As soon as I can think again, I reach for him. He’s hard against my thigh and he shudders when I wrap my hand around his cock. I spend some time working my hand up and down his shaft, feeling him pulsing under my skin. He groans like he can’t take it anymore.
“Inside me,” I say. “Now.”
He reaches for his jeans. Finds the condom. Rolls it on with hands that are still shaking.
He nudges the head of his cock against my entrance and my fingernails dig into his butt, willing him to go further.
He grins, nibbles my neck, all the while teasing me, then suddenly pushes inside me and the relief, the blessed, fucking relief.
Every glorious inch of him is inside me, and I can’t get enough of this man and his incredible body.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Yeah.” My voice is wrecked. “Move.”
He moves. Slow at first, deep, his hips rolling against mine. One hand braced by my head, the other gripping my hip. His mouth is open, his breathing is ragged, and he’s looking at me, not closing his eyes.
“Harder,” I say, and he gives me harder. “Much, much harder.”
The bed he built holds. The frame creaks with each thrust, and I want to laugh because he built this, he sanded the joints, and now he’s testing the structural integrity, and I am losing my mind underneath him.
A laugh escapes. He catches it. Looks at me. The corner of his mouth lifts.
“Something funny?” he says between thrusts.
“You built me a bed.”
“Seemed like the right call.”
“It was,” I say, pulling him closer, deeper. “It was the right call.”
The laughter fades as the pace picks up. His hand slides under my thigh, changes the angle, and my head goes back, and the laugh becomes a moan. He buries his face in my neck.
“Regan.” My name again. Like a prayer. Like a promise.
The second orgasm builds slower, deeper. He feels it when I start to tighten, and his thrusts get harder, his breath fracturing, and I hear him say my name once more and then I’m gone.
“Your turn,” I say, but he shakes his head.
“Let’s really put this bed through its paces.”
He flips me over and pushes me up until I’m flush against the headboard and his body is pressed against my back. His hands play with my breasts, his tongue traces up and down my neck, and his cock presses against my butt.
“I need you inside me,” I say.
“Your wish is my command.”
There’s no teasing this time. He pushes into me hard and fast, and my hands grip the bedframe, and my head tips back, searching for his mouth that meets mine and kisses me hard. His muscles tense.
“Regan, I’m so close.”
“So am I.”
“Again?” he says, laughing, then moving his fingers down onto my clit.
“A…ag…” I can’t finish the word.
“Fuck,” he says as I come on his cock, tensing, squeezing, and causing him to push deep and hold his position. “Fuck, I’m going to…”
“Come hard inside me, Caleb Callahan.”
Whether it’s me saying his name, or the fact my pussy is still clenching around him, I don’t know. But he lets out a low moan, his body seizing, and he pounds me so hard that when he comes, it’s like an out-of-body experience.
“Well,” I say, when our breathing’s calmed enough to speak.
“Well,” he says. His body is still pressed against mine, hot and sticky, our arms tangled, him still inside me, neither of us wanting to break apart.
Eventually, he slips out of me, and plants a series of kisses down my neck, and pulls me down onto the bed beside him. His chest is still heaving. His hand finds my hand on the pillow and laces his fingers through mine, and holds on.
From the floor, Bear sighs. The long, contented sigh of a dog who has decided everything is exactly as it should be.
I press my mouth to Caleb’s temple. His pulse hammers against my lips.
“Stay,” I say.
His fingers tighten in mine.
“I’m staying,” he says.
The October light comes through the window and lands on the bed he built, and his breathing slows against my skin, and the Airstream is small and warm and ours.