Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Avery Jane
In my bathtub under the spray of the shower, I washed Dixon, attending to the ridge and rise of every muscle with soapy hands and caressing fingers.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, rubbing a bar of soap over his stomach, “for trusting me.”
“I do trust you, AJ. It’s me I don’t trust.”
“Why?”
“You have to ask?”
“Yeah, I mean, I know why you would say that, but you’ve been sober a long time. Don’t you know yourself well enough now to trust that you won’t relapse?”
“People can go years without a drink or a hit, and then somethin’ shitty happens or they have a bad day, and it starts all over again. The fear will last the rest of my life. And it’s not just drugs I’m afraid of. It’s the anger. It’s always there.”
“Anger at your father?”
“Yeah. Both of ’em.”
“Both?”
“Noah Lee ain’t my dad. Not biologically. I think I’ve known it my whole life.”
He’d hinted at it more than once, but this was the first he’d said it out loud. “Your mama told you this?”
“No,” he said, “she’s skirted it since the day I was born.
I’ve suspected it for a long time, but when I came home a few weeks ago, that first time I saw Merv and gave her the orange flowers, it was in her eyes.
It’s time for me to come right out and ask her to tell me who I belong to. Where I belong.”
I was quiet as I contemplated what he’d said, but I kept washing. His fantastical story about the magic man flitted through my mind, but finally, I turned him and rubbed the bar of soap over his back and hips. I knew he’d tell me more when he was ready.
“What are these tattoos?” I asked, chasing the dark lines inked between his shoulder blades with a fingertip. “What do they mean? When did you get them?”
He pushed into my touch as I traced the image of a broken human heart on his back, the arteries left frayed and bleeding. “The one you’re touchin’ is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a broken heart.”
“I can see that.” I swatted his ass playfully. “But who’s it for? Kel?”
“Naw. Don’t get me wrong. I loved Kel. She gave me Stu, and she was a friend to me when no one else in the world was, but we didn’t love each other. Not like that. We were just two people—two friends—caught up in somethin’ they didn’t know how to get out of.
“No,” he said, “the heart’s for Stu. After I left him with Bax, I wandered a while but eventually headed up to Alaska, and I got a job on a halibut boat. I saved most of what I made to give to Bax for Stu, but with my first paycheck, I paid for the tattoo.
“I put it on my back, ’cause at the time, I thought I could move on from the pain of leavin’ Stu behind.
I wanted the evidence that I loved him to be part of me forever, but I knew if I had to look at it every day, it would be a temptation.
To use again or to come home when I wasn’t ready.
I wasn’t sure which, but I knew both would hurt.
“But I was dead wrong.
“I thought about that kid every day. I went to bed every night with a sour stomach ’cause I couldn’t forget him.” Dixon went quiet for a minute. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was seeing in his head, but finally, he said, “I thought about you too.”
“You thought about me?”
“Yeah. You’re gonna laugh, but I couldn’t remember your name. I tried and tried, but it was like my brain wanted to protect you from me. It got so bad, the need to remember you, that I almost called my sister after years of unreturned messages. I probably should have.
“I remembered your laugh, though, and your hair. And your eyes. Your eyes have been hauntin’ me for a long time.”
Pressing my cheek against his back, I leaned into him. “I thought about you too. There’s never really been a time when you weren’t in the back of my mind. I think I’ve compared every guy I’ve ever dated to you.”
“Why would you do that? There’s no way I measured up.”
This time, I pinched his ass, but then I couldn’t resist, and I let my hand caress the taut, rounded muscle and wander down his strong thigh.
“Sorry,” he said, “I’m not tryin’ to talk down about myself, but I was homeless and jobless for a long time, and that’s not even mentionin’ the drugs.”
“Yeah, but I don’t measure a man’s worth by his job or his house. I’ve looked for somethin’ else from men my whole life.”
“What’s that?” he asked, turning to face me. He removed my hands from his hips and placed them on his chest, and right then and there I fell in love with the feeling of my fingertips digging into his pectoral muscles and the way the hair there tickled my skin.
I peeked up at him, blinking away the spray of the shower, but he angled his body to shield me from it.
“Creativity. Imagination,” I said. “I have this weird curiosity about the world, the earth, and when I’m with someone, I always wonder if they feel it too.
It’s not somethin’ adults seem to think about, like it got lost as they grew older.
My number-crunching accountant mother certainly didn’t, and growin’ up, its absence in my life was loud.
“Gran’s flowers and your stories when we were kids filled the void. I feel it now. And I know you do too.”
“Yeah, I do. I think it’s ’cause of how I came up.
I was always curious, and when things started to get dark in my life, the curiosity didn’t go away.
It changed and morphed—I sought answers to different questions—but it never left me.
And now that I’m sober and learnin’ how to survive life without drugs or alcohol, I lean on it.
Y’know? Almost like another coping mechanism.
The stories in my head get me through hard moments or sleepless nights.
They help me process the world around me. ”
I smiled and nodded, because I knew exactly what he meant, but when he bent down, licked the water running between my breasts, and lifted me into his arms, I moaned and wrapped my thighs around his waist.
“Your voice and the sound of your laugh did that for me too,” he said.
“I carried it with me, and when things got bad, I’d concentrate really hard and pull up the memory.
Sometimes, alone in the dark, I’d let myself feel it—that tickle in my stomach—and I’d laugh, too, like you were right there with me. ”
“I was there,” I said, and I slid my arms behind his neck and pressed my lips against his. “And I dreamt about you too. I used to wake up with the sounds of us runnin’ through the woods, laughin’ and chasin’ each other, playing at the edges of my dreams. Those were always good days.”
In a rough, uncertain voice, he said, “I love you, Avery Jane. I think I always have.”
I nodded, hoping the conviction of what I was about to say would give him confidence too.
“I still remember the first time I saw you, standin’ in the middle of Old Fish Creek Road, drippin’ lake water and wearin’ nothin’ but your little blue boxer shorts after you and your brothers had gone swimmin’. I was four years old. You were five, and I’ve loved you every day since.”
“You’re beautiful,” Dixon said.
Running his finger below my collarbone, he traced the thin line of my dress’s black spaghetti strap. Date night had finally arrived, and I felt relaxed, ready, and proud to be on his arm.
A week had passed in a sex-fueled haze. When I imagined sex with Dixon, I really had underestimated him. The man was insatiable and so giving.
But we’d spent even more time reminiscing about our childhood and talking about what the future might hold for us both.
He talked a lot about Stu and his hopes for their future too.
Which always led back to sex because that hope was just so damn beautiful when it showed in his eyes. I couldn’t help but kiss him.
Just like now. He dipped his finger below my dress’s thin cotton fabric and let his skin slide over the swell of my breast slowly. My chest rose and fell rapidly as my breath sped.
Turning me a little, he checked out my ass, let out an appreciative “hmm,” then ran his hand down my hip and bunched the fabric in his fist. “I can’t wait to feel you pressed up against me later in this dress.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” I said, admiring the new navy button-down he’d bought in town and his fresh Wranglers. The way he fit into them gifted me with the most perfect view of his ass, other than when it was bare.
“You sure?” he asked, looking down at himself. “I haven’t bought brand-new clothes in a while. You look elegant, and I look like any other ranch hand, dressed for supper.”
“You’re perfect,” I replied when he lifted his eyes back to mine. “And if jeans are what you’re comfortable in, then they’re the sexiest pants on the planet.”
“You have a happy answer for everything, don’t you? You’re diabolically positive.”
I shrugged, grabbed my purse, then hooked my arm through his.
He chuckled. “C’mon, baby girl. Let’s go get us some dinner.”
“I’m not four, Dixon. You can’t call me baby girl anymore.”
Pressing me against the wall with one large hand, he locked my door with the other, smirked, then tucked his mouth into the crook of my neck. “Who says? I didn’t mean it like I said it when we were kids.”
He breathed me in and moaned, and the vibration of his voice on my skin made me wet. I rubbed my legs together while he licked me from collarbone to ear.
When he spoke again, his voice was deliciously low, rasping, and wanting. “I meant it like, ‘c’mon, baby girl, spread those pretty thighs wide for me so I can make you come before I feed you.’”
I moaned, too, and my legs parted just like he’d said.
His hand traced the curve of my hip, and he lifted my dress by its hem.
Raising it above my waist, his hand disappeared beneath my lacy underwear, and he licked his lips and bit them.
He rubbed rigid fingers between my pussy lips, smearing arousal over my clit and studying my face as he fingered me. Heat flushed my cheeks and I gasped.
“D-didn’t you say you made a reservation at Paulo’s?” I mumbled, nearly lost to the sensations his pumping hand between my legs caused.
“We can be a few minutes late,” he breathed. “Isn’t that what life’s all about? Livin’ every moment to the fullest?”
“You’re makin’ me insane,” I panted and thrust against his hand, chasing euphoria.
“No, ma’am. It’s you makin’ me wild right now in this dress.
Don’t blame me. It’s all your fault.” He pumped harder, and I groaned and fumbled with his fly, trying to tug the zipper down, but an orgasm rushed out from deep inside me.
My toes curled, scraping against the soles of my sandals.
My hands dropped lax at my sides, and I began to slide down the wall.
Dixon seized the opportunity to kiss me, holding me up, and my dress strap slid down my arm. My breast slipped out because in my attempt to be sexy for him, I’d chosen not to wear a bra.
“Fuck. I want inside you so bad right now, but I don’t have a condom. I’ve been too greedy for you, and we used ’em all up.”
My purse had fallen to my feet sometime between when he pushed me against the wall and when he made me come, but I nodded to it. “I do. In there, but if you want to fuck me bare, you can.”
He moaned again, pressing his forehead to mine.
“I take birth control because I get really bad period cramps, and the medication helps with that.”
“I won’t get you pregnant?”
I shook my head. “It’s as effective as a condom, and I’ve never had unprotected sex with anyone. Do you trust me?”
“I do,” he said as he lifted me, pressing my back to the wall again. “But do you trust me the same? There hasn’t been anyone since Kel, and I got tested at a free clinic in Oregon before I came home. I didn’t wanna bring any kind of sickness around Stu, but I wouldn’t blame you if—”
“I trust you.”
My legs slipped around his hips. I reached between us, unzipped his jeans, and pulled his cock free from his boxers. Hard, hot skin met wet and soft, and as he slid inside me, he cursed.
“Goddamn, AJ. It’s never felt like this. Nothin’s ever felt this good when I wasn’t high.”
“It’s you and me,” I whispered. “We fit together because we were meant for each other.”
He didn’t reply. He couldn’t because he was focused on the slide of his tongue in my mouth and the glide of his cock between my legs. He fucked me like he existed for that purpose alone, snapping his hips with every slow, languid pump inside me.
I was mindless, listening to the rough sound of his breath in my ear, the quiet thud from my elbow bumping the wall, and the scuffling of clothes over skin. All of it drove us higher, until it felt like all we were was a singular pursuit of release.
My body gripped his aggressively with every grunt and rasp of his breath, and my hands sought his bare skin wildly. I dug my fingernails into the backs of his arms below his shirt sleeves, trying desperately to pull him closer, so close he could crawl beneath my skin.
I begged him, “Come inside. Please, Dixon. Make me come.”
His hands slid over my ass cheeks, and he squeezed while he took my mouth again. I bit his lip hard enough when I came to make him hiss and kiss me deeper.
“Please.”
My last plea drew his eyes to mine, and he gazed into them and called out when he came. Mine fell shut. My body held his in safety as he released inside me.
“Damn, baby girl,” he whispered, breathless. “You ain’t as innocent as you make out to be.”
With one eyebrow arched, I shook my head slowly.
“We better go or else my hunger for food’s gonna turn into hunger for you, and we’ll never leave this house.”
“Doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me.”
“Maybe not, but I think your stomach begs to differ.”
My stomach rumbled loudly, proving him right, and I flashed him a pouting face, but when he kissed my cheeks, I sighed and melted into him.
He had also been right when he said I was a dreamer, but he’d just made every dream I’d ever had come true because, when his lips were on me and he was inside me with nothing between us, it was like he’d never left.
Like he’d stayed right here in Wisper with me, where he’d always belonged.