You’ll Be Sorry

Prologue

And so it begins.

They fall upon the bed in a tangle of limbs, him kissing her neck, her tugging at his shirt. Sighs and moans and gasps and giggles. It hadn’t even started as a date, more like an encounter, and yet it’s ending exactly where both of them want.

His hands caressing down her arms, across her breasts. Her fingers, digging into the muscles of his back. The rasp of his groomed whiskers, the luxurious feel of her silky hair. More sighs and moans.

Rolling across the sheets. A thump of something, maybe his belt, maybe her phone, crashing to the floor. Both way too busy to care.

He can’t get enough of her lips. She can’t stop stroking the lean line of his flanks. Hard meeting soft, then a slight battle of wills as both seek the upper hand. He tickles her ribs. She nips his shoulders. He pulls her under. She rolls on top. He pins her hips, she bites his ear.

Around and around. A haze of white-hot lust, fresh discovery, and mutual abandonment.

Pillows kicked to the floor. Covers mangled. Until finally…

Collapsing into each other’s arms, a hot, breathless mess.

He might’ve started laughing first. Or maybe it was her.

“Didn’t really see that coming,” he confesses, tracing a lazy pattern down her arm.

She weaves her fingers into his as a show of agreement, because, honestly, who could’ve foreseen all that?

“Are you the love ’em and leave ’em type?” she asks, genuinely curious.

“Don’t have enough strength left in my legs.”

“I might not be walking steadily anytime soon.”

“You’ll just have to stay the night.”

“Awfully forward of you, don’t you think?”

He smirks, given their current state. With a deft move, he tucks her against him, her head on his chest, his arm around her shoulders.

“In the morning,” he whispers, “I will make you breakfast, and you can tell me all your secrets.”

“I don’t have any secrets.”

“Oh, good, neither do I.”

And they both laugh because they know it isn’t true.

First time he proposes, she whacks his shoulder.

“It’s barely been three weeks. Besides, I already told you, I’m not the marrying type.”

“Me neither. That’s what makes us perfect together.”

“More sex, less talking.”

“Are you using me for my body?”

“Aren’t you using me for mine?”

They fall into a pattern. Always his place, never hers.

Sometimes she stays three nights, sometimes three hours.

He likes it best when she’s around; she continues to insist on leaving.

Another month passes. Sometimes they talk into the small hours of the morning the way new couples do.

His job, her work. Did you hear about? Hey, isn’t it crazy what’s on the news?

But they both know their preferred method of communication, and as two young, healthy adults, they spend their time wisely.

He’s very charming. She’s scarily self-contained.

He proposes twice more with a diamond the size most women would find compelling.

She snaps the Tiffany box shut each time and shoves it back into his grasp.

But gradually…a slow melting. Until one middle-of-the-night session, still entwined beneath a twist of sheets:

He slides the ring onto her finger.

She doesn’t take it off.

He waits until morning, just to be on the safe side, then officially pops the champagne.

“To there never being any secrets between us,” he toasts.

And she smiles sadly, because she already knows that’s a lie.

Sometimes she wakes up screaming. Other times he finds her standing in the dark, looking out the bedroom window at nothing at all.

The nights she whimpers in her sleep, he shakes her back to consciousness. She clutches him desperately, like a drowning woman desperate for shore. She never talks. He learns to stroke her hair while practicing his patience.

Finally, one night: “You know you can tell me anything. Anything at all. It’ll be all right.”

“What would I have to say?” She looks him directly in the eye. “No secrets, remember?”

And then he’s the one smiling sadly, as he realizes the full weight of the silence between them.

Now he’s running, burning legs punching through knee-deep snow. Her awkward bulk is clasped desperately against his chest. His heart, pounding to the point of nearly bursting.

A trail of red dotting the white-blanketed wilderness behind them.

He staggers forward through the fierce blizzard, head down, shoulders rounded. Fighting against the wind, the stinging cold, the sheer intractability of Mother Nature. Must keep moving. Faster, farther, only hope they have left…

“No secrets no secrets no secrets,” he mutters in her ear.

But it’s already much too late for that.

He collapses into the snow, her limp body dragging him down.

He tries to rise to standing. Tries to pull her up with him.

In the end, exhaustion wins out, and he lies beside her, his form curled protectively around hers, as icy white flakes continue to pelt down, quickly covering the mound of their entwined bodies.

A man and woman.

A story of what might’ve been.