Everything Changes (22 page)

“Ro...” This time it wasn’t an endearment but a
warning. “Fuck…” I hummed around him and he gasped again. His hand fisted in my
hair, hips bucking upward shoving the length of him as deep into my throat as
he could go. I watched his face as he came. He tightly squeezed his eyes shut,
and opened his mouth in silent rapture. His entire body taut as he shuddered, warm
gushes of him flooding my throat.

I gasped and swallowed, licking my own lips when
his eyes cracked open to watch me.

“Ro,” he said again, his eyes still afire as they
watched my mouth despite his spent body.

He pulled me up to kiss me, and I was mildly
surprised that he didn’t hesitate to stick his tongue in my mouth.

“Wow,” he murmured against my lips, and I pulled
back to smile.

“I’ve definitely never done that in this tree
house before,” I teased.

Parker tilted his head to one side and made quite
the picture: chaotic hair, swollen lips, flushed cheeks. He licked his lips and
gave me that half smile I loved. “I love you…”

I arched an eyebrow at him and pinned him with
one look. “Are you saying that because of what I just did, or because you truly
do?”

I was teasing and he knew it. “A little of both,”
he admitted, sitting up as his hands reached for my thighs and he pulled me
forward to straddle him. “Now let me show you how much I love you.”

“By all means, Parker, show me.” I giggled when
his lips found my neck, and oh God did he show me.

The tree house had definitely seen better days,
but it didn’t stop us from rocking it a little. Parker thought it would come
crashing down and he’d have to explain to Rick what happened, but I assured him
if he protected me from the Sasquatch I was certain was lurking in the shadows
watching us go at it, I would protect him from Rick.

About the time I was putting my shirt back on, my
dad was calling for me.

“Thank God he didn’t come out here,” Parker said,
pulling his T-shirt over his shoulders, his cheeks still flushed.

“No kidding.” Once we righted our clothes, we
made our way back to the house in a comfortable silence.

My thoughts mostly revolved around the fact that
sex was no longer awkward. We were learning things about each other that I was
sure none of us had ever shared with anyone else or ever would.

We learned that sex was a lot like dancing. If
you moved with each other it worked. If you closed your eyes and felt the
music, your body moved. I did that and soon I was there with Parker, moving
with him, feeling him with me.

It was like being in love. Sometimes you just
closed your eyes and you fell. I fell that was for sure.

CHAPTER
11

Rowan
Jensen

Line

This describes the path of the motorcycle a rider
goes through: a section of the track or around a turn. Riders think hard about
the best lines to take, lines that can be used for passing and lines that can
be used later in the race when the track surface has changed.

July
21, 1997

The next night after work Parker showed up again.

This time he came to my bedroom window and threw
rocks at it only to crack the glass. “I saw that going differently,” he
explained, looking frightened.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, climbing out onto
the roof, ready to climb down the tree. It was an escape route I had used many
times over the years with
Addy
. “You’re not the first
person to break that window.
Addy
has broken it like
ten times.”

“Well, then get down here.” He smiled, holding
his hands out with a shrug. He was wearing a black hoodie, and he looked so
cuddly and cute. I just wanted to squeeze him. My dad wasn’t exactly excited
about me sneaking out every night, but he had to have known.

I eagerly skipped down the driveway towards
Parker. He stood by the tree at the end of the road with his dirt bike leaning
against the fence. The entire town was asleep, but Parker and I were just
getting started. The thought put my tummy into a spin and made my body tingling
again.

“Hey.” I smiled as I got close to him. There was
something alluring about the way his eyes looked in the moonlight framed by his
black plushy sweatshirt.

He handed me a helmet with a smile. “Hey.”

Parker watched carefully as I climbed behind him
on the back of his bike.

He was careful with me, but he still rode like a
pro in my mind, better than I ever did on a trail. He didn’t pin it until we
were about a mile from my house, and then he blipped the throttle once leaving
me clinging to that plushy sweatshirt, hoping I didn’t fall off the back.

With the light of the day fading, creating new
shadows and dark patches around us, the thoughts about what was in these very
woods spooked me a little, and I found myself holding on tighter.

I couldn’t help but smile when I felt his chest
shake with laughter at how tightly I clung to him. He said something but I
couldn’t hear it and instead hung on tighter. We got to a clearing and the moon
lit our path.

“I wanted to show you my tree house,” he said,
gesturing to a track in the distance with a few table jumps and hill climbs
where a few acres of trees had been cleared out last summer.

His tree house was a track. It was a place he
knew his lines, the routes he wanted to take, and the place where his actions
and decisions came naturally. Out there he didn’t have to hold himself in. He
was Parker O’Neil.

I laughed, taking in the sights before me, an
embedded and cultivated land he called his tree house. Parker straddled his
bike with his helmet in hand.

“I think my tree house holds good memories now,
don’t you?” I gestured south with a tip of my head.

With a light chuckle, Parker took his helmet
between his hands and slipped it over his head, the moonlight and shadows
dancing over the polished black and yellow paint. He reached his hands under
his chin to adjust his chin strap. “It holds some pretty awesome memories for
me too…but this place...” he sighed looking out at the jumps they had built
“...this place is a little glimpse into me.” His voice faded with each word,
and I had to strain to hear him. “And I wanted to share that with you.”

I watched for probably thirty minutes as he
soared through the air doing a series of freestyle moves where he would put his
hands on the front bars and then arch his back, keeping his knees tight against
the bike. He’d land that one and then shoot some thirty feet in the air again,
putting his front feet over the handlebars between his arms and then replacing
them before landing.

My favorite trick was the one where he grabbed
the front fenders and basically did a handstand on the bike before pulling it
back.

I couldn’t believe that he could do freestyle
like this and not crash.

When the front end almost took a nose dive
midair, he’d tap the back brake and even the bike out. He was a natural and
knew way more than I ever did, and he was doing all this under the light of the
moon. He looked so peaceful out there as the trees and time stood still, the
moon lighting his way.

He had a huge grin on his face when he finally
came back around to where I was sitting near the edge of the clearing wrapped
in his black hoodie.

He didn’t say anything until he pulled his helmet
off. “It feels good to be able to do that again.”

“How do you keep control like that and not slip
off the bike or lose it midair?”

Parker shrugged, leaning against the bike as it
made various noises while the engine cooled. The heat radiating from it warmed
me slightly. “It takes practice,” he said, gesturing to the clearing. “The
first time I ever attempted a jump I was probably six, and back then it was a
huge deal. Anyways, I was at some
moto
and watching
all these older guys going off ramp. So I decided to try it.”

“And did you land it?”

“Fuck no!” He laughed. “I thought I had it, but
then when I came down on the other side, I had no idea how to land it. The bike
nosedived midair and I went into the face of the jump and shattered my
collarbone. It was awful.” He giggled. “But I had a pretty cool nurse that fed
me chocolate pudding for a week.”

“Why?”

“Please, look at this face...” he made a pouty
face “...I had her eating from the palm of my hand.”

I couldn’t help but laugh too. Watching him now,
he seemed so confident I wanted to bury myself in him, wrap myself around every
curve of him, but I didn’t.

His smile softened when he knew I was watching
him drink from his water bottle. He seemed out of breath.

“Rough day?” I asked.

“Yeah, I spent the last six hours riding with
Jack in Belfair. Probably wasn’t a good idea, but I
gotta
practice.”

“Oh.” I breathed. “Here I was thinking it was
because of me,” I said, trying to be humorous about it.

Parker put the cap back on his water bottle and
tucked it away. “That too.” He smiled. “Let’s get out of here,” he said in that
gravelly, seductive voice with a glint of mischief in his eyes. He gestured for
me to get on the bike.

“Okay.” I smiled. “Where do you want to go?” I
asked, throwing a leg over the back of his bike after I put on his helmet. The
fact that I was wearing his helmet, a helmet he sweated in, and I wasn’t as
repulsive as it should have been. Instead, it was a turn on.

“We could go to my house,” Parker said, his voice
dropping a bit, his eyes getting even more hooded and soft.

I gulped, feeling my face get hot from the idea
of being at Parker’s house, in his room, alone. “Okay.”

We took the trail that led from my house to his.
It was one I didn’t know was there. It was a tight single track that looked
well maintained. Despite the little whoops and ruts, I was able to stay on the
bike but Parker was also riding safely with me on the bike. By simply shifting
his body weight around on the seat and a slight twist of the throttle, he was
able to control the bike through the single track trails without dumping the
bike or me.

The closer we got to his house, the more the
shivers set in.
 
Being in the seclusion
of the woods felt like there was no one around for miles, like there was no on
around at all.

Soon, the lights of a distant A-framed home came
into view. The hush of Stillwater Creek rustling in the background gave the
scene a peaceful but enticing atmosphere. For some reason I looked up, and the
sky was dark, spotted with millions of tiny stars, the moon high.

I didn’t pay too much attention to the house. My
focus was on Parker and the fact that I would soon be in his bedroom, alone,
with him.

He parked the bike in the driveway between his
truck and a silver Subaru. I took off my helmet and handed it to him. He did
the same and placed both helmets in the bed of his truck.

“This way,” he whispered, reaching for my hand,
eagerness in his eyes when I removed the helmet and set it on the bike like he
had done with his. “Come on.”

I placed my hand in Parker’s, slipping my fingers
in between his and squeezing them. “Is anyone home?” I asked, feeling a little
weird about going to his house. I hadn’t met anyone in his family aside from
Justin, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to meet Jack and Michelle, the two
people he spoke so highly of.

Parker smiled and poked his head down the hall
after he unlocked the door. “We’re all alone. Justin is with
Addy
at the movies, and Jack took Michelle to Seabrook for
the week.”

 
The
moonlight reflecting off the large windows in every room lit the inside just
enough so Parker didn’t turn on any lights. He guided me to his room at the end
of the long hallway. A stream of light came through the large floor to ceiling
window that overlooked the forest. Against the wall was his bed and a
nightstand. Across from that was a dresser with a television on it. Other than
that, the room was bare.

He sat down on the bed and held out his hand to
me. “We haven’t been alone like this since Moab.” I knew what he was hinting
at. The last two times we had been together it was rushed. Now, it appeared we
had time, time to explore and learn a little more.

“Please don’t knee me in the junk.” His smile was
bright even in the moonlight.

I laughed moved towards the bed. “Only if you
promise to pull my hair a little.”

“Oh, well,” he said slowly, “I think that can be
arranged…”

When I sat beside him, he looked down at me.
Neither one of us said anything. His arms moved into a stretch as he removed
his shirt, raising them over his head in elaborate gesture to show off his
muscles. “Did it work?” He grinned.

“Did what work?”

“My muscles,” he answered with a chuckle,
flexing.
 
“Wanna get naked now?”

I leaned into him, unable to control how cute I
found him when he did little things like that. “Yeah, getting naked sounds
pretty good actually.” I looked up at him from my lashes.