Heavy: A Contemporary Romance (25 page)

I followed her, shattering into a million pieces
– disintegrating into the air around us – breaking apart over and over again until I was nothing more than a fine mist. A mist that, like my physical self, was immediately and uncontrollably drawn back towards her, sucked into her body through her open mouth that now panted for air. I was inhaled into her lungs and flowing through her bloodstream.

My chest heaving, I fought to regain control of my own breathing. With our lower bodies still so intimately connected, I supported my upper torso using my elbows
. She had me inside her now, running through her veins. I licked along the curve of her neck, reveling in the taste of her – salt and sweat… and, most of all, me. I tasted
me
on her. It was a never-ending cycle – an exchange of life forces on a continual loop. It was hot, and sexy, and arousing, and… terrifying.

Cali

Thatch closed his eyes, trying to hide the look that had just flitted across his face
. Too late. With feelings this intense and emotions this connected, there was no place to hide.

What had started off as primal, lust-fueled fucking had intensified into something
else. Something tender and soul-destroyingly beautiful. It was too much – especially for him. Maybe for me, too. It was all happening too fast.

“Thatch?”
I whispered, forcing him to open his eyes to look at me again. “Did I lose you?”

“God, that was….”

“Intense.”

“Yes.”

“Too much, too soon?”

“Maybe.”

I sighed deeply as he rolled off me and headed to the bathroom – maybe to get some space to wrap his head around what just happened.

I felt the warm wetness of tears as they spilled from the corners of my eyes, and curled myself into a tight ball, the air
conditioning cooling my sweat-soaked skin.

I felt the bed dip behind me and strong arms engulf me.

“I’m sorry, California,” he rasped into my neck. “I’m just scared and overwhelmed.”

“Me too,” I whispered back.

I turned in his arms and pressed my forehead to his.

“You’re worried about getting in too deep and then me letting you down,” I stated softly.

When he didn’t answer immediately, I knew I was right.

He pulled me in tight to him, tucking my head under his chin.

“I’m more worried that if I don’t give us a chance, I’ll spend the rest of my life tortured by regret.”

“I won’t let you down, Thatch
. I promise. I know you’ve had people promise you that before, and you’ve been let down in the worst way by them, and that I can’t say anything that will help ease your mind. If you give us a chance, I promise I’ll show you. I’ll show you I can be trusted and we’re worth the risk.”

“I want to believe you so bad, Cali
. I want it so much I can hardly breathe. But what if I never trust you? What happens then?”

Thatch
cradled my face in his hands and tilted it up to look into his. His thumbs swept across the pools of moisture in the corners of my eyes.

“Tell me about the bulimia, Cali,” he whispered
. “Tell me everything that wasn’t in the video.”

“Can we move over to the side of the bed that’s not so…”

“Wet?” he chuckled.

“Yeah,” I smiled.

“My sweat looks good on you.”

“I bet I smell
great, too,” I countered facetiously.

“You smell perfect,” he replied
, sweeping the flat of his tongue up the side of my neck. “You taste even better.”

I moved myself over to the dry side and he scooted along behind me.

Now, we were back to being serious again.

“
What we’re doing now… sitting and talking while naked is something I never thought I’d ever be able to do. I’ve had body issues my entire life and the fact we’re sitting here like this is a testament to how far I’ve come recently. I know a lot of it’s connected to you, but I’d like to take a little bit of the credit – something else I would’ve never allowed myself to do in the past either.

“It probably began when my mother left us
. My dad dealt with it by throwing himself into his work and I dealt with abandonment issues on my own. Those only got worse when Tallulah came into our lives. I can’t really blame my dad. Well, not as much as I could anyway. He thought he was bringing me a mother and sister. All he did was gather up a collection of fucked-up individuals and force them to live together under one roof.”

I paused here to pull the sheet up over me
. I convinced myself it wasn’t because I was ashamed of my body but because the AC just kicked on again. Thatch snuggled down next to me to confirm this.

“I’m not making any excuse for her, but Lake had suffered for a long time at the hands of her mother before
Tallulah finally sunk her hooks into me. It might help to explain why Lake is like she is. She learned pretty quickly that it wasn’t too difficult to get her mother to focus on me over her.

“Long story short, my body issues turned into an obsession about my weight
. It sounds crazy now when I look back on it, but I used to weigh myself constantly and gaining so much as a single pound would put me into starvation mode. Starvation mode would last one to two days, and I became really good at hiding it from Rose our housekeeper. I would hide food in my lap and throw it away or say I’d eaten a big lunch. A girl at school introduced me to baby food and told me it was a good way to get essential nutrients without really eating. But not eating solid food for two days always lead to bingeing, and then bingeing lead to guilt and shame and, in the end, the one pound had turned into three or five and the cycle started all over again.”

“What about your stepmom
? Didn’t she notice you not eating?” Thatch asked.

“She noticed the bing
eing and definitely noticed the added five pounds. When I was sixteen, she taught me how to get rid of the empty calories after a full-on binge.”

“Fuck, Cali…”

“In her defense, although why I’m even trying to defend her at all beats me, she had no idea I’d been doing the binge-starve thing for about a year. In her mind, she thought she was giving me a quick tip to use every now and then, if I ever over-indulged. And, for the next year or so, it was a tip I only used every now until I went too far. At that time, I wasn’t throwing up after every meal, but only after I binge-ate things like cake, and chocolate, and chips. After the kidnapping is when I really started to abuse my body. I was having these nightmares and sometimes wouldn’t sleep for days. The fact my parents refused to pay my ransom just added another layer to my pile of abandonment issues and I transferred all of my anxieties to food. For about a year, I wasn’t just purging the empty calories… I was starving and then eating the contents of the fridge before emptying the contents of my stomach.

“Then
, the guilt would crush me and the only way to recover from it was to completely numb myself any way I could.”

“Sex, drugs
, and alcohol,” Thatch muttered under his breath.

“The alcohol numbed my body
, and coke numbed my mind and let me fly out of myself. It let me be someone else for a while. It took about eight months before I finally realized that ‘someone else’ was not who I wanted to be. The string of one-night stands started happening about six months before I met you. It was my rock bottom. I just didn’t care – about myself – about anything. And then I met you… and I started caring again.”

“Oh, California,” Thatch said, pulling me in even closer to him
. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know I’ve only been clean for three months, but you also need to understand that I wasn’t abusing for years and years
. I mean, I was where my eating disorder was concerned, but the substance abuse was just a side effect and I hit my rock bottom so quickly. I’m not an alcoholic or a drug addict, but I am bulimic. I still get nervous around food, but it’s getting better every day. Your father and Thaddeus have helped me more than I ever believed possible. Last night you said you had feelings for me… but that you hated the fact you did. I get it.”

“I also said I wasn’t go to ask you to stay in Vegas, yet here I am chasing after you like some sap from a rom-com asking you to come back with me,” Thatch sighed.

I smiled slowly. “Do you still want me to come back to Vegas with you?”

“Yes
. It terrifies me, but I haven’t changed my mind.”

“I just have
to hope that one day, if you give me a chance, you’ll eventually not hate yourself as much for caring about me.”

“I hope so too, Cali.
I really hope so, too.”

Cali

It was noon by the time I opened my eyes
. My entire body ached in the most delightful of ways from all the activities of last night. Our talk had emotionally drained me, but the sex marathon that had followed it had exhausted me in a completely different way. Deliciously so. I smiled and stretched, slightly disappointed to see I was alone in the bed.

It then registered that the T.V. in the other room was on and Thatch must be with Thaddeus
. Throwing on my yoga pants and the T-shirt I’d been wearing last night, I made my way into the living room.

Thatch was on the floor doing push-ups, with Thaddeus
lying on his back, holding Mr. Bunny to his chest.

“Cali, Cali, Cali!” Thaddeus cried,
jumping off his dad and running over to me and hugging me around the legs. “You slept late! Daddy said we had to be weally quiet so not to wake you up.”

“He did, did he?”
I looked over at Thatch as he stopped his exercising to give me a lopsided grin.

“Good morning,” he smiled.

“It certainly is,” I smiled back.

“It’s almost the afternoon
alweady!” Thaddeus added. “We went to the store and got bweakfast
and
lunch.”

“Awesome,” I said running my hand over his shaved head
. “I’m starving. I didn’t get a chance to tell you last night that I like your haircut too, angel.”

“Yeah, me and Daddy did it,” Thaddeus beamed up at me.

It was a buzz cut at the back and sides, but with a little quiff left right at the top and front. He looked completely adorable.

“Hey Thaddeus,” I fake-whispered to him
. “Have you looked out the back window yet?” I asked, pointing to the sliding patio doors at the back of the living room.

“No!” he exclaimed, running over and trying to open up the doors on his own
. Giving Thatch a wink, I went over and helped him.

He ran onto my small balcony and looked out through the railings.

“There’s a pool! You have a pool!” The kid was so excited he starting jumping up and down.

“I tell you what
. Let’s have something to eat and then maybe we can all go for a swim, yeah?”

“Can
we, Daddy! Can we? Please?”

“I think I might be up for that,” Thatch said
, coming out onto the balcony and putting his arms around me. “Though I can think of a few other things I’d rather do,” he whispered into my ear, nuzzling my neck with his nose.

“I hear you,” I said
, turning around and pulling his face towards mine.

I kept the kiss brief,
ever conscious of the PG-rated audience we had. Although, said audience was already running back into the apartment to look for his bathing suit.

“Is it okay for us to be doing this in front of him?” I whispered.

“It’s either that, or we have to get rid of him,” Thatch joked.

My stomach gave a low growl and we both laughed.

“I have an egg and cheese bagel with your name on it in the kitchen.”

“Thank God
. I was thinking about gnawing on your arm for a minute there.”

“If I didn’t need it next weekend, I’d offer it up willingly to you,” Thatch smiled, pulling me behind him and back into the apartment.

“Oh my God, I completely forgot about your competition next weekend! I mean, should I be there? I want to, but—”

“Of course
, you should be there. Fuck the press. When they find out we’re not quite the rebels-gone-wild they think we are, they’ll move on to bigger and more interesting things.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, taking a seat at the counter as he pulled my sandwich from the microwave.

“Dead sure. Are you sure you want to get involved with someone who has a kid and all the responsibilities that come with it? You’re only twenty, California. I know you’re crazy about my son and he’s crazy about you, but expecting you to be a mother-figure at your age is probably a little selfish of me.”

“
You’ve
been doing it – and very well – since you were seventeen. You aren’t much older than me now. Honestly, Thatch, being part of a family is all I’ve ever dreamed of. I just hope that all the media attention that our relationship is going to attract isn’t going to ruin any of it for us.”

“Bring it on,” he smiled, kissing me on the nose
. “We’ll handle whatever they throw at us – together.”

“Talking of family,” I said after I swallowed a mouthful of breakfast sandwich
. “I have to go see mine today. My dad gets home around seven, and I need to be there when he arrives. It will be the family dinner from hell. You guys going to come with me?”

“Do you want us there?”

“I came here determined to face them alone… but… now that I’m here, I think I might need the moral support.”

“Well, you’d better call ahead and tell them to set two more places
at the table then.”

Thatch

We managed to spend a couple of hours at the pool before the media
sharks caught up to us again. It took a text from my dad to alert us though. Tabloid reporters are sneaky like that. Blurry photos of the three of us taken through the fence and from a distance were already up on the Internet before we even got back upstairs to the apartment. I guess when they saw Thad and I leaving Vegas last night, it hadn’t taken them long to work out where we were headed.

“How are you staying so calm?” California asked as she paced up and down her living room.

Thaddeus was taking a nap, completely worn out from the pool activity.

I grabbed her by the hand as she passed me
and pulled her down next to me on the couch.

“I’m about to meet your parents in a few hours, babe
. I’m anything but calm.”

“Well
, you look calm. Stop looking so damn calm,” she snapped, punching me in the arm.

I laughed and hugged her in tight to my side.

“They got a photo of Thaddeus doing a back flip into the pool. Do you know how stoked he’s going to be when he sees it?”

This made her smile.

My God, she was beautiful when she smiled.

Putting a finger under her chin
, I tilted her face up and kissed her softly.

“I’m going to give you two choices,” I said once her lips were swollen and he
r face flushed. “One, we discuss the strategy for meeting your dad here, or two, we take it to the bedroom.”

“Oh, definitely the bedroom,” she replied
breathlessly.

I stood up quickly, reached down,
and then threw her over my shoulder, fireman style.

“Just so you’re aware, Miss Huntington, option two involves absolutely no discussion whatsoever of your parents.”

“I figured as much,” she giggled, grabbing hold of my ass as I carried her down the hall. “Why do you think I chose it?”

“Well, I was hoping for the potential mind-blowing sex.”

“Oh, Mr. Reston, that’s just the expected bonus,” she laughed in reply as I threw her on the bed.