If I Break (24 page)

“I--I’m still going to have to leave.”

His voice is unyielding but soft, and it causes me to melt, his grip on my wrist gentle but firm enough to not allow me to run away, which was my absolute intention. I wish I could stop
him
from running away so easily. I replay his words in my head, trying to decipher the meaning, and in my clouded, emotional state I realize he’s trying to give me a choice. For once, he's not trying to use sex as a bandage or as a means of control or as manipulation. But I have to say his timing sucks.

I take a deep breath and command my voice to be steady. “I want to go to sleep,” My voice is raspy and somewhat harsh. I clear my throat and wipe away any vulnerability and sincerity. I want him to know that him giving me his body wouldn’t be a knife stabbing through me, that this is not about trying to keep him here--but that I need this, now. His guilt about it is not a priority to me now.

“Put me to sleep,” I say, sternly commanding my normal voice to return, and his eyebrow rises skeptically. I can tell he’s surprised. Before he can say anything, I attack his lips, this time without hesitancy, with a swiftness I think has caught him off guard and with a force I’m shocked I’m able to muster, considering the state I’m in.

I climb on top of him, entangling his body between my legs, and wrap my arms tightly around his neck, kissing him with an urgency I’ve never felt before. He pulls away this time, seeming to catch his breath, but he takes my face in his hands, searching my expression, his eyes finding mine—the tables have turned and he’s trying to figure out what it is I want. But I don’t have time for that; he’s trying to give me my last out, and I don’t want out, I want the one thing from him that makes me forget about everything else.

“What are you waiting on?” I ask, breaking the solemnness of this moment. Before a second passes, he takes my lips in his, countering my hectic kisses and frantic need with a passionate patience that my fake bravado isn’t ready for, an unhurried desire that causes my stiffness to melt away. His lips hold onto mine like he’s trying to pull me into him. His hands slowly start to remove my clothes, but his pacing makes me feel vulnerable, almost innocent. The hard fa
軋
de I’m trying to create is going to break, but I try to hold on. I break our embrace, snatch my shirt over my head, and reach to undo his pants, somehow successful even with my rapid, clumsy movements.

“Lauren!”

I ravish his lips to silence him, throwing all of my body weight on him, which causes us to momentarily fall back on the bed. I realize my pants are still on and I swiftly shimmy out of them. When I try to climb on top of him again, he grabs my waist, stopping my pace. His eyes are downcast and his lips pressed tightly together—he’s upset, but right now, I don’t care. The confusion on his face is unexpected, but I don’t want to know what it’s about.

I need to be distracted. My lips find his once more but, again, he's pulling me into that slow, sensual kiss that almost broke me before. I pull away. I rest my eyes on his chest—I can’t look at him. I work up my nerve to try again and kiss him hard, biting down on his bottom lip. This time he breaks our kiss, and my eyes can’t leave his face fast enough. There’s a glimpse of something I have never seen before, and I think I see heart, possibly disappointment and it stabs through me, but the expression is brief. Soon, his familiar wicked grin covers what was just there. His fingers slide between the lacy material on my hip and the skin there. He pulls it down, and I step out of it. Within a second, I’m on the bed, my arms above my head, trapped beneath his wrist. This is what I want. Lust—not love. Physicality—not intimacy.

He’s fucking me figuratively, and I want it literally. I don’t want to be made love to—that’s over. I can’t let him in that place, not with him leaving. I won’t. I go to suck his neck, and he moves. His finger glides down my arm, and I try to ignore the tingling that jolts down my back at his touch, it’s something I’ll have to forget. He grips my hands, holds them together, taking the flimsy thong of mine from earlier and ties it around my wrists. It’s tight, but I don’t say anything. I don’t want tenderness, anyway. I want him inside of me. I want to be exhausted mostly I want to forget. I want to forget this moment, that this could be or is goodbye.

When his lips find my neck, they stay there only briefly before his tongue glides down to the crook of it, sucking in the skin midway. His path is slow and tortuous, and I shift to stop his trail. His fingers ensnare my hair, forcing me to look at him, and I close my eyes, I won’t. I don’t want to see into him.

His lips are at my ear. “Open your eyes.” His voice is deep and stern, but I ignore him. I can’t look at him. I bite my lips and squeeze my eyes shut tighter, and soon his tongue finds its way inside my ear. My body involuntarily arches towards him; the place he knows causes me to give him complete control. My eyes open. I pray that the tears welling up don’t escape them. I try to focus on the waves of lust going through my body and not on the fact that after all this, he’s going to be gone. That is what I want to forget. I want to forget that I don’t want him to go. I feel his hardness pressing up against me. It's torture, and I’m growing inpatient. I want him inside.

“Now,” I demand, but it comes out more as if I’m begging, and I realize I’m helpless. I start to try to free my hands. His lips leave my ear, traveling down my neck, past my breasts, and when they reach my belly button I freeze as his tongue swirls around it. This isn’t what I want. I know now where he’s going with this, and it isn’t what I wanted.

I try to move my body away from him, but he holds me in place as his lips trail lower and lower. I try to lock my legs together, but he easily holds them open and in place, and his tongue starts to trace the one part of my body I have absolutely no control of. I can’t help but cry out.

“Cal. Cal, stop,” I pant. My mind is demanding that I do something to stop this, but my body is giving in to each stroke of his tongue, causing my thoughts and emotions to crash against one another, my moans of pleasure battling against my pleas for him to stop. This isn’t what I wanted. I cover my face as best I can with my arms as his tongue delves deeper inside of me. I try to inch away from him, and he grips my thighs tightly and pulls me to him. He goes more slowly, his pressure increasing, and my protests become shorter and inaudible. As my stomach tightens, he begins going faster, and I can barely catch my breath. I give in completely, and as I feel myself building to a climax, my legs trembling, I think of when we first met—our first kiss. I try to block these things out and focus on the absolute pleasure my body is feeling— no emotion.

But my mind isn’t giving in. I see the night he proposed and our wedding day. Then, suddenly, our first fight, the
first
time he left for days without calling. I see him walking out the door and me alone on the floor, and I envision getting a phone call from Dexter telling me he’s dead. And at that moment, my body gives in, experiencing a pleasure that momentarily overwhelms these terrible thoughts.

My body recovers and my legs stop trembling, an overwhelming sadness washes over me. I begin to catch my breath and recover from the eerie visions that are weighing on me. Now, more than anything, I want him to hold me. I want that slow, sensual kiss he gave me a taste of earlier, but he just undoes the thong on my wrist, goes into the bathroom and slams the door. I don’t know what to think or how to feel, my thoughts clouded. I rub my wrists that are now free and wonder what happens next. Is he just going to walk out? Is he going to say anything? He’s angry and I don’t know why
he
has any right to be angry. I put my t-shirt back on and hug my knees to my chest.

When he comes out, he leans in the doorway, his lips held between his teeth, arms folded. “That’s what you wanted, right?” he asks in a sardonic tone. He’s fully dressed again.

“What are you talking about?” I say, rubbing my temples, not wanting to look at him.

“To get off. That’s what you wanted from me. A last good fuck, right?” he snarls, leaving the doorway and grabbing his keys off the nightstand. I can’t believe he would say that to me.

“What? That wasn’t what I wanted!” Deep down I know it’s a lie. I didn’t want to feel him—I wanted to feel his body and he was trying to take me to a place I couldn’t go. I wanted him to give me something--to
not
think about him, to get away from all this. I know it’s wrong, but he’s the one fucking leaving at the end of all this.

“Yeah. You wanted me to fuck you but you couldn’t even look at me.” He laughs cuttingly, his hand resting on the back of his head. I open my mouth to respond, but I have no valid comeback.

“What do you want from me, Cal? What? You’re the one leaving. What do you want me to do? How do you want me to feel?!” I demand, getting angrier by the minute.

“I wanted you to let me in.” He says it so dejectedly it makes my heart break.

Why is he doing this? Why is he trying to take me to a place I have to leave in order to move on?.... But, I guess the reality is, he didn’t need to take me to that place. I’m already there living in it. Since the day I met him, I’ve been there, and he’s the only person I want to be there with.

I swallow my pride and get off the bed. He’s hurt and he can easily spurn me, but I still move toward him. When I reach him, he looks down at me, his hands now stuffed into his jeans. I place both my hands on his chest and force myself to look at him and I know that once I do, the flimsy wall I’ve tried to create around myself today is going to crumble. And when I look into his eyes, it does.

“You’re already in. You always have been and you always will be,” I say, unable to imagine how he can’t know this already. In the back of my mind, I wonder if this is a trick. Is this what he wanted to hear all along? Is this a card he can play, to know he can leave and waltz back into my life whenever he wants, because he can’t
not
know how much I love him, how much I need him, and how much his leaving tears me apart? It feels as if my heart is being ripped out of my body.

“Promise me,” he says, and for only the
second
time in my life, I hear his voice sound unsteady and he really seems unsure. I nod furiously and stand on tiptoe. I kiss him as he did me earlier passionately, with controlled patience, and in return, he makes it so deep I it's as if he’s pulling my soul from my body and is trying to take it with him. His hands slide beneath my shirt, and he removes it. I do the same, tugging at his, and soon our clothes are both off and I’m back on the bed, this time with him fully inside of me, connected. He doesn’t pin my arms over my head, but allows me to dig my fingers deep into his skin as he takes me to places of ecstasy only he has. I take in his scent, his breath, his touch. I try to remember each of his kisses; his every single movement I capture in my mind. I allow him to go as deep inside of me as he wants, taking in the pain and the pleasure as one. I hold him tight. I say his name, and my body gives into him over and over again as it always does, even knowing the danger in which I'm putting myself.

I tell him how much I love him and that I’d wait if he only asks…but he doesn’t. He’s done what I asked: my earlier demand that he put me to sleep. I can barely keep my eyes open, but now I try to fight the sleep that’s coming down on me so heavily, the kind I wished for earlier. I’m exhausted emotionally and physically. I look back at Cal and he’s already asleep and lye as close to him as I can. My eyes are so heavy but I don't want them to close.

“Don't give up on me,” his words are quiet barely over a whisper and as quickly as they’re said they’re gone. I wonder if I imagined it. I close my eyes and know that soon this night will only be a memory within a nightmare I want to forget. Now it's only a dream. Still, I give him my heart and let him take it with him.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I can’t give him something he’s always had.

April 22nd 2010

I open my eyes and stretch out my body, noticing there’s more space in the bed than usual. I sit up and look around to see that I’m alone.

“Cal?” I call out. He’d better not have left me again. I hate being in his house alone. I especially hate waking up in his bed alone instead of in his arms. Looking out of the window I notice the sun has been replaced by darkness, which is interrupted by the surrounding city lights. I step out of bed and turn on the lamp in order to find my clothes. A piece of paper on the nightstand catches my eye. It’s a note from Cal asking me to come to the roof.

“What are you up to now?” I say to myself a smile spreading across my face. Quickly, I open one of his drawers and pull out a shirt to throw on instead of dragging around this stupid sheet. A brief glance in the mirror tells me my hair needs some help. My brush is nowhere to be found, so I shake my fingers through it to try to settle it back down. It’ll have to do.

I hear music playing as I make my way up the stairs. My eyebrows shoot up when I see the candles lighting the way up the stairs and pink rose petals trailing the steps. When I finally make it up to the top, my mouth drops open. The entire roof is outlined with candles and the ground is littered with rose petals.

“Oh my God,” a smile creeps across my face “Cal, I can’t believe you,” I scold him playfully. “Where are you?” I stop when he picks me up from behind. “How did you do all this?” I giggle when he puts me down.

“Well, technically, I didn’t do it—but it was my idea.”

“How did you know I wouldn’t wake up?”

“Well, I made sure you were pretty tired earlier, didn’t I?” he smiles suggestively, pulling me up against him. I push him away playfully.

“This is beautiful, really. It’s my graduation present?” I guess. He’s been hinting at having a big surprise for me and it’d be like him to give it to me a month early so I’d be truly surprised.

“Do you remember the first night I danced with you?” he asks pulling me back in his arms.

“Yeah, I remember what that led to,” I giggle as I wrap my arms around his neck, and we sway to the music.

He looks into my eyes. “I told you I’d give you everything.”