Random (Going the Distance) (17 page)

And then he moves, slowly, slowly, and stops and starts, stops and starts, and I’m quivering and shaking and embarrassed and can’t stop, and then he moves inside me and my entire being dissolves into an orgasm that’s so far beyond anything I knew I could feel that it should have another word. It’s a thousand waves of light and pleasure and pulsing, and it goes on and on and on. I grab him close to me and bite his shoulder, his neck, and then he’s rocking hard and sweating. He finds my mouth and kisses me, and I can feel him exploding inside me, sucking on my mouth. I taste blood and it hurts, but I don’t care, my body still pulses and pulses until I could lose my mind. His fingers are digging into my ass, and we’re so tightly joined that not even light could find its way between us.

Finally, after a long, long time, my body slows. I feel the wet between us, and our bodies ease. We fall sideways, still tangled.

He holds my head against his chest, and I feel cradled, adored. Sun falls down around us. “I feel so wicked, out in the open like this.”

He laughs, presses a kiss to my head. “No one comes here except my family, and they’re all on the East Coast.”

“In Maine?”

“Probably.”

“Do you miss them?”

He ponders the question. “Not exactly. Sometimes, I guess.” He sighs. “I just don’t like their world, their values. I like
them—
at least some of them—but there’s always that underlying
thing
.” His voice goes hale, full bellied. “‘So, Tyler. You ready to give up the ski bum life yet?’” He fakes a laugh. “Drives me crazy.”

“Are you a ski bum?”

He turns his head, a smile lifting half that beautiful mouth. “No. I never have been. I was an athlete in training before I was injured. Then…” He shrugs.

“Then?”

His thumb rubs against my shoulder. After a minute he says, “There was a bad couple of years in there.”

“Bad in what way?

“Partying.” He looks up at the sky. “Drugs. Booze. Trouble.”

I think of the way he hit Rick when they were fighting. “Fighting?”

He doesn’t answer right away. The sense of something hidden rises up like a shadow on the day. But he says only, “Yeah. A lot of it.” He draws a circle around my shoulder. “I was out here on the slopes mostly, drinking and fighting, and my dad finally made a bargain with me—if I’d clean up my shit, he’d pull some strings and get me into CC.”

“Did it work?

He looks at me quizzically. “Work?

“Did you stop partying?”

“Not entirely.” He strokes my arm. “But not like the asshole I was before. I finished my degree, started grad school.”

“You went to grad school?”

“Didn’t finish.”

“But you made it sound like you’d dropped out earlier than that.” I frown a little. “You’re only 25, right?”

“Yeah, I finished undergrad work in three years.”

“Smart and gorgeous,” I say again, like the day we first met. I wonder if he remembers.

His life has been so different from mine. Idly, I trace the shape of his chest. “It sounds like you still have kind of bad blood with your family, though. Do you?”

“They want me to be somebody I’m not. They keep saying it’s time to shape up, but I’m only 25. There’s time.”

“Time?”

“To decide. Join the old guard, put on a suit, all that shit.”

My heart pinches. “So you will, eventually?”

“I don’t know.” His fingers move on my back, and he looks at the sky. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m lying to myself sometimes. I haven’t believed in their values since I was a little kid, but—” He shakes his head. “Here I am, painting and skiing and working at a restaurant. Here we are at the family cabin. I’m driving that car. Finding myself.” He puts air quotes around the phase, then turns his head to look at me. “Full of shit, right? And I should have warned you that I can’t stop talking after sex.”

I grin, lifting myself up on an elbow. “Isn’t that supposed to be the girl’s thing?”

“Usually.”

His body is long and gorgeous, stretched out naked in the sunshine. The hair on his legs and belly glistens with light, and his cock is still half-erect, fallen sideways on its nest of curly hair. I touch the hair on his chest, trace a spiral of words without making sense of them. I feel light-headed that I’m here. That a guy like this just gave me an orgasm I’ll remember when I’m 90. “Finding yourself now is probably better than freaking out at 40 or something, right?”

“I guess.” He twines his fingers in my hair. “What do you think? Am I full of shit?”

“I have no idea, Tyler.” I look into his earnest eyes. “Do you mean it when you say you want to be an artist, or is it just a rebellion?”

He twirls the strands of my hair through his fingers, round and round. “Pretty astute question.”

“Well, despite the lack of that all-powerful education, I am a smart girl.” It sounds sharper than I intend, but I don’t backtrack.

“Woman. And, yes, you are.”

“So is it a rebellion?”

He frowns. “I wanted to be an Olympian, that’s the thing. I never thought much beyond that. I guess I imagined that there would be a couple of decades of snowboarding, maybe some endorsements or something, and then I’d get into the sports world in some other way. Coaching or TV or—” He shrugs. “Something.” His jaw clenches. “Not the world of finance. I can’t stand that world. Can’t.”

“There you go. You know one thing for sure.”

He pushes himself up on his elbow so that we’re face to face, and he slowly leans in and kisses me gently. “Two things.”

“Yeah?”

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Ever.”

The fierce way he says it sends a bloom of heat through my middle.

“And,” he says, his face very serious, “I’m really feeling something here. For you.” He pulls a long strand of hair over my shoulder. “For us. This seems important.”

I cannot tell him that I’m starting to fall in love with him. I can’t even let myself think that yet. I swallow and cup his jaw. “I’ve never met anyone like you. But it’s kind of scaring me.”

“Scaring you?”

“You’re…” I struggle to put it into words that aren’t going to sound totally humiliating. “You’re just from another world.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

I think of Henry’s house, of my car, of my tiny house with no computer. I think of families having summers in Maine and parents pulling strings to get you into an expensive private college. It does matter.

But for today, it doesn’t. “Maybe not.” I raise an eyebrow and let it go. “When are you going to show me your paintings, Tyler?”

“Mmm.” He breaks eye contact. “In time. I promise.”

“What are you hiding?”

“Not what you think.” He circles his hand around my arch. “Trust me. Okay?”

“For a little while.” I stand up. “I hate to be the one to break up this great scene,” I say, “but I need the bathroom.”

He laughs. “Understandable. Let’s go in. I could use something to drink.”

* * *

Tyler has turned on some music while I washed up and got dressed, and he’s spreading out the cherries and cheese on the kitchen counter. He’s wearing a pair of board shorts, but he’s left his torso bare. The trust touches me, and I come up to him from behind and kiss his broad back, putting my hands on his shoulders, then sliding them down across the ropy scars, thinking with sorrow of the day his life changed. “I always think how odd it is that one single second in your life can change it all,” I say, tracing the worst one down to his hip. “One blink, one wrong step.”

He turns, taking me into his arms. “You really are an old soul, aren’t you?”

I just smile. This seems so right, so true. I feel myself relaxing, showing my real self. “I had to be, really.”

“I guess you did.” He brushes my hair away from my face. “You were fourteen when your mom died?”

“Fifteen. We went downtown to do some shopping and meet this friend of hers for lunch. Henry, my step-dad, took it really hard. He just fell apart. I’m not sure he—”

Tyler’s body tenses, and he’s looking over my shoulder. “Somebody’s here.” He puts me aside urgently and goes to the window. “Fuck. It’s my sister. She wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow.”

“Your sister? I thought you said they’re all on the East Coast.”

“They
live
there. People use the cabin all the time, but we have a calendar.” He turns around, looking at me with a hard expression. “We have to go. Get your stuff.”

“Why are you acting like this?”

He tugs his shirt over his head. “Like what?” He tosses me my hoodie. “Grab the cherries. We’ll eat them in the car.” He dashes into the bathroom and comes out with the wet suit, looking around.

“Do you want me to do something?”

“No.” He takes the suit back to the bathroom and I see him hang it on the shower rack. He pulls the towels off the rack and carries them into another room, presumably a laundry. “Okay, we’re set. Let’s go.”

I hurry to put my flip flops on, wishing I could get my hair into a braid so I don’t look so disheveled.

The person who comes through the door is what I think of as a horsey girl. Tall and athletically lean, with glossy dark hair in a short ponytail tied with a scarf. She’s clearly Tyler’s sister, with the same elegant bone structure and beautiful mouth. Her eyes are darker blue, and they sweep over me and the room with a cocked eyebrow. “Oooh, a tryst!” she says with amusement.

“You weren’t supposed to be here until tomorrow.”

She gives a twitch of the shoulders. “I left early. I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“I come here a lot.”

“So to speak.” Her nostrils flare at her joke.

I feel my forehead buzz, and my neck flushes.

“Don’t.” Tyler shakes his head. “It would have been polite to let me know.”

She crosses her arms. “Hey, Tyler, I’m arriving a day early.”

“We’re out of here.” He holds out a hand to me, but I avoid touching him as I head for the door.

“Hope you changed the sheets.”

I’m nearly even with her and pause, looking right at her so she has to look back at me. I make my gaze hard.

“Oh, don’t look so offended. You must have known he’s brought a million girls here. All his little ‘models.’”

The stricken way I feel must show on my face.

“Jesus, you’re a baby.” She looks over my shoulder at Tyler. “Could you be any more of a Lothario?”

An acid humiliation burns through my veins. Lothario, Casanova,
ladies’ man
.

“Kate!” Tyler says in a sharp voice. “Stop being such a bitch.”

“I’ll stop being a bitch when you stop being such a man whore.” She gives me a tight little smile. “It’s nothing personal, sweetheart.”

“Actually, for me, it kind of is.” I walk out stiffly and head down the steps, trying not to look at the spot on the beach where we’d had such great sex. Of course he’s good at it. I think of the way he dodged my question about how many lovers he’s had. A hard pulse beats in my ears.

Behind me, brother and sister erupt into a fight, and I block out their words, trying to keep them out of my brain. If I could
walk
back to Colorado Springs, I would.

I head for the car and get into the passenger seat. The keys are dangling in the ignition, and half of me wants to just start it up and roar on down the mountain. Instead, I pick up the book he gave me. Every emotional cell in my body is stinging, and it takes everything I’ve got not to cry. I flip the book open randomly, unable to read the words, but the book itself is a kind of pain. It made me feel
seen
that he brought me a book, rather than some plain red roses from 7-Eleven. He brings food and humor and books. How can that all be fake?

But things don’t add up, exactly. He’s hiding something, maybe many things. I can feel them boiling beneath that veneer of honesty. His mysterious paintings. The bad times after he was hurt. The women.

Tyler storms out of the cabin a few minutes later. I see him slam his open palm against a tree with a roar of fury. He does it once, twice, a third time. Slam, roar; slam, roar; slam, roar. I wince at the power he uses—it has to hurt insanely.

I think again of the way he hit Rick, and it gives me a sense of uneasiness. There’s a lot of violence in him, coming from some hidden reservoir. What could make a guy with all the advantages in the world so furious?

When he gets in the car he’s panting and flushed. His left palm is shredded and bleeding, but he grabs a bandana from the back seat and wraps it up, not looking at me. His cheeks are bright red, and a sheen of sweat glitters along his brow.

With his hands on the steering wheel, he says, “Don’t let her fuck this up, Jess. Please. That’s what she wants. She—”

I feel myself slipping into sympathy, then I think of how she said, “All his little models,” and the humiliation is present and acidic in my belly. “You didn’t defend me at all.”

He bows his head. “She’s a liar and a bitch. She’ll say anything.”

“You acted like you were embarrassed over me, trying to rush me out.”

“I didn’t want her to talk to us. I knew what she’d do.”

I’m just one of his models. “How many girls have you brought here?”

He shrugs. “It really doesn’t matter. You are not them.”

“Aren’t I?” I shake my head. “How many lovers have you had, Tyler?”

He looks at me, the blue in his eyes hardening into chips of ice. “Do you really want to go there?”

“How many?”

“I have no idea.” His mouth is hard. “Remember the lost years? There were a lot. I didn’t count.”

“Since then.”

“I don’t know. Thirty, maybe.”

Tears are thick in my throat. I’m not about to let him see them. “Can we just go?”

“The past has nothing to do with you, Jess.”

“Why didn’t you introduce me?”

“I didn’t have a chance, did I?”

“You didn’t stand up for me, didn’t make…
this
sound any better than she was making it. And if we were there first, why did we have to leave?”

“You don’t understand,” he says grimly. He starts the car.

I close my eyes as we begin to drive, holding the book to my chest. It’s a long, silent ride, and he clicks on the radio.