Roar (27 page)

“Good girl.” She pats my shoulder and grants me a tired smile. “Come along, David. Let’s go to bed.”

Davey places the cereal on the coffee table and claps his hands, “Read Jack?”

“Yes, son, I’ll read Jack to you.” Nona ushers him along and up the stairs to read him
The House that Jack Built
. It’s a story all of us have read countless times to help Davey settle before bed. I watch them disappear upstairs, leaving me on the sofa with Bugs Bunny to keep me company until Nate has finished reading and deciding on my future—our future. I grab that box of cereal and rummage through the packaging to get a few sweet loops, popping them in my mouth.

I eat almost a quarter of the box without tasting a single one. I’ve gone through countless tissues before I feel Nate enter the room and sit beside me with the looming decision maker in his lap. It is like a bomb device waiting, ticking, taunting me with its countdown.

He sits in silence, his heavy breathing thickening the air. The damn bunny annoys me in the background. I snatch the remote and shut the box off. I wish he would say something.

“Did you read it all?” I ask, afraid, my voice shaking.

He turns to me; there are shadows under his eyes, and I can see he’s been crying. I can’t hold back my own sob even though I clasp my mouth. What if he doesn’t want me to touch him? What if he is now repulsed by me? He now knows what Daddy did to me that morning that flares me in nightmares every night. He now knows about the foster parents who were just like him, and he now knows how bad it was with Paul. He knows everything that I tried to hide from the world and my mind. I go to stroke his cheek and hesitate, but he grabs my hand with both of his and kisses mine before bringing it to his cheek and breaks down in my arms. My tears are nothing in comparison to his, it’s as though he is feeling it all at once, every bit of my pain, betrayal and more.

“I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.” He keeps chanting into my neck, his voice as broken as his heart. I knew it would hurt to read it, but never did I think he would be this wrecked.

“It’s not your fault,” I keep repeating. “It’s not your fault.”

I don’t know how long we remain like this, but when he begins to kiss my cheek, I feel the deepest need in my belly and chest. Tear-stained, I search for his mouth, tasting his salty tears across his stubbled jaw until I find his warm, welcoming mouth. His tongue is strong and needy; I want it all over my body, like his hands. I want him inside me more than ever. I need him.

My diary falls to the ground when he pins me back against the cushions of the sofa. My shirt is hiked up and within seconds it’s gone, as is his. Our skin is touching just like I need it to be. I never felt a need like this before; I never thought I could want someone so bad as though my life depended upon it.

Grasping at his trunks, I pull at them and take his firm length in my hand, drawing him to me, enticing him to take me here and now on the sofa that bears so much history. He can’t deny me, and I’m glad. He pulls at the leg of my shorts and his fingers find me, sliding between my fold with ease, making me groan. I’m loud enough he places his other hand over my mouth to hush me from announcing to Nona what disrespecting deviants we are.

We never had limitations before, always able to find secret places and stolen moments. I knew how to be quiet, and he knew how to love me and play my game. I liked it a certain way; my father conditioned me that way. Nate would touch me, whisper in my ear and I would always come at his command. I shared a secret with Nate no other would understand; we liked it. That’s a confession I made in those pages I should never have.
Never. Ever
. He saw my betrayal, our secret inscribed with ink to paper. Nate and I learned to like the show my daddy filmed for him and other deviants to watch. We learned to enjoy, love, and crave what he taught us. We may never have liked doing it with an audience, or with direction, but the action, the brazen touch youth shouldn’t know or experience for years to come—that is what we became addicted to.

After Nate was taken from me, I suffered a withdrawal not unlike a crack addict, I suppose. I shook and cried myself to sleep. I itched for his touch and the feel of him filling my insides. I tried to pleasure myself and imagine it was him, whispering his name in the darkness of my strange bed. I couldn’t come; I was empty without him. I couldn’t make it past the flashes of those I wanted to see die. All it did was leave me cold and alone, so I stopped trying.

Now, I have him back. He is mine, and he wants me even though I spilled our secret. He wants me even though I’m broken, even though I wanted to murder. He wants me even though I’ve been used and abused by others.

Nate took all those things away from me, punched, pummeled, and smashed those demons right back to hell so I could be with him without the images of those dark, evil faces before. Nate took me to the end of the earth where I wanted to scream. I was so scared of falling off the edge, but then he’d hold my hand, linking his fingers with mine, and he would tell me it was okay. My heart walloped against my chest, my belly on fire, and my pussy clenched in preparation of the final jump together.

“Now, baby. Come for me now,” he growls in my ear. I had the go sign and I gripped his hand tight and jumped, freefalling with Nate alongside me until we reached the bottom of the universe. We fall onto a soft, velour cushion in a swathe of sweat and juices of our lovemaking. We lay there in the air of sex and our depleting pant as we gather our thoughts and body for the journey up the stairs, and into a shower before bed. Suddenly the idea of sleep calls to me like a siren. I’m so exhausted, mentally and physically, and just like that, I yawn like a kitten fat on milk.

“Come on,” he snickers and kisses me gently. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“Shower me first.”

The smirk on his face howls out his thoughts, as though he speaks them to me.

“Not with Nona two doors down,” I reprimand and playfully slap his chest.

He sighs, and I regret my rejection. I had no right to reject him after he forgave me for everything I’d done.

“Stop that.” He grips my chin tightly, almost painfully. “You don’t have to have sex with me just because I want to. I have always wanted you to choose to be with me, and I never want to take that away. I will
never
take that from you.”

I bite down on my lip so hard I can taste the tang of my own blood. It’s only when he pulls against my chin and licks my lower lip that I release the abused flesh.

“We have a lot of work ahead, you and I…” His eyes soften as his forehead leans against mine. “But for now, I just want to hold you and listen to your cute little snore. Tomorrow we can worry about the rest.”

“I don’t snore,” I say playfully, ignoring the seriousness of what was to come in the morning.

He chuckles, and I feel it from his chest, massaging mine. “Baby, sometimes you snore like a damn freight train.”

I gasp and slap him, wriggling under him, trying to get free. “Ladies do not snore.”

“I have no answer to that.”

I can’t help the laughter which betrays me. I like our banter; I miss it almost more than the sex… almost.

It’s still dark when I hear the hint of padding feet in the room. Normally this would scare me, have me scuttle from the bed in search for safety and freedom from my nightmare. This time, I feel an inner peace I’ve never known… or maybe just never remembered. I doubt I have felt it since my mother passed. Stretching my used body across Nate’s small bed, I smile into the cast moonlight.

“Where are you going?” I ask in a suggestive tone, willing him to come back to me.

He freezes, chuckling quietly before sauntering his way back to me, bracing his hands on either side of my head. The indent of his weight pulls me away from him, when all I want to do is be closer, to kiss him and make love to that mouth of his. I want to draw him back into this bed and have him slide right into where he belongs.

His breath is hot as it brushes my cheek. I shiver, even though the air is warm. “You need your sleep. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice me gone.”

My smile disappears, replaced by an instant ache in my temple. I don’t have abandonment issues, not by far, but that’s how I feel right now. I’m scared he’s going to leave me, realizing he is better off without someone like me. I think I always had those fears, even from the age of six when I took him into my nightmare. I have always needed Nate more than he’s needed me, and that’s my disaster, my crippling nightmare. One nightmare is replaced with another.

Maybe that’s why I did what I did; I took him into a darkness I knew deep inside to be wrong, all because I didn’t want to lose him. I never gave him the choice; I trapped him with guilt, secrets, and sex, and he’s now seen my ruse.

He leans in, kisses and licks the tears that drip to the shell of my ear, his deep breathing echoing loudly. “Come with me.” I shudder and begin to bawl as I wrap my arms around his neck. He pulls me up and across the stiff denim of his pants. “Shh, don’t cry. It was just a bad dream, remember? You’re here, and you’re safe with me in my old bed, the way you like it.”

I shake my head in his neck and kiss his cheek before I pull away from him just enough to see his eyes glisten in the dim light. “It didn’t come tonight.”

Nate brushes my cheeks, his smile bright. “You didn’t? But you get them every night.”

“I know, I know.”

“That’s fantastic… why are you crying then?”

Again I shake my head. I don’t want to admit my newfound shame. I don’t want him to see what a mammoth mistake he is making by staying with me and risking everything for our love.

Pft
. Our love? What a fucking joke. I trapped a beautiful bird, tamed it, trained it to love me, and essentially broke its spirit.

I freed myself from my captors so I could be with Nate in peace, only to realize I was his captor.

“Nate, you can go without me. You were right; I do need some sleep before I go to the station to give my statement. I don’t want to hold you back anymore, not when you have a company at stake. You need to look after things and stop worrying about me.”

He scoffs. “Charlie, I will always worry about you, and as for my company, I have a great leading hand who can take control in most instances. I was only going in early so I would have the rest of the day to be with you.” He was brushing my hair from my cheeks and ears. I didn’t give a shit about my hair. I just wanted to banish the new awareness from my mind so I didn’t have to do what needs to be done, for his own good.

This was going to hurt him in the short term and probably kill me forever.

“Nate…”

“I won’t take no for an answer. Up ya get.”

My body wants me to, it moves with its own accord even though I know he needs me to push him away or stay in this bed, until his truck has gone around the corner. I don’t think I can do it if I don’t make that step right now.

“Charlie, this actually would mean a lot to me for you to see how much I have changed. Everything I have done, I have done because I wanted to be a better man, because you deserve the very best. I hit rock bottom when I lost you, and have had to fight my way back to where I am, to someone I could be proud of, someone you can be proud of.”

If I wasn’t crying enough before, I am now. I don’t know how much more pain I could put this man through. I was going to leave town so he could move on, but I don’t think that I can do it. “I don’t deserve you.”

“What are you talking about?” His body has gone hard; I hit a nerve and I think he’s cottoning on to what I was planning. “You are my everything. Don’t you fucking dare think any different, Charlie. Don’t you fucking think that you’re not.”

“I’ve trapped you, trained you to think that.
You never had a chance.
”

I’m crushed into him, wrapped by his strong arms against his shuddering chest. “You are my only chance at happiness. I thought we sorted this out. I chose you; I love you. It doesn’t matter that someone else brought us together. We were bound to be together from the moment you jumped out of that truck in your red dress, not when someone else dictated. I
chose
you, Charlie Barns.” He pulls my face to his almost painfully, kissing me over my weeping eyes, my damp cheeks, my mouth, everywhere.

I want to kiss him forever, feverishly, hungrily, lovingly and leisurely for all of my days. I would tell him if he gave me the chance, but he keeps gripping me like I might slip from his arms. My mistake is clear now; I’ve been killing him more painfully by not showing him I was his forever. No one else’s—not Daddy’s, not my foster parents’, not Paul’s. I was Nathan Shaw’s, always and forever.

Nate finally stops his parade of kisses on me and goes back to squeezing my body, holding me from my selfish desertion.

“I would love to see what you have accomplished, and I have always been proud of you. Don’t
you
ever forget that.”

My mouth is swamped by his tongue and I yield to it, desiring it to never end, for the world to disappear and there just be us. God’s earthly creation can close up, and leave us right here in this bedroom where we dreamed so much for us, when we couldn’t rely on anything but dreams. To finally see Nate was getting his, that he is happier with me in his new life, blew away so much of the dark guilt I had swelling up within, choking me by its poison. Nate broke open my prison, the cage I had locked myself into and for just a moment, I was blinded by the flock of birds that I always pictured as ugly, black ravens—I can see the truth now that I’m under his light. I was caging beautiful white doves, crisp and pure, and now they were free.