Tasting Never (20 page)

“
You
think you're clever?” he asks me as he reaches down and grabs
my wrists, pushes them out to the sides and kisses me on the jaw. He
works his way down, towards my neck and breathes heat there, drips
molten lava across my skin with every exhale.

“
Ty,”
I moan because I've never had the chance to moan someone's name
before. Usually, I don't even know it. “Are you jealous of
Noah?” I ask on the tail end of a gasp. Ty is nibbling my
skin, biting the soft flesh of my throat, squeezing it between his
teeth with just enough pressure that I swear it's going to hurt. It
doesn't.

“
Fuck
Noah,” he says as releases my hands and grabs the edge of my
shirt, tugging it up and over my head and tossing it across the room.
Admittedly, I didn't expect to be in this situation, so I'm wearing
an ugly, beige bra with thick straps. Ty grins as I cross my arms
over my chest to hide it. “If you hate it so much,” he
says as he bends down and breathes in my hair. “Why don't we
take it off?” Ty slides his hands under my torso and
miraculously, it only takes him a second to undo the clasps.

“
You've
had practice,” I say with just a hint of jealousy. Ty's grin
relaxes into a smile, but he doesn't say a thing. Instead, he grabs
the bra with his fingers and slides it down my arms, dropping it off
the edge of the bed while his eyes take in my breasts and the
sprinkling of freckles along my chest and shoulders.

“
God,”
he says as he bends down and breathes on my nipples, caresses the
flesh around them with his warm hand. “You really are fucking
beautiful.” I grab his hair suddenly, tangle my fingers in it
and pull his mouth to mine. Some cultures believe that a person's
soul is in their breath and that by kissing, we're exchanging the
deepest parts of ourselves. I'd always thought that was a load of
shit. Until now. Until Ty. I wrap my hand around Ty's neck,
moaning into his mouth while his hand dives lower and starts at the
buttons to my jeans.

I
don't fight him, letting my fingers explore his back and shoulders,
slide across the nape of his neck. It's such a high for me that I
groan in disappointment when he moves away, stands up and drops his
pants to the floor just like that.

“
No
fair,” I tell him as he slides his hands up my legs and wraps
his fingers around the waist of my jeans. “I wanted to take
those off.”

“
Next
time,” Ty says as he yanks my pants off and tosses them to the
floor, leaving me in nothing but a pair of thin, white cotton
panties. They're boyshorts, so they're not terribly hideous, but if
I had known I was going to be on my back in Ty McCabe's apartment, I
would've worn lace. When Ty climbs back on the bed, he sits up for a
moment, lets me a get a full, glorious view of his muscular body, the
curves of the muscles in his arms and thighs, the smooth skin of his
chest and belly and the sweep of dark hair around his cock.

“
Guess
what?” I tell him as he positions himself between my legs and
presses the heavy weight of his body into mine. The bed creaks,
shifts, makes this little nest where it's just me and Ty and a bundle
of sheets and pillow. “You're fucking beautiful, too.”
Ty bits my lower lip, sucks it between his teeth and pulls back.

“
That's
it?” he jokes. “Just beautiful? Not handsome or hung or
– ” I bite Ty's lip ring, tug on it and twirl it around
in my mouth while he groans and reaches down, pushes my panties aside
with his ringed fingers. Ty and I are stupid, but we're also
infatuated with one another, so we don't bother to use a condom.
When he pushes into me, all I can see are stars, and I forget about
the things I've learned in our meetings, the fear I felt sitting on
those plastic chairs in that clinic, all I can think about is Ty.
Ty. Ty.

“
Never,”
he says as my eyes tear up. I don't know why. I've never cried
during sex before. Ty kisses the drops away and moves his body in a
gentle rhythm, slides into me with long strokes that cut right to the
core, but in a good way, a better way. This isn't a frantic fuck in
the back of a frat house. This is me and Ty getting to know one
another, touching, feeling, embracing. I look up at the ceiling and
wrap my hands around his neck, certain that there won't be another
day that I feel like this. It's too good, too perfect. Nothing like
this ever lasts; I know that better than anyone. I want to tell him
to stop, to get off of me, to go away, but I can't speak.

When
the pressure breaks, when I clench Ty's body with mine and listen to
him cry out, when I feel his body relax into me, the world gets
flipped upside down and won't go back the other way. Something
inside of me has changed. If I can accept that, I'll be okay. If
not, then I might as well have stayed the way I was, never bothered
to try, because if I try to go back, I will break.

“
Never,”
Ty says as he looks down at me and tries to get my attention. I
think I'm sobbing but just a bit, just because I'm confused and lost.
This is all new territory for me. Fucking and making love are
different things, I can see that now. “Are you alright?”
he asks me with a small laugh. When he sees that I really am upset,
Ty pushes my hair from my face and locks his dark eyes with mine.
“Hey, you,” Ty says with a wink and a kiss to the cheek.
“Promise me you'll never be sad for me or about me.”
He brushes my tears away and kisses me hard and possessive on the
lips. “Promise me that.”

“
I
promise,” I say as I take Ty into my arms and into my heart.
From where I sit, there's no going back now. My life is now in the
hands of fate.

31

I'm
sitting on Ty's couch, still naked, with my phone in one hand and a
glass of wine in the other. I have
never
felt like this after
sex before, so … fulfilled. I've been seeking it out since I
left Noah sleeping in my bed at my mother's house, and I haven't
found it, not even close. Until now. Until Ty fucking McCabe. I'm
staring at the text message, debating whether I should delete it or
not. Debating if I should go home or not. If I do, I might be able
to heal some of the rifts in my heart, get to know my sisters, have a
family again. I might be able to tell Mom the truth with conviction,
and if that bastard is still around, maybe I can finally find justice
for my dad? At the same time, there's a lot of room for error there,
a lot of chances to fuck things up royally. Besides, if I go home
now, I'll have to see Noah. I'll just have to. And I'll have to
leave Ty, here, alone. It might only be for a month, but a lot can
happen in four weeks. I set my phone aside and take a deep breath.
Honestly, it's hard to be stressed when I feel so good, physically,
emotionally, even spiritually.

“
I'm
in love with a guy who wears a nose ring,” I say aloud and
chuckle. He's dead asleep right now with his tight, little ass
peeking out of the blankets, the smooth muscles of his upper back lit
up with the silver light from the moon outside the window. Or at
least I thought he was.

“
Did
I hear the word
love
?” Ty asks as he moves into the
living room, stark naked. He's beautiful, chiseled and hard,
masculine and strong, like a statue of Apollo or some other virile,
young god. It's a strange thought to have, but I can suddenly
imagine why he worked as a prostitute. I can see why people would be
clamoring to pay him for his time. Ty is the most flawed, most
tortured, most beautiful human being I have ever met.

This
scares me.

I
watch him come around the edge of the couch and sit next to me.

“
I
think you just misheard me,” I try to tell him as he yawns and
rubs his hand down his belly.

“
Did
I?” he asks, but he doesn't sound like he believes me. I
glance over at the phone and sip my wine.

“
What
would you do?” I ask Ty as he rubs his eyes and looks at me
with sleepy satisfaction. He scoots closer to me and can't seem to
keep his hands off my bare skin. I don't know what to think about it
because I've never really had a
lover.
I've had sexual
partners galore but never a lover, never someone that wanted to hold
me, possess me, consume me. Ty wants all of these things and more.
“What would you do if the people you loved betrayed you?”

“
I've
never been in love before,” he tells me with a yawn. “So
that's a bit outside my range of knowledge, but if you're talking
about your family, I think you should go see them.” I stare at
him, and I wonder if I'm reading too much into his words.
He's
never been in love?
What about now? What about the way I'm
feeling? Doesn't he feel that way, too? My heart clenches tight,
but I try to keep smiling. Ty doesn't notice any of this. He kisses
my neck and whispers in my ear. “Come to bed with?” I
nod, but my mind is going a hundred miles an hour. When he gets up,
he tries to drag me with him and I hold up my wine like it's some
kind of stupid fucking explanation.

“
Let
me finish this, and I'll be right there,” I tell him, and he's
so cute and naked and tired that he just nods and leans down for a
kiss. I wrap my hand around his neck and make it last, burn it into
my brain and my heart and my soul. When Ty pulls away, I keep a
smile plastered to my face. When he disappears, I frown. I'm having
a crisis of character, as Ty would say. Maybe it's because of Noah?
No, that's just a convenient excuse. I'm panicking because I'm in
deep, because it has just hit me how important Ty has become, and
he's the only thing I have now. If something goes wrong, I don't
know what I'll do.
I
know as soon as I start to cry that I'm not thinking clearly, that
I'm making a terrible decision. I've been making all the right ones
lately and now I'm having a relapse. It happens, with alcoholics,
drug addicts, food addicts. It's happening because I don't know how
to handle my feelings properly. Of course, like with everything, it
has to get worse before it get better.

I
finish my wine, get up, get dressed and leave.

32

I'm
standing under the corrugated metal roof that protects the single
bench from the rain. In one hand, I have an unlit cigarette that I
put between my lips, just so I can hold something there and forget
what it was like to have Ty's mouth on mine. I squeeze my eyes shut
and feel drops of water run down my eyebrows and slide down the sides
of my face. Tears threaten, but I push them back, determined to keep
my promise to Ty. Even if I never see him again, I'll always keep my
promise. If I've learned anything in the past few weeks, it's that
integrity and honesty are all we really have. Once we lose sight of
them, it's just a slow descent into madness. Despite all the odds,
I've climbed out of that misery. I'm standing in the light now, and
I refuse to go back to the darkness.

I
clench my fist around the handle of my suitcase and open my eyes to
the sheet of rain that's falling all around me, splashing the dirty
pavement and pinging off the roofs of nearby cars. On one side of me
is a woman in a leather jacket with haunted eyes and a ghostly smile
on her face. On the opposite side is a guy who's determined to tell
me his life story, whether I want to hear it or not. I tune out his
voice, turn my thoughts to their maximum volume and let them continue
to convince me that this is the right thing to do. I've been away
from home for far too long. It's time to see my mom and my sisters
again, to visit my father's grave, to start over.
It's not too
late.
Besides, I'm being overdramatic. I'll be back after
break, so it isn't like I won't ever see him again. I swallow hard
and try to remember to keep breathing.

“
I
can never go back,” says the man, and I turn my face slowly to
look at him. He isn't looking back at me; his gaze is focused out
towards the street, but he isn't seeing it. I recognize that
expression. He's looking inside of himself, trying to find a reason
to be alive. I want to tell him it's okay, that if he tries really,
really hard, that he'll find it, but that's his conclusion to come to
on his own. I found my reason. I found a whole bunch of reasons and
that's why I can't stay here another second. “I can never go
back,” the man says again, trying to convince himself that it's
true. I once thought that, too, but I know that it isn't. You can
always go back. Sometimes, it's just easier to pretend that you
can't.

“
Never
say never,” says a voice just outside of my peripheral vision.
The tears I've been holding back spill out, run down my face like
rain. My lip trembles a bit and the cigarette falls to the ground,
lands in a puddle at my feet. Footsteps splash across the pavement
towards me and suddenly, there he is with his wet hair in his face
and a suitcase in his hand.

“
Fuck
off,” the man tells Ty and stands up, turning away from the two
of us and slumping down on the ground on the opposite side of the
bench.