The World is a Stage (32 page)

He pulled back, looking down on her with infinite kindness. Her breath caught in her throat, and she longed to be able to look away, but she was trapped.
Now
he brought out the strength.
Now
he told her body what to do and how to do it.

“Relax, Red,” he said, chuckling softly. “I was going to say that I love the feel of your body against mine.”

“You’re impossible,” she muttered, blinking rapidly.

“You’re impossible too,” he whispered, wiping at something on her face. His finger was damp as he brushed it across her cheek. “Are you sure you want me to keep going?”

Yes.
More than anything else in the world, she wanted to retain the feeling of his weight on top of her, feel the hard press of his erection against her belly, keep his arms encasing her like she was some sort of precious commodity worth saving.

“Only if you promise not to cuddle afterwards,” she finally said, her body rolling underneath his, urging him to get closer, harder, faster.
Anything
with an -er. “I don’t do cuddling. And if you try to offer me a single nauseating compliment, I’m biting your ear off.”

He nipped at the corner of her mouth, and she could feel his smile. “You don’t hug, you don’t cuddle, you don’t sweet talk. What do you do, Rachel?”

“Anything, Michael.” She sighed as one of his strong hands gripped hers, forcing it above her head. With his free hand, he lifted her sweater but didn’t go any farther than to place his hand on the bare curve of her belly. It was a promise of things to come, achingly intimate, almost innocent. She arched. “I’ll do everything.”

What followed
was
everything—everything textbook, everything the way they told you sex was supposed to be. Man on top, woman on bottom. Plenty of blankets for warmth. Safety before pleasure.

There was even that moment when he first entered her body, their eyes meeting and their voices combined in a single gasp that reached all the way to the sky. And slow, mounting pleasure that never seemed to come—and when it finally did, it never seemed to end. His hands everywhere, on her breasts, between her legs, caressing her stomach and her arms, and finally, when she was too far gone to stop him, through her hair and over her face, endlessly affectionate and warm.

And when it was over, when her body felt empty of everything, he murmured a low apology.

“Just this one compliment, Rachel. I can’t help it.”

“What?” she asked warily. Looking up at the sky, she wondered if the clouds overhead were going to open and pour on them the same way the stinging in her eyes threatened to do.

He kissed her softly on the forehead. “You’re the most amazing and beautiful woman I’ve ever met. There’s no way a man like me could ever find the words to say it all.”

That was when she turned her head away and sobbed.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Overflow of Good

Rachel sat brooding into her breakfast of lime-green Gatorade. Before he’d left after dropping her off yesterday, Michael stocked the refrigerator with several bottles of it, saying something about how many of her electrolytes he’d zapped. It was a dumb-jock thing to say, a completely Michael-like boast designed to put her back at ease.

But she wasn’t at ease.

What they’d done the day before—that wasn’t sex. That wasn’t a fun whirlwind of hormones she could revel in for hours, only to get up and walk away from it a few hours later. They’d done something else entirely.

In her lifetime, she’d had countless one-night stands and an illicit affair with her college professor. She tried almost everything at least once, and rarely with men she cared about. She was free of romantic illusions of any kind, and her inhibitions in the bedroom were a direct reflection of that.

But this was the first time she’d ever been mastered by sex, ever lost control. This was the first time she ever felt ashamed to look the man in the eye afterward.

“What’s wrong with your drink?” Molly asked, coming into the kitchen behind her.

“It’s green, for starters.” Rachel pushed the offending item away and did her best to appear calm. She didn’t want to invite questions she didn’t know the answers to. “You can have it if you want.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

Molly looked as dejected as Rachel felt. Normally, that would have put her on high alert. Today, she just felt tired and unequal to the task of ironing out the kinks in Molly’s life.

That had once been her every waking thought. She was slipping.

“Where did you end up going after rehearsal yesterday?” Molly asked. “I tried calling, but you weren’t picking up.”

Rachel waved her hand. “I was working on a few things for the show.”

“Oh.”

“What about you?” Rachel asked politely, unsure how else to fill the silence. The only other alternative was to go back to sitting alone, thinking. Remembering. Reliving each touch, each kiss, those agonizing minutes when he held her and let her cry, not once asking why or what he could do to help.

She got up and poured the Gatorade down the sink, the slug-slugging of the liquid filling her with an odd satisfaction. When she finally turned around, it was to find Molly gripping the edges of the kitchen island, tears brimming in her eyes.

Eric.
He’d finally broken her.
Every other thought fled, and Rachel had her arms around her sister within seconds. She ran a soothing hand over her hair and murmured things that probably didn’t make any sense.

The words didn’t matter, though. The sound of her voice seemed to calm Molly down, and the regular movements kept Rachel from the uncontrollable shaking that threatened to take over her whole body.

“What’s wrong, Molly?” she asked as soon as the worst of the crying stopped. “Where were you yesterday? What happened?”

Molly blew her nose into a napkin before turning her red-rimmed eyes Rachel’s way. “I was with Lily.”

Lily.

Rachel fell to the stool. They hadn’t said her name in over a year.

It had been their girlhood dream name, the name given to every single doll they’d ever had, adopted by whichever one of them happened to be playing Queen of Dress-Up at the time. There had been a pact at some point, sealed in blood from twin pinpricks, that whichever of them was the first to have a daughter could claim sole ownership of the name.

Lily Hewitt. Gone before she was here. Loved before she was lost.

Rachel reached across the island to grip Molly’s fingers, which were so cold they were almost lifeless. “What happened?”

“I’m pregnant.”

Rachel was not a woman given to fainting—she had far too much hot blood and hot air running through her. Still, the room tipped on its side, threatening to topple them both over. Rachel clutched at her sister’s hand even harder, afraid if she let go, they’d never be able to find one another again.

“How can that be? It’s impossible.”

Molly’s laugh, bitter and heart-wrenching, came out a sharp jab that Rachel felt right in the center of her chest. It hurt, but it also jolted her out of her stupor. Molly. Pregnant.

Again.

“I promise—not only is it possible, it’s true. I saw my doctor yesterday.”

Warning bells, which were so loud they made her head ring, told her not to say the words forming on her lips. But she couldn’t help it. How could one woman—a woman she cared about more than anything else in the world—be so careless with her life?

“For crying out loud, Molly. Haven’t you ever heard of a condom? For all you know, you could be carrying a heck of a lot more than Eric’s child—you could have dozens of his STDs. You’re a grown woman. Please tell me you know better than this.”

Rachel braced herself, fully expecting an outburst of tears, but there was nothing. A stifling, heavy nothing.

“Stop trying so hard, Rachel. I don’t always have to break down in tears, so you can stop wearing that stupid martyr face. It makes you look constipated.”

It most certainly did not, but she wisely refrained from commenting.

“How far along are you?”

Molly looked down at her stomach, which, as far as Rachel could see, showed no signs of life. “Nine weeks. I’m due in November.”

Rachel drew a deep breath. The next question wasn’t likely to yield anything positive and sisterly between them, but she had to ask. “What are you going to do?”

“You know the answer to that,” Molly said, not nearly as angry as Rachel had expected. “I’m keeping it, of course. It’s just…”

Rachel held her breath. Not screaming her frustrations to the world was going to end up causing some sort of brain trauma. She was sure of it.

“…I haven’t told Eric yet.”

“Well.” Rachel weighed her words carefully. “There’s time, Molly. It’s still early. You know I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

This time, her sister did let out a choked sob, dropping her face so she was just a pair of hands surrounded by bouncy yellow curls. “I meant I haven’t told him about Lily.”

Oh, Molly.
Rachel bit her lip so hard it bled.

This was what Molly did. She tumbled headfirst into love, and nothing else in her life—past, present or future—mattered. She shared the parts of her that were enticing to a man, and all those broken and bleeding parts simply got tucked away. Though what was left of her other than the gaping hole between those broken parts, Rachel had no idea.

“Does he know any of it? Justin, the hospital—anything?”

“No. I didn’t want him to think I’m…”

Broken? Bleeding? Anything other than a cute piece of ass?

“…too complicated,” Molly filled in lamely. “Look—don’t say anything to Michael, okay? I’ve got to figure things out with Eric first.”

“I think I can safely promise that,” Rachel said wryly. She tossed the empty bottle of Gatorade into the recycling bin. “He’s the last man on earth I’m going to divulge the family secrets to.”

Rachel didn’t know why she was surprised when, a few hours later, the telephone rang. Molly’s excitement was palpable from the other end, and she screamed as if her mouth was feet away from the phone rather than inches.

“He asked me to marry him, Rachel. Can you believe it? I’m getting married!”

“I hear yelling, dear. Who is yelling at your phone?” Indira looked up from the magazine she sat reading on the opposite couch.

“It’s Molly, Mom. Hang on a sec.”

She dashed from the room, one finger plugging the opposite ear so she could make out the exact words. But Molly must have been in some kind of frenzied delirium, because she just kept squealing and saying married and baby over and over again. Like it was a mantra and only through repetition could it possibly be true.

“Don’t you think this is awfully sudden, Molly? How can you possibly have everything worked out already? What about Lily?”

As she expected, her concerns were ignored. But it wasn’t until Molly sighed, dropped her voice and said, “This is it, Rachel—he’s the One,” that she realized just how big her concerns were.

A baby was a big deal, a lifelong association with the Peterson family that could never be erased. That was bad enough. But marriage? The One? As far as Rachel was concerned, that was the end of the line.

There had been three Ones before. Each time, Molly allowed herself to be completely absorbed into the man-of-the-hour’s life. She disappeared into a hole where all the air and light and food and joy was centered around and provided by the One. And she loved it in there. It was warm and cozy, and in some deluded sense only she understood, it was safe.

But when the One became abusive and mean, treating her body and her soul like they were garbage—she was usually too deep inside that hole to be able to scream for help.

“Be careful, Molly,” she pleaded into the phone, though she doubted her words were making any impression at all on the rainbows and cartwheels inside her sister’s heart. She was too far gone, baby and man and family in one package. Molly’s American Dream. “Please.”

But she’d already hung up. Rachel fell to a kitchen chair, torn between a strong desire to cry and an even stronger desire to call Michael just to hear his voice. If there was one thing she knew for sure, it was that he could be counted on to make a joke, to make her feel better. The low rumble in his voice was exactly in tune with the timbre of her heart, and she was beginning to fear that the organ inside her chest could no longer function without him near.
 

She felt cold inside and dead. The only person who could get her kick started and going again was him.

Rachel had gotten half of his numbers punched into her phone before she realized what that meant. Michael was her One. She was deep inside the hole of her own making, and the only way she could see out was him.

She was just like Indira. She was just like Molly. No. She was worse, because she knew better. She’d let him get to her—let him rip open her soul out there on the plains yesterday, and all because she couldn’t say no to his soft lips and softer hands.

That didn’t deserve tears. That deserved a swift kick to the ass.