CHERISH (65 page)

She arches into me, my hands gripping her hair, forcing her eyes to mine.

There is no way to be closer to her. My eyes on hers, my dick clutched inside her walls, and my soul’s cry that we are no longer separate people.

She stays with me as I rock, her arms latching around my neck. Our bodies know what to do.

“Tell me. Answer me.” My voice deepens, my hands pull at the roots of her hair until her mouth opens.

“
You.
I belong to you.” Her words are magnificent, but the way her eyes do not leave mine is priceless.

I pour everything I can't say into every movement. I was made to be inside of her. Every second, she is more amazing than the last. She takes everything I give and, in return, gives more of herself to me.

No person or possession has belonged to me more than she does right now—and I realize she is both.

I work slowly, then quicken my pace until I feel her tighten. Her body is mine, meshed together with mine, slick, and we move together, harder yet soft at the same time. My eyes watch her face in that glorious moment when what I give her pushes her to the place where there is no time or struggle.

I pull her as tight as possible without breaking her. I feel every wave and shake as she comes. With her noises rising in the room, I try to remember each note and inflection of that music. When my dick holds up the white flag and explodes again, I know I will forever be responsible for her happiness.

For her everything.

It is what I was born to do.

Beckett

Shit.

“Get these on before I lose my fucking mind.” I hold out her scrubs as she wiggles around in her panties and some crazy, white, lace bra that has my dick ready for another bombing run.

“Take them off, put them on . . . you need to decide what you want.” She gives me a playful pout before taking the folded uniform and swishing her fine ass into the attached bath.

Once I get my mind back in check, I look around her room and lay back in amazement at the explosion of colors and images that cover the walls, sit in stacks, and lean against every vertical surface.

“I’m going to guess what you do in your spare time.” I raise my voice so she can hear me over the water running in the sink.

I hear it shut off, and her smile comes into the doorway. “Oh yeah? What is it you think I do?”

Thank Christ she managed to get her scrubs on and give my dick a break. When she smiles, and her eyes trace around the walls, she looks so much like that little girl I saw back in that courtroom ten years ago.

Watching her fiddle with her earring, then glance back in the mirror and touch her hair, it is an exquisitely common moment. Yet, it seems every detail of her movements—the way her skin is pink on her cheeks, the wisp of hair she can’t seem to tame—are show stoppers for me now. For the first time in my life, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. I know where I belong. It’s up to me to make sure she feels the same way.

“You’re a storyteller.” I follow the walls around the bedroom. It’s beautiful chaos everywhere I look. “In every one of these paintings, I see a story.”

My heart feels like someone is squeezing. Each pump is hitting my veins hot and hard. Staring at the walls, each canvas looks like a volcano of orange, yellow and red. Every image unique but somehow the same.

I am mesmerized by a huge canvas on the opposite wall from her bed. It has two figures, black faces in shadow with a sky of flames behind.

Another one to the left is a woman lying prone on a bed. The bed is the fire, and her hands are pressed together in prayer. Her face is old, her body young. In the mirror above her bed is a reflection of another black face, featureless but still very much alive. The intensity and sadness send a chill down my spine.

There must be a hundred paintings covering the four walls. Each one has two things in common.

Something is on fire.

And a male figure without a face appears somewhere in each.

My body is thick and weighted down from the crush of what I feel from the paintings. It takes some effort to get to my feet, and I shake my arms out and remember just how fucking happy I am right now. I’ve got the bed made in a flash, my clothes on, and I try not to look at these new flames that surround me.

Promise is pinning her hair up in a bun as she turns to see me watching her, and she grins.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“They’re amazing. All of them. How long have you been painting?”

“I don’t know. Probably since I was twelve or so. But, most of the ones in here are from the last five years. I had to buy all the canvases myself, so probably since I was sixteen. I got a job that year so that I could buy them myself.”

“What was your first job?” I want to know every one of her firsts. Everything about her past.

She chuckles and crinkles her nose, then holds her hand up to her ear like she speaking into a phone. “Hi, this is Carol from Marathon Building Company. I’m calling to talk to you about your need for home improvements or repairs . . .” She finishes the canned speech then changes her tone back to her natural lilt. “It was horrible. I worked in this back room with twenty other girls, all of us repeating the same speech a hundred times a day, getting cursed out and hung up on. My boss’s name was Dottie, and she looked like a cross between Phyllis Diller and Dolly Parton.” Promise clears her throat and pins her eyebrows together, raising a wagging finger in the air. “
God damn it, get back to work! I’m not paying you to sit here and bullshit! If you don’t get on those damn phones, get the hell out!
” Promise smiles. “That was Dottie. But, I liked her. She was authentic.”

“Carol?” I can’t help but pick up on the name.

“Yeah, they made me use a more ‘normal’ name. Didn’t help. I got fired after a month. I moved up to cashier at Jax Car Wash after that.” She finishes with her hair and doesn’t bother to put away her hair brush or the other lotions and potions that fill her bathroom counter.

Just realizing she’s going to work for ten hours has my heart slamming around in my chest. I’m not ready to let her go. Not in any small way.

I stretch and take another look around at the walls of this room where she lays her head every night, and something catches my eye. It’s insignificant among the volume of flaming paint adorning the room. It would have been missed by anyone else. But not me.

It’s a scrap of notebook paper pinned to the wall between two paintings.

The paper’s edges are soft and gray. It’s been folded too many times, and the charcoal pencil lines are fading. My heart skips a beat.

The sketched silhouette is as haunting as it was that day. The words that cover her face pour over me, and the memories of that day tear loose, rising up from a place so deep and painful, I have to blink and look away. I don’t need to be close enough to the small drawing to read the words; I remember them. I wrote them that first day I saw her in the courtroom. The attorney addressed the court with a segment from an interview with Promise’s mother, conducted after Child Protective Services removed Promise and her brother from the apartment where they had been left alone. I wrote down pieces of the painful admission by a woman who did not deserve the title of mother.

“Because I can’t love them.

Because I don’t care enough.

Because he’s more important to me.

Because it’s too much.

I can’t handle her.

I didn’t want him.

I can’t.

I won’t.

I’m done . . .”

I picked out the words that struck the hardest, the words I know must have branded such sorrow into her heart, and I stared at that little girl with white hair and porcelain skin, wondering why the fuck they would let her sit there and hear that shit.

I stared and sketched and then cried when I handed it to her. I covered my face and stuck it in her hand.

Before I walked into my dad’s room at Windfield a week ago and laid my eyes on Promise once again, I’d come to terms with the fact that I would be alone for the rest of my life.

“Ready?” When she smiles, she takes my heart right out of my chest, and I can only hope she can feel how fragile it is in her hands.

“Yep.” I help her slip her jacket over her scrub uniform and set my hand in the small of her back until I get her out the door of the apartment.

I pull her next to me, and we meet our strides down the hall. “So, I know we’ve been otherwise occupied, but I want to talk about last night. I need to know what’s going on. I need to know everything about you, and clearly, whatever I walked in on was pretty important in your life.”

I can feel her tense as we move in silence down the hall, outside and into the truck. She keeps pulling at a loose thread on the collar of that tangerine colored jacket. She coils the black and white striped scarf around her neck as she settles into the passenger seat. I give her the time because I can feel she needs it, but now it’s enough.

“I’m waiting.” I put the Suburban in drive and give her a look that lets her know she needs to start talking

“Okay. Jordan’s my brother. That horrible woman is Lydia, his social worker. Jeremy . . .” I watch her pull her lips to the side, her nose crinkles as her arms come around her waist. I’m not having any of that, so I grab one of her hands and bring it to my lips before I settle on holding it between us.

“Keep going.”

I listen to her breathing in and blowing the air back out for a moment.

“Jordan is in foster care. My mom lost custody of us when I was ten. I’ve been fighting for him ever since I turned eighteen; I’ve been trying. First, I needed a better job. Then, I needed a better place to live. Then . . .” She stops, sucking in an uneven breath, cutting off whatever the end of that last sentence might have been. “Now, the family he’s been living with has filed a petition to adopt him.”

Her voice catches, and I squeeze her hand because I don’t know what else to do as my heart shatters for her.

“They’re not good people, Beck. They’re
bad
. I’ve been over to the house. When a foster family adopts a foster child, they get $2,452 a month from the state until the child turns eighteen. This family just wants the money. They have four other adopted foster children there, and it’s horrible. Jordan is so unhappy, but no one listens to him.”

The next several minutes are an exercise in self-control. I want to pull over and envelop her. Her voice fills the car with pain too familiar. I need with all my being to take it away from her.

“Jordan doesn’t deserve that. After all we’ve been through, he’s still kind and sweet. I’m the one that loves him. He’s sharing a room with two, seventeen-year-old boys who force him to do everything for them. Otherwise, they pound on him. He comes over with black eyes, and he’s lost so much weight. He doesn’t even have a backpack for school. I gave him one, and they took it from him. I only have a month to try to stop the adoption. Jeremy is supposed to be helping me. He’s my only hope.”

Fuck if he is.

Since I’ve gotten home, I’ve avoided thinking about my own messed up life. The decisions I have to make and the pain I’ve caused. But, listening to her is causing all my own looming bullshit to start knocking around inside my head. Losing my dad is only making each thought sharper, cutting me in soft places I didn’t know were still there.

“Why is he your only hope?” The level of effort it takes to keep my voice in check is daunting. Hearing her say Jeremy is her “only hope” sets my teeth on edge.

I want to tell her everything I know about him. To relieve her of her seeming loyalty to a worthless piece of shit.

“He’s got connections at CPS. I don’t know who else can help me the same way.” She leans down to fiddle and tug on her orange and yellow argyle sock.

“He’s not your only hope. Don’t say things like that. I know this thing between us is new. But, it’s also not new. It’s been a part of both of us for a long time. Don’t tell me you don’t feel it, too. The ‘us’ that we’ve created in the last week feels like it’s been a part of me for a hundred years, and I want it to keep going for a hundred more. I’m here for you. I know I don’t have all the details, but trust me when I tell you, there are always other ways, and I’m here to help you however I can.”

“
He’s
the social worker. He’s got the connections, and he’s trying to help me behind the scenes. I need him.”

“No.” The muscles in my shoulders tighten, and my neck jerks a few times. “You don’t fucking
need
him. I’m not going to tell you right now to do anything differently, but don’t say you need him again. Don’t ever say that again.”

This shit is new to me—these feelings of ownership over her. At moments like this, I can feel how dangerous this could be.

“What? Seriously?” The snark in her voice is not helping me stay in control.

“Yes. Fucking seriously.” The thought of pulling the car over and having a different sort of discussion flashes through my head. “If it wasn’t clear back there, what just happened with us, it meant something. There’s an ‘us’ now, and that means something to me. It means something to you, too. It means you’re mine. You said it, and I meant it. This is no fucking game to me. That means we’re in this together.”