Days Like This (23 page)

SHE WAS RIGHT next to me, but
she was so quiet. It was almost like she was afraid to breathe. I could feel
the tension around her, and I wondered if she could hear my heart pounding in
the silence. I did all this to get her out here—and now here she was.

“You’re wrong
about one thing,” I said, pounding the next post into the ground.

“What’s that?”

“I’m not
happy.” I hit the beam again. “And I don’t have everything that I want.” One
more swing and then my eyes were on her. “I don’t have you.”

I threw the hammer
to the ground, and it was an instant. She leapt from the fence into my arms,
and wrapped her legs around my waist. I couldn’t think about anything else
except how much I wanted to taste every inch of her.

I lowered Cass
to her feet, and she broke our kiss, inhaling a half-laugh, half-breath. I
smiled. This was our moment. Everything was out there and now we could be
whatever we wanted. I kissed her again, and her body pressed against mine like
it belonged there. Cass guided me toward the door of my apartment, and opened
it. Then, I remembered the one thing. I pulled her to a stop. “Wait—I need to
tell you something.”

She shook her
head and kissed me. I leaned into it and welcomed her tongue into my mouth.
This girl couldn’t get close enough. She caught my lip with her teeth
playfully. “No more talking.”

Okay.

BY THE TIME we were up the
stairs, my lips were already in that swollen, numb, but this-was-so-good-don’t-stop
phase. Graham closed the door behind us, and for a moment, it was hard to
believe this was happening. Everything wasn’t totally lost. He turned back to
me and my heart was pounding as he slipped the robe off my shoulders, and
placed a kiss under my ear, on my neck, on my collarbone.
He feathered kisses down my jaw
to my ripe lips, and opened them with his tongue. I practically purred as our
mouths clung in a heated kiss.

My
hands slid up his shirt, pulling it over his head, not wanting to separate. I
ran my hands down his chest and his abs, and his lips moved to my neck.
His hand slid under my shirt and over my
skin, leaving chills. He eased my shirt over my head and his fingers trailed
over my breasts. His hands were like ice as he touched me and made every nerve
inside me shiver. I never wanted that to stop.

His lips and
tongue flitted over my nipples; I braced my arms around him so I didn’t fall
over. I moaned as he moved his lips up my breasts, back to my waiting mouth. His
tongue explored, and his hands continued to caress my breasts. My body was
feeling everything, everywhere, a thousand pins and needles. I let him lead me,
let his tongue and his hands and his breath take me away.

My fingers
fumbled to unbutton his pants without stopping the kissing, and his pants fell to
the floor. My hand went downward into his boxers, and as I took the full length
of him in my hand he parted from my mouth with a gasp. I smiled at the
reaction. Graham kissed me again quickly before flashing a devilish smile. He pulled
off my shorts, kissing my thighs as he lowered the fabric. He did the same with
my underwear and his fingers slide inside me. My breath hitched at the sudden
entry, and got more ragged as he moved inside me. I whispered his name and
gripped his shoulders. I was going to come undone. I moaned as his fingers
found my clit and pressed myself against him. He kissed me as he moved deeper
and harder inside me while I groaned into his mouth.

I couldn’t
think anymore. My legs felt weak as I leaned my whole body against him. He ran
his tongue along my neck, and I moaned his name, pressing my mouth into his
shoulder as my fingers dug in for something to steady me. He was the only thing
keeping me standing,

“Come for me,”
he said breathlessly in my ear. I whispered his name while my body uncoiled
around him, and then, he kissed me again and lowered me to the floor.

He was on top
of me, the pressure of his erection pressing into my hip, while my hands
explored him and our mouths breathed in each other. I was safe under him, like
nothing could ever harm me. I was always that way when I was with him. There
was nothing and no one who would ever be able to complete me like he could.

Graham looked
down at me. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.” He pressed a
kiss to my collarbone. “I will never stop wanting you.”

“I need you,”
I said, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him in for another kiss.
“Now.”

I felt him
enter me slowly, and I bit his bottom lip. He was the same as I remembered,
filling me perfectly, impossibly full, but my body felt different around him. As
if I had a few million extra nerve endings and he knew how to trigger each one
of them. Maybe I was new or different, or maybe it was him. Maybe it was us. Whatever
it was, the feeling of him inside me was almost too much.

He moved
inside me and my fingers ran down his back. I felt myself already building and
we’d barely gotten started. My body craved him too much. “God, Graham.”

He moved
harder. I lifted my hips into his movements, and we both moaned together. The
sounds grew louder between us, and I focused on him moving inside me. It was
all I’d wanted for months, and I’d never thought I could actually have it
again. I moaned loudly in tune with him as c
oherent
thought deserted me and I floated on pure sensation.
For a brief moment,
time stopped, and we were caught in the middle, frozen together as one.

Graham

I
kissed down Cass’s throat to the full rise of her breasts,
as she snuggled up beside me and intertwined
her legs with mine. My whole body was exhausted, and alive, and hungry for her,
and my hands couldn’t leave her alone. I kissed every inch of her that I could
find and enjoyed the sounds she made under me. The sounds I’d missed and
couldn’t get enough of. I didn’t want her to ever stop making them.

Then she laughed.
I really loved her laugh.

“You shouldn’t
laugh after sex, Cass. You’ll give a guy a complex.”

That only made
her laugh more. I gave her my best stern face, but I couldn’t be mad at her.
Not after that. After this.

“We didn’t
even make it to the bed,” she said with a smile. “I can literally touch it.”

She reached
out her hand over her head, and sure enough, it was right there.

“And that’s
funny?”

“I didn’t
really imagine this on the floor. Like we’re animals.”

“I imagined it
everywhere,” I said.

She smiled.
“Everywhere?”

I nodded and
kissed her neck. “The floor.” Another kiss. “Your car.” Another kiss. “The bed
of my truck—”

“Why have we
never done that?”

“The beach,
the yard, against that stupid fence, a road somewhere
.”
I kissed a new
part of her body between each word, and then looked at her and couldn’t stop
smiling. “With you is all that matters to me.”

“I don’t
deserve you,” she said. I kissed her again, and she ran her hand down my face.
“I really don’t.”

“No, you
really don’t,” I said.

She hit me
playfully on the arm. “I love you, Graham Tucker.”

“I love you,
too. Always.”

I kissed her
again, and her body burnt this path against mine. My body groaned in response
to her hand, which was suspiciously drifting downward. “You want to be an
animal again?” I whispered in her ear.

“You could
convince me,” she said. I gasped as her hand moved against me, and her eyes
widened with laughter. I was so hard under her touch, even after what we’d just
done. I couldn’t get enough of her. I inhaled some air, exhaled her name, as
Cass took control of my body.

SHE SEEMED SO happy next to
me in the morning sunlight—I hadn’t seen her that way in a very long time. I
folded my hands behind my head and looked at her. I wanted to capture that
moment and keep it forever. To imprint it on my memory as a reminder that these
rare times of pure bliss—those were the moments, the days, we existed for.
Those were the ones that kept us moving forward, kept us fighting and
forgiving, and loving. Every mistake, every stupid decision, every lie found
hope in this. We’d found our way back to each other, and I never wanted to forget.

“Why are you
staring at me?”

“Because
you’re beautiful.”

Her face lit
up, and I loved that I could still make her blush. She was the same Cass, the
same and new and completely different at once. I patted the bed, and she lay
back down next to me, resting her head in that spot on my chest. It was made
for her.

“I keep
thinking about this thing,” Cassie said slowly.

“You can think
of something besides a whole year of make-up sex?”

I couldn’t see
her face, but I knew she was blushing again. “What thing?” I kissed her head.

“You remember
that thing you always say to me?
You
can’t live your life in fear or you’ll never live.
This reminds me of that.”

I took a deep
breath. That thing.

“How so?” I
asked.

“I don’t know.
I guess it just makes sense now. I was so afraid, and I wasted all this time.”

“You don’t
have to waste any more of it,” I said.

She
hmmed
,
and I knew that sound. It urged something up in the pit of my stomach. Cassie
knew something, or she thought she did, and she may have been evolving, but she
was still her. Any ideas she had would spiral. She would over-analyze them and
they would make her doubt. I didn’t want to be the thing she doubted. Not ever.

“I should tell
you something about that.”

“About what?”
she asked.

“That saying.
I almost told you before, but then…”
You
pulled me upstairs.
I
sat up, and she faced me. I smiled at her one more time because I loved to see
that glow on her face when I did. “This is a new start for us, so I don’t want
to have any secrets.”

I locked eyes
with her. This was harder than I thought it would be. “I heard that from your
father.”

She frowned. “You
didn’t know my father. I don’t even know my father.”

I shook my
head, and took a breath. “I met him once.”

“Met who?”

“Your father,”
I said.

Cassie
blinked, confused, and then shook her head. “That’s not funny.”

I gulped. This
was it. My secret. The thing I tried to protect her from knowing, and it’s the
cause of so many problems. “I’m not kidding. I met him. Richard Harlen. He had
your eyes,” I said. She bunched the sheet over her chest. Her hair fell around
her face when moved, and a lump formed in my throat. I rose next to her. “He
showed up at the hospital
after you found your mom in the bathtub. We’d been there all night and they finally
let you in to see her.”

That was hard
for her, for us both. We hadn’t known what was happening or why. They wouldn’t
really tell Cassie much. I’d waited outside the door, sitting in one of those
hard, plastic chairs that existed only in emergency rooms—even though that’s
where they should’ve been the most comfortable since people at hospitals had to
almost live in them.

“I heard
someone talking at the nurse’s station, a man with a low voice, and he was
standing fifty feet away. I’d only seen him in pictures, but I knew it was
him.”

Cassie stared
at me in disbelief while I talked. I wanted to know what she was thinking. This
was going to kill her. I didn’t want to lose her, but not telling her the whole
truth again was going to make that happen anyway.

“I didn’t know
what to do. I only thought of you, Cass. I didn’t know how you’d handle him
being there on top of everything. I didn’t even think, really.”

“What’d you
say to him?” she asked, her voice low.

Richard Harlen
looked me up and down when I’d introduced myself. “Well, I said, ‘With all due
respect, sir, why are you here?’”

“You what?”
Cassie shook her head.

“He said
they’d called him because he was the emergency contact.”

Cassie wasn’t
looking at me, but I knew I had to tell her. I was wrong to have never told her
anyway.

“I told him I
was with you,” I said. To his benefit, the man had looked a little taken aback
by her name. He’d at least paused, and I had no clue what I was doing, but I
knew she wouldn’t be able to see him. I couldn’t protect her from the stuff
with her mom, but that, her father, I could. So I had. “I told him he had to
leave.”

 “What do—”

“I told him it
wasn’t fair to you for him to be there.” Cassie shook her head at me. “I said
he would make it all harder on you, and you didn’t deserve that. I said he
couldn’t help, not now, and that you didn’t even know he was alive.”

Her father hadn’t
seemed surprised by the confession. He’d been silent, processing. I knew he’d
bail. I knew it. I could sense it.

“Then what?”
Cassie asked, after a few minutes of silence.

I nodded. “I
asked why he was there. Why hadn’t he come on your birthday or one of the
Christmases where you asked about him, or any of the times Mrs. H was sick. I
asked him how he could leave you. He said I didn’t know what he’d been through
with Mrs. H, or how hard it was to leave.” Cassie started to speak, but I
didn’t let her. “I told him he was right, but I knew how easy it was to stay.”
She looked at me, her eyes wide and sparkling with tears. “I said he could come
back the next day, but that right then it was too much. I told him I was trying
to protect you, and that you were dealing with enough.”

“You love
her?” he’d asked me.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is she
happy?” he’d asked.

 “With Cassie,
you never really know,” I’d said.

He’d smiled,
like it was a joke that I missed out on. “I reckon you’re right. It’s a lot to
throw at a girl. Maybe tomorrow, you say?”

I’d nodded.
“Maybe tomorrow.” He didn’t come back the next day. I’d known he wouldn’t. He’d
already proven he wasn’t the type to stay.

I looked at
Cassie. “He said he’d come back later, and he asked me to do him a favor.” Cassie
didn’t speak, but she waited, her eyes wide. “‘Tell her not to live her life in
fear or she’ll never really live.’ I told him that he could tell you that when
he came back. But he didn’t come back.”

The room was
silent. Cassie wasn’t facing me anymore, and I reached out to touch her but she
flinched away.

“Say
something, Cass.”

“Four years
you’ve known?” Her voice was strangely calm. She was trying, but I knew she was
upset.

“Yes,” I said.

She spun
around to face me. “Why wouldn’t you tell me that?” She shook her head, like
she couldn’t believe I’d done it. She’d done the same thing, but in another
way. We were more alike than we probably even knew. “He came for us, Graham.”

I took her
hand, even though she didn’t want me to. She had to see me, to hear me. “He
left again, Cassie. He would’ve always left. He wouldn’t have been able to be
what you needed.”

 “But maybe I
would’ve!” she yelled, pushing away from me again and moving off the bed.

She was crying
and it threw me off. “If I hadn’t learned about my dad the way I did, maybe I
would never have freaked out! Maybe I would’ve stayed and all of this last year
wouldn’t have happened.”

“You don’t
know any of that is true, Cass,” I said, moving with her. I grabbed her waist
and pulled her, but she didn’t budge. “What else would it have done to your life?
You don’t know; I don’t know. Maybe you didn’t leave; maybe you did. It doesn’t
matter now. We can’t change it.”

I’d tried to
look him up for her once before. I’d figured that the nurses got him so his
number must be the same, but it was disconnected. It was like the man
re-disappeared. She didn’t need to know all that, though. Not right now.

“It does
matter, Graham. It will always matter. You met him and I haven’t.”

I knew then
that it wasn’t my secret that hurt, it was his. It was that he was alive and
stayed away. It was him not wanting to see his own daughter. I could see the
pain on her face, the rejection. I could see it because I’d known it.

Cassie moved
around the living room in my small studio. She threw on her robe.

“What are you
doing?” I asked.

“I need some
air,” she said.

No, no, no.
This wasn’t
happening.
I bolted from the bed and grabbed her arm. “Don’t walk away right now. Let’s
talk about this.”

Her eyes were
full of tears. She couldn’t leave again. She couldn’t walk out on us. “Cass,” I
said. I pressed my forehead against hers. She stayed there for a second next to
me as tears fell from her eyes.

“I need some
air,” she said. “Just for a minute.”

“Okay,” I
said.

And then she
went toward the door. I let her go this time, because maybe that was the
problem before. I’d held on too tight. I’d proposed too early. I was too scared
to let her have space and find herself because if she did that then maybe she’d
find herself away from me. I didn’t know who I was without Cassie, so I thought
giving her that ring would mean she’d always stay, when really, it made her
run.