Lifers (25 page)

My God! How did this man who had endured eight long years of brutalizing treatment hold such love in his heart? It stunned my soul. I attacked his lips and felt the rising heat of raw passion pour from him.

I pulled myself back onto his lap and let out a long wail of pleasure as I impaled myself on him.

His breathing was fast and erratic as he tugged me forward so my chest was flush against his, then he bucked into me repeatedly.

“Torrey!” he gasped. “Goddamn, Torrey!”

I could feel him swell inside me, and he moaned louder.

Suddenly he tipped me over and my back crashed onto the blanket. Then he pulled my ankles over his shoulders so I was almost bent in half. His eyes were closed and his biceps bunched as he pumped hard. I cried out and his eyelids flew open, the intensity of his gaze thrilling me. His back arched and he shuddered as his body pulsed into mine, almost an entity of its own; a life force passing between us.

He cried out and collapsed onto me, his crushing weight forcing out the small amount of breath I had left from my lungs.

Then he rolled onto his back, tugging me with him so I was splayed across his broad chest.

It took several minutes before either of us was capable of speaking.

His dick slipped out of me, but I still couldn’t move.

“You okay?” he whispered, his hands stroking up and down my spine.

“Mm-mm.”

“Is that a ‘mm-mm, yes’ or a ‘mm-mm, no’?” he asked, a smile in his voice.

“That’s a ‘mm-mm, shut the fuck up’,” I yawned.

He laughed quietly and sat up slowly, letting me slide from his chest and onto the blanket.

I couldn’t open my eyes but heard the telltale snap as he pulled off the used condom, tying a knot in the end.

He lay back down and looped his long body around mine, snuggling against me, and peppering tiny kisses over my shoulder.

I stretched out my well-exercised muscles, impressed that his vigorous love-making hadn’t snapped me in two.

He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me in even tighter.

“Every time,” he breathed into my hair, “every time I think it couldn’t be better than the last time, but every time it is. You. Are. So. Special.”

He paused, as if waiting for me to reply, but I was too comfortable, too replete, too entirely exhausted to speak.

He sounded hesitant when he spoke again.

“Christ, Torrey, I hate soundin’ like a fuckin’ juvenile, but ya gotta tell me, sweetheart, how was it for you?”

I almost snapped back some sarcastic answer, but his words exposed his vulnerability. I didn’t want to hurt him that way, knowing that a word from me was all he needed.

“Well,” I said, rubbing my finger in a small circle over the back of his hand, “every time I think it couldn’t be better than the last time, but every time it is. Every time I think I’ve had the best there is, you teach my body something new. I can’t get enough of you, Jordan Kane.”

The breath rushed from his lungs, and I felt him tremble. He clutched me to him with painful pressure, as his body shook behind me.

I lay in his arms, my back against his chest, stroking his hands and wrists, twining my legs with his, letting him lose his tears in my hair.

After several minutes, he stilled, and I felt his body stiffen with embarrassment at his loss of control.

I twisted in his arms so I was facing him and kissed the tears from his long lashes.

“It’s okay, Jordan. You’re safe with me.”

He took a shuddering breath. “I love you, Torrey Delaney. You don’t have to say it back to me, but I love you. I didn’t believe life was worth living ‘til I met you. I’m so, so happy I was wrong.”

Any chance of a reply dried in my throat. His arms tightened around me and I waited for the moment when I freaked, afraid of what he’d said, afraid of the intensity of his emotions.

But the panic didn’t come. Instead I leaned into his strong, solid body and held him just as tightly.

Jordan 

This woman.

What she did to me. I felt as if I’d been in a dark cave for years and she was the sun exploding around me. She’d stripped away every layer of skin and poured her kindness and compassion into my body, healing me from the inside out.

I watched her lying beside me at the fishing hole, her hair tumbling across the blanket, her golden skin glowing in the sunshine, trusting me with her thoughts, and memories, and feelings—and with her body.

It scared the shit out of me to feel so much.

I’d spent eight years keeping every emotion frozen and numb, trusting no one.

In prison you’re caged alongside other people like you, close but untouching and untouchable, until all the anger and rage and frustration explode in violence. Every second you have to watch your back, and if you show any weakness, you’re fucked. Sometimes literally.

Parole had come as a shock. I’d been turned down so many times, year after long year, that I’d pretty much given up any hope that I’d ever be released. I sat in that chair in my white pullover shirt, my hands cuffed, watching the indifferent faces of the review board in front of me.

My past misdemeanors were listed: fighting, wounding another prisoner, prohibited tattooing, poor attitude, disrespecting the guards. But then, apparently, I’d shown ‘progression in my rehabilitation’. That was news to me, but I’d take anything I could get.

I was surprised—stunned into incomprehensibility—when I learned that my parents were going to take me back as part of my parole package plan. I hadn’t expected that. In fact I’d been certain that I’d never see or hear from them again.

The day I was released was a rollercoaster ride of emotions.

I was excited, I was nervous—fucking terrified if I’m being honest. I knew how to be a good convict, but I didn’t know anymore how to live
out there
. I had to find a new way of relating to ordinary people, learn to read a different set of signals. I couldn’t take the prison mindset into the real world. I had no fucking clue how to behave.

Seeing my parents was the biggest mind fuck ever. For years, I’d believed that they’d washed their hands of me. There’d been no letters or cards, no phone calls, no communication whatsoever. I might as well have been dead to them.

So to find that they were willing to take me home: it raised all sorts of hope inside me. And I had questions … a lot of questions. They all started with ‘why?’

I was up early on release day, mostly because I hadn’t slept. I was given some crappy clothes to wear and escorted from my cell. I had a couple of paperbacks in a box and some of the sketches I’d done for tattoos, and that was it. That was my entire life for the last eight years.

The corrections officer took me into a room where a man and a woman were sitting—my parents. It was a shock. They looked older, of course, but I hadn’t been expecting it. In my mind, they were frozen in time, the way I’d last seen them, at my trial, in tears.

I could see them scanning my face, searching for something they could recognize of the boy they’d known in the man before them. Dad’s eyes followed the lines of tattoos on my arms, and he frowned. I could see him trying to work it out—how had I gotten them in prison?

When my eyes met Momma’s, she looked away.

They didn’t try to touch me. No hugs, no handshakes, no words for their son.

I was pointed toward a chair by the corrections officer, and we sat looking at each other—strangers thrown together by the sick fuck that was fate.

The corrections officer handed me a copy of my release form, and explained again the rules of my parole.

Nobody else had spoken.

I was processed and released.

It was a bizarre feeling walking into the visitors’ parking lot. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it all seemed so unreal. I was looking for Dad’s old pickup truck, but he pressed his key fob, and lights flashed on a Toyota.

“You got a new car, Dad?”

He looked shocked that I’d spoken and nodded in reply.

“Four years now,” he said.

Those were the first words he’d spoken to me since saying that I was no longer his son all those years before.

Momma just stared at me.

No one spoke on the way home. I sat in the back seat, staring out of the window while roads and houses and trees flashed by me. As the scenery gradually became more familiar, the panicky feelings started to subside, and I was excited to see places I recognized. But all the time the stone in the pit of my stomach weighed heavier the nearer we got to the place I’d called home.

We bumped down the familiar dirt road and the cottonwoods parted. They were taller than I remembered, more luxuriant, but the house looked smaller and kind of rundown. Dad had always been insistent on cleaning out the gutters and keeping the paintwork fresh. I remembered the times Mikey and I had bitched about having to climb up ladders to fix things. It looked like nothing had been fixed in a long while. Eight years, perhaps.

Inside, the house was the same but different. A new lampshade here; a new table in the kitchen there. The family room seemed the least changed, the sofa and curtains familiar. Only the TV had been updated.

“I’ve made your bed.”

My head snapped up, stunned that Momma had spoken.

I scanned her face for something else, but she wasn’t looking at me.

“Thanks,” I said at last.

I headed upstairs, pausing outside Mikey’s room. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open—and stared. Nothing,
and I mean nothing
had changed. His clothes were still hanging across the chair as if he might come back at any moment and throw them on. His posters and pictures were still tacked to the walls, and his yearbook was open at the page with the football team.

I closed my eyes as my stomach coiled and rolled. I backed out and headed for my own room.

That had definitely changed. Everything had been stripped out, all the posters gone, all my books and school stuff gone, the closet and drawers empty. It hit me then—they hadn’t planned on me coming back. I wondered what had changed their minds. Why was I here?

I know now it was a way of punishing me more—as if I hadn’t thought about Mikey every waking hour of every day since it had happened.

Beside me, Torrey stretched and yawned.

“Did I fall asleep?”

“Only for a few minutes—twenty, maybe.”

“Did you sleep?”

“Too much snortin’ and snorin’,” I smiled.

“I do
not
snore!” she complained, roughly pushing my shoulder.

“If you say so, sweetheart.”

“You’re not being very smooth, Jordan Kane. I bet Mikey wouldn’t have told a woman that she snored!”

I liked to hear her talking about Mikey like he was a real person, not someone whose name had to be whispered. She had a way of helping me remember the good stuff, not just the way he died.

“I wish you could have known Mikey. He was a great guy.”

“Hmm, two Kane brothers,” she said, with a gentle smile. “That sounds like double trouble to me.”

“Hell, yeah! We got into a lot of shit, that’s for sure.”

“Sounds like he led the way most of the time.”

I smiled to myself.

“Well, yeah. He was the oldest by 18 months. I wanted to be just like him.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment.

“That’s something that’s been puzzling me, Jordan. When you talk about him, I picture this wild, bad boy—a version of you. But when everyone else mentions him, it’s like he was halfway between a saint and an angel.”

I knew what she meant, but that’s only because people wanted to remember the good stuff.

“He was real, Torrey. But special. Blessed, you know? He just had a way of drawin’ people to him. Like you.”

She was quiet and I didn’t know what she was thinking.

“Did you ever say goodbye to him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you went straight from the hospital to juvie. Did you get a chance to visit Mikey’s grave since you got out?”

Her words hit me with the force of a ten-ton truck.

“No, I … I don’t even know where … where they put him.”

“It’s not hard to find out—if you wanted to go.”

Do I? The words ‘final resting place’ seem so unreal
.

I felt her fingers flutter down my chest, and she laid her hand over my heart.

“I’ll come with you, if you want to go … if you want me to.”

“I don’t think I can. I don’t deserve…”

She slapped my chest hard and my eyes snapped to hers. She looked genuinely angry, like a bad tempered bull in a horn tossing mood.

“For God’s sake, Jordan! Love isn’t a life sentence! But that’s how you’re using it, like a punishment. You loved your brother and it sounds like he loved you. Do you think for one second he’d want you to live your life rotting away like this? Blaming yourself for being the one who survived? Blaming yourself for living? Would you have wanted that for him if it had been the other way around? Don’t you see? You have to live for
both
of you!”

She jumped to her feet and started scrambling around for her clothes. My heart pounded and I felt sick.