Random Acts of Hope (11 page)

“So no complications?” I’d whispered, pulled back into existence by the cold scrape of steel against my womb’s walls. The clearing of the tissue that had once held promise but that had—unlike me—made the full passage out of existence.

“That’s right.” Her hand had been so warm against my ice-block skin. “Everything’s back as it was before.”

Everything’s back as it was before
. That
wa
s what I wanted so badly it tasted like blood sometimes. I stared now at Liam, at the father of my baby, and I just couldn’t stop shaking. Tears filled the bridge of my nose, spreading to the tip, the inside flaring and flaming
as though
wet napalm invaded my sinuses, and then he was kissing me, softly and tenderly, his hands around my waist as I walked
backward
through my apartment door and invited him to join me.

Because somehow I had to live with an ache like a scar
an
d to try to get everything back as it was before.
I had no idea how, exactly, to do that, but I knew this:
 

Liam was
her
e.

And that was more than I’d had in five years.

Liam

I touched her. I kissed her. I held her in my arms and something in me fused with her, even for a few brief seconds. All I wan
ted wa
s to go back in time and for her
not
to make that phone call
telling me she was pregnant
,
not
tell me what she said, make it untrue and unsaid, so I c
ould
have my damn five years with her and
not
feel this hot rush of confusion that boil
ed
my blood.

She looked at me with that arched eyebrow and those big eyes that
we
re the size of a clock. Two clocks, counting time, counting the years. The pa
i
n on her face must
have
mirror
ed
my own.

How c
ould
all this pa
in
be mixed so easily with so much pleasure, like
finely-
ground glass in chocolate mousse? The danger
wa
sn’t the p
assion
. It
wa
s what hid within i
t
.

Charlotte hid a disgusting secret from me all those years ago and I shut her out. Walked away. Closed off.
Bam!
Done. There was no dialogue, no “what if,” no talking about what had happened, because you can’t argue with biology.

Now she was in my arms, shaking like everything between us made an earthquake, and her warm skin fe
lt
like home.

She smell
ed
like Charlotte, the same mix of perfume and musk and home-baked cookies I loved. Even during sex she carried that scent, and when I
was
between her legs and drove her to frenzied declarations of love,
that
was
the
scent
I carried all day.

Breathing it in right now was unreal. Fucking unreal.

“Why now?” she whispered as I settled her on the couch, pressing my lips to her cheeks.

My chest tightened. “Because we saw each other. I couldn’t stop seeing you after that. I can’t stop seeing you now.
You’re burned into my mind.
”

“So you’re chasing me down and stalking me? At 6 a.m.?” She sniffled. “Didn’t you have to work last night? Gig or…”
S
he laughed. “Gig?”

“
I did. Took a long shower to wash the stink of cougar money off my…hips.” I almost said “cock” but held back.
 

“What else
on your body
smells like cougar money?” she asked, and I burst into a deep laugh that rumbled through my chest. Why be prim
a
round Charlotte? She’s the one who could tell jokes so dirty she made me blush.

That was one of the many reasons why I love her.

Loved her.
Loved
. Past tense. My heart felt like one of Sam’s drums during a long solo, pounding with emotion but without sheet music, just moving through time and space and imagination. Except I didn’t have to imagine. For the first time in five years, Charlotte was very real and here in front of me with those big eyes that looked at me now like she, too, couldn’t quite believe we were together.
 

A
prickly feeling took over suddenly and I became a stuttering teen boy. What was I supposed to say? Why I had come here—because I had no choice. Nothing else made sense, and all I knew was that an hour ago I’d been at the gym and then suddenly I was driving to her college where I knew she lived and worked. A quick check on my phone told me which dorm she was in charge of.

And that was that.

Why are you here?
h
er eyes asked, though her lips stayed silent. It was easier to say nothing, so I did, just staring. Five years had changed me. It had changed her, too. Those hips were wider, her ass shapely and fine. Her face was thinner and more sophisticated, with eyes that were calm and focused. Neither of us was a nervous kid anymore.

“I don’t know what to say,” Charlotte said. In any other tone of voice
that
would come out as a confession or an accusation, but for some reason she managed to make the words seem neutral. Open. Searching.

My stomach seized and my breath caught in my throat. “
M
e either,” I replied. I stifled a sigh. I wanted to stop the talking with another kiss but something held me back. In the intervening years I’d been with so many women, spent so many nights trying to erase Charlotte's imprint from me, but these minutes were a kick in the gut.

She had me all these years and I stupidly didn’t realize it.

“We probably have a lot we need to say,” she added.

All I could do was blink.
I’d imagined this moment a million times, and every scenario involved having her beg me for forgiveness, plead with me to get over her betrayal, and have some explanation—
any
explanation—that made sense. I invented so many ideas it became comical, but not funny.
 

Never funny.

“We probably do,” I said evenly, dying inside but only giving back what she let loose.
Like playing a polite game of tennis for the sake of killing time. The goal is to keep the ball in play, but not to stop the back-and-forth.
 

M
y arms tingle
d
with the pressure of her skin against mine, her head bending down to tuck into the soft spot between my shoulder and my collarbone. Her hair smelled like cinnamon and coconut and that fresh scent that Charlotte always smelled like. She breathed steadily, in and out, like a metronome. I couldn’t tell if it came naturally to her or if she was working as hard to control herself as I was.

Inside I might have been dying, but on the outside my body was alive in so many different ways, stirring beneath my clothes, straining to erase the years by sinking into her until my mind just melted and all we were was warmth and moans and friction, all heated flesh and frenzied touch.

And then her body, tense but pressed into mine, relaxed. She was like a series of layers of tension, and somehow just holding her made one of those layers yield.

It gave me permission to just
be
. No one had given me that in…ever. Following her lead, I hugged her tight and just breathed in and out. In and out. Without a word, we stood and connected. What should have felt weird and uncomfortable, charged and tense, felt like coming home.

And then she yawned.

“That’s a new reaction from a woman I’m holding in my arms,” I said, feeling my own words rumble low in my throat.

She laughed, but yawned again. “It’s not an insult. In fact, it’s a compl
i
ment.” She looked at the clock on her desk. It read 7:02 a.m.

“Are you expiring?”

Another yawn. “I’m off duty now, technically.”

My pulse burst into applause. I could feel the thready pull of it in my throat, and she jumped a bit, stretching back from me, as if she felt my skin jerk under the blood’s pressure. Having her startle in my arms made a rush of uncertainty return. What was I doing?

“What does that mean?” I asked, sounding and feeling stupid.

Yawn. “It means I can go to bed.”

The air changed in an instant. My body reacted damn fast to that comment, and she felt me go hard. Her hips shifted against mine and then settled back in place, eyes intense and fierce.

Is that an offer?
I almost asked. Almost.

Her long, slow out-breath that wasn’t quite a sigh helped to ground me. Charlotte was in my arms, her head nestled against the crook of my neck, and she smelled like everything I’d missed for years. The distance between us, the gaping, fanned-out past, collapsed into a thin layer of nothing, almost imaginary, as the bare skin of her arm touched my own forearm.

“I know this seems rude, Liam, but I’m exhausted. In so many more ways than one. Work, the snake, you…”

“I exhaust you?” I tried to make a joke of it but couldn’t.

“
This
exhausts me.” She shifted and went tense. Her crappy top was for a band I hadn’t thought of in six years, one that was popular when Random Acts of Crazy got
its
start, but disbanded a few years ago. My mind migrated to stupid details like that, lured away because the magnitude of
Holy shit, Charlotte’s in my arms
was so great it felt like a supernova. And not just in my pants.

“Sorry,” was my lameass response. Molecules on my skin rubbed together to produce the kind of heat you only feel in the presence of one person. Ever.

“I missed you,” she whispered.

I leaned my head against the back of her couch and stared up at the ceiling, eyes wide and unblinking, my thumb gently rubbing her arm. Zoning out wasn’t my plan, but some message from the universe gave me a few minutes to just do nothing. Say nothing. Be…nothing. No movement, no apologies, no explanations, no demands, no outrage.

Just pure existence.

While I was pure existencing myself, though, Charlotte fell asleep.

God damn Charlotte.

Charlotte

The sunlight stream
ed
through the slats in the blinds,
its gentle nudge a bit more urgent than usual.
T
he rays of heat fro
m
the window were not what actually woke me up,
though
.

It was the strange man’s hot palm on my hip.

The slide of the sheets against my clothed body felt like sandpaper, my hands rushing to my hair, fingers interweaved with a giant rat’s nest of bedhead as I sat up and stared at the six-foot-plus being in bed.

Not a snake.
Sooooo
not a snake.

Liam. Long and muscled, hard and tanned, his shirt off and pants on, feet bare. The sheets were a tangled mess between us, his
golden locks
as rumpled as I imagined mine w
ere
, and his arm was outstretched, fingers twitching as if searching for my body.

His eyelids fluttered. He looked like a little boy again, like the eleven year old I’d met more than half a life ago. Under those lids were the cynical
ocean
eyes that still made my breath pause. When he smiled those eyes could anchor my world, the grin of straight white teeth and pleasure and connection all mixed in with his hands, his heart, his—

Wham.

Air jammed in my throat. Five years. Five years of wishing for this moment, of wanting to reconcile, of needing it so badly it was a part of my DNA, some sequence that needed to be mapped and understood as part of the genome. The genome of love, of pain, o
f
heartache.

A deep sigh from him, then he turned over, his tight ass toward me, the waistband of well-worn jeans pulled down enough to show those two dimples, on either side of his spine, far down enough to make that air in my throat stay stuck for a little longer.

My hungry eyes took him in, starved for the sight of him, the scent of sweat and musk and Liam—the same laundry detergent his mom used all those years, the same cologne he’d worn since his freshman year
of high school
, the same biochemical pheromone combination that my nose sought out like a golden retriever in a dorm full of women all on their periods at the same time.

“Hey,” he
mumble
d from across the bed. “You awake?”

“Yes.” Was I ever. Liam McCarthy was in my bed. We’d fallen asleep last night, too overwhelmed to talk. Touch—affection, really—was the comfort we’d both asked of each other and received.

Not forgiveness. Not sex. Not even intimacy, per se.

Just…touch.

It was a start.

Liam

My boner was so big it was going to burst out of my fly and go strangle some small contraband pet in one of the dorm rooms.

Bed. Charlotte. Bed. Charlotte. We’d slept together without sex, her ass cradled up against my raging erection for hours, her breathing slowing until her body had relaxed against mine, the ultimate subconscious trust.

And then I’d spent the last few hours with eyes wide open, reveling in the scent and the lush touch of her, that sweet heat against my body, in my arms.

A man could starve without the love of a good woman.

I felt like I was ninety-eight pounds and on the verge of death but didn’t know it. All these years.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Why hadn’t I even tried?

Because she fucked some other guy and tried to pass his baby off as yours.

The thought made me turn away. I pretended to be asleep as Charlotte sat bolt upright in bed and made cute little mewling sounds like she was having morning-after regrets. Except there was nothing to regret but the hours of hugging and cuddling.

If anyone had a right to regrets, it was me. My blue balls were bigger than that kid’s in
We’re the Millers
, and I hadn’t had my nads chomped on by a tarantula.

“Hey,” I said.