Church
She kissed me.
Her lips touched mine and she destroyed me. This tiny ray of light that seemed determined to chase the darkness inside of me away unraveled me with nothing more than the brush of her very soft lips against mine.
I should’ve pulled away, either that or gone all in. The attraction between us was only going to end one way, with me inside of her as we scorched through one another, so a real kiss with tongues and teeth and grabbing hands was inevitable, especially if she was holding the door wide open in invitation. I was already struggling with the friend thing and this wasn’t helping at all. I stood there, holding her, feeling her as she rubbed her mouth over mine, the barest hint of pressure as she took a taste, as she feathered her lips against mine like she was trying to memorize the shape, the feel, the flavor of them. It was the singularly softest touch I’d ever experienced and yet it had the power to make my knees weak and my blood pop with a desire so sharp it felt like it could pierce right through my skin.
Her hand cradled my jaw, her fingers shaking with some of the same things I was feeling. This thing that lived between us was hungry and tired of being ignored. It buzzed around us, electric and hot, refusing to be cooled by the chill in the night air that surrounded us. If we weren’t careful the passion that was starving and needy between us would consume us, devour us, and leave us nothing more than hollow husks filled with fading satisfaction and jagged disenchantment because no matter how good we were together it couldn’t and wouldn’t last. I didn’t want any part of me to be responsible for burning her out. I liked that her light chased my shadows away and that meant I wasn’t going to have any kind of hand in dimming the way she glowed.
Her breasts pressed into the center of my chest as she leaned more fully into me and I could feel the pointed peaks of her nipples stab into my skin. The sensation made my dick twitch behind my zipper and had all the available blood that was still above my belt rushing south. I’d always liked the way Dixie was built. She was on the shorter side, but every single part of her small frame was curved and lush. She looked like a woman that you could grab ahold of without having to watch yourself. She was delicate but in no way did she come across as fragile or breakable. She looked like she could take everything I had to give her, all the pent-up longing, all the nights of frustration I spent hard and alone, all the denied hunger that made me want to eat her up and then go back for seconds and thirds because I knew there was no way I was going to have my fill of her honeyed lips and velvety skin in one go.
There was so much of her to experience, and I wanted to know what all of it felt like, tasted like, sounded like. I wanted to watch her come from every possible position I could get her in, and then I wanted to find some new ones, ones no man had ever had her in before, and watch her come in those, too. Because I knew once I got her she would let me have her in ways she hadn’t let anyone else. Her eyes, so pretty and dark, made me all kinds of promises, and I wanted to take her up on every single one of them. But there wasn’t anything I could promise in return, and that always kept me from crossing the invisible line.
She ran the tip of her nose along the edge of my jaw and that little nuzzle made my entire body shudder. She had the ability to bring down all the walls I’d so carefully built up around us in order to keep both of us safe. She didn’t have any clue the kind of damage I could do if I ignored all the warning bells ringing loudly in the back of my mind. I knew the ways in which I could wreck the women in my life that I cared about and there was no way on God’s green and often unforgiving Earth that I would subject her to that. I barely survived the loss of the last woman I loved, I knew if I let Dixie sneak her way inside my heart and something happened to her there would be nothing left of me. There wouldn’t be anyplace left for me to run.
I hated that she still had her helmet on. I wanted my hands in that wild mane of hair. I wanted to hold her close and let myself absorb how good it felt to have her in my arms after wondering how we would fit together in the dark for so long. We fit just right. She was small, but mighty. She had no trouble getting herself where she wanted to be and the side benefit of all her stretching and grabbing on to me meant that every soft and sweet part of her was pressed fully and tightly against every hard and hot part of me. Her body yielded to mine and I swore I would never survive if it did the same thing while she was stretched out naked and wanting underneath me. It felt better than anything ever had even though we were standing up, fully clothed on the side of a highway. There was no way my starved senses and achingly lonely soul were going to be able to withstand the sensation overload that would follow getting Dixie naked and my hands and mouth on every part of her creamy, freckled skin.
The very tip of her tongue darted out and gave the center of my bottom lip a little lick. It was the best kiss I’d ever had and it was barely a kiss at all. She fell back on her heels and gave my shoulders a little push so that I would let her go. I took a step back and used the tip of my own tongue to chase the way she tasted off my lips. Sweet. Everything about her was always so damn sweet. Her taste was going to be branded on every part of my memory long after she was gone, just like I could feel the touch of warmth against my skin and know she had been in the room recently. She thought I wasn’t aware of her. The truth was she was the only thing I’d been aware of since getting back home and turning in my fatigues.
She gave her head a little shake and blinked her eyes up at me like she was struggling to see me. A truck flew past us and blasted the horn, which made her jump and had me scowling after it as it disappeared down the road. “We should probably get moving. Being parked on the side of the highway in the dark isn’t much safer than riding down it.”
She nodded absently and waited for me to get back on the bike. When she crawled on behind me I expected her to sit stiffly the way she had been for most of the evening. I was a little surprised when she curled into my back and even more surprised when I felt the press of her cheek between my shoulder blades. It was nice to have a pretty girl that I had a hard-on for wind her way around me and hold on like she would never let me go.
The next exit was about twenty miles up the road and luckily there was a motel that didn’t look like it was a frequent sight for crime scenes or used as a meth lab, so I pulled over and stopped. I wasn’t sure if there was going to be an awkward talk while we discussed if we were sharing a room or not, honestly I was fine either way. I was used to sleeping in barracks and under the desert sky, so anything that even remotely resembled a bed was fine with me, but I never had the opportunity to ask because she shoved her credit card at me and told me to put her room on it as she hefted her backpack over her shoulders and told me she would be at the diner across the street when I was done.
I couldn’t tell if she was really that hungry or if she was cutting me some slack and taking the choice and the conversation out of my hands. I went into the office, pleased that the clerk didn’t look like an extra from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and secured us two adjoining rooms. Of course I paid for both. This long-overdue and overly dramatic homecoming was all of my making, so I had no intention of letting her pay for anything along the way. I already owed her more than I could ever repay.
I moved the bike so that it was in front of our rooms, dropped my stuff off inside the room I decided would be mine, and then made my way over to the diner. Dixie was already at a booth, a chocolate milkshake in front of her as she chatted with a waitress who looked tired but was still smiling because it was impossible not to smile at the redhead when she turned that infectious grin and those big doe eyes on you. I slid in across from her and got a raised eyebrow from the waitress. Her keen gaze skimmed over me and she turned to give Dixie a wink that made me frown. I ordered a cheeseburger without looking at the menu and narrowed my eyes at Dixie as she stuck the straw sticking out of the frothy drink into her mouth and sucked.
The way her mouth puckered and her cheeks hollowed out immediately made me think of her sucking on something else like that, which had me shifting uncomfortably on the seat and trying to discreetly adjust my jeans. “Why did she wink at you before she walked away?”
Her tongue darted out to catch a stray dollop of whipped cream that dotted her lip and I had to bite back a groan. “I told her I was waiting on the best-looking guy she was going to have in her section all week. She’s working a double because the girl that was supposed to relieve her called in sick and that means she had to leave her kids with their dad who has a live in girlfriend that is barely over eighteen. You walked in and proved me right. She needed something to make her smile.”
The waitress walked over and poured me a cup of coffee without asking if that’s what I wanted. I wasn’t really the smiling type but I did manage a stiff lip twitch for her when she let her gaze roll over me. There was a twinkle in her tired eyes that I knew Dixie was entirely responsible for. She simply had that effect on everyone that crossed her path.
“Did I ever tell you that you remind me of someone I used to know? Someone that also thought it was her job to make everyone she came into contact with smile.” I picked up the coffee and gave it a sip. It was surprisingly good.
She stuck a finger in the whipped cream on the top of her drink and stuck it in her mouth. I didn’t bother to hide my reaction to her innocent seduction. I could feel the heat in my gaze as I stared at her and I watched as it made her cheeks turn pink. She was cute but when she blushed she was so fucking adorable that it felt unfair.
“You’ve never told me much of anything, Church.” Her words cut because they were true. She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “When my dad got hurt he couldn’t work anymore and my mom was juggling a lot. She was trying to take care of him and of me and my little sister. She had to find a job but she had been home with us for so long that she wasn’t really qualified to do much besides service industry jobs. We had to downsize and move. We had to change schools. Things were really rough at home and everyone was in a pretty bad place. I figured the least I could do was try to be the one that stayed positive about things. I’ve always believed that you get what you put out there in the world and my family was putting out enough bad vibes that someone had to counteract that before karma kicked all of our asses. Sometimes it’s so much easier to focus on what went wrong rather than what went right.” She shrugged again. “It must have worked. Dad settled into his new normal and actually ended up being way better at staying home with us than my mom ever was, Mom got promoted at the hotel she was working at from banquet server to a conference planner, so she ended up making more than my dad did when he was working full-time, and a few years later my sister met Wheeler and he managed to curb some of her worst spoiled-brat tendencies. Having a positive attitude and an optimistic outlook on life didn’t cost me anything, and it was what my family needed from me. I guess I never stopped being everyone’s cheerleader.” Her chocolate gaze narrowed fractionally. “Who do I remind you of?”
I considered her thoughtfully for a minute as her attention was stolen by the arrival of our food. She looked like a cheerleader. She looked like the kind of person that would never let you believe that you would fail. Everything about her inspired the belief that things would indeed work out the way they were supposed to. Just like the woman that had stepped up to take care of me, Jules, and my brother after we were forced to say good-bye to my mom. Caroline was never my stepmother. She was my second mother and her bright, positive personality was very similar to Dixie’s, which was crazy considering she had also been handed some really shitty circumstances she had to work her way through while maintaining that smile.
I smothered my burger in ketchup and smashed the top bun back down with my palm. Dixie did the same with hers and made a sound that I knew she would make if I ever got inside of her as she took her first bite. It made the fit of my jeans even more uncomfortable than it already was after watching her with that milkshake.
“My dad remarried when I was a teenager. The woman he married was a lot like you. She saw the best in everyone and in every situation. She was quick to smile and quick to forgive.” She was also the reason I knew that having something good and pure in my life wasn’t in the cards for me.
I leaned back in the vinyl seat knowing I’d opened the door to a line of questioning I couldn’t avoid forever. Talking about Caroline meant talking about my mom and how things had ended so tragically with both of them.
She arched her eyebrows a little bit and went back to her melting drink. “Who exactly are we going to see besides the woman that fell and hurt herself? You said you swore on your mother and now we have your second mother, so I assume we’ll be crossing paths with at least some of your parents at some point in the next week.” Anyone else might be a little intimidated by that but Dixie was likeable and she liked everyone, so I knew she would fit right in with the remaining members of my family. “What are they like?”
It was an easy question but one that I tended to dance my way around when it was asked. Typically, strangers asked it because they were wondering how I came by my unusual coloring and they wanted me to lay out my family tree and walk them through my genetic makeup. I knew Dixie could care less what color skin and eyes the people who had made me had, and since I knew that I had no problem trying to help her climb my complicated family tree.
“My mom was a beauty queen. A pretty blonde with blue eyes that wanted to be the next Miss America. She got knocked up with me her freshman year in college and was effectively disowned by her parents.” The corners of my lips turned down, and I couldn’t stop the flare of outrage I always felt on my mother’s behalf that my grandparents were so close-minded and cold. “She never told me if the reason they were so pissed was because she pretty much tanked her education and her pageant future by getting pregnant, or because she got knocked up by a guy who was biracial. It was like she was doubly defying their antiquated and racist views. He was African American but he also had a solid chunk of Middle Eastern in him, too. He played soccer at the same school but didn’t stick around long when Mom told him she was keeping me.” I’d never met the guy, but she often told me I looked a lot like him. “Things were pretty rough for her when I was young.”
Dixie sucked in an audible breath and I could see how deeply my words were affecting her. She was hurting for me and I hadn’t even gotten to the parts that actually wounded and left scars yet. My frown dug deeper into my face and my hands curled tightly around the mug in front of me. “My grandparents never bothered to contact either of us. Not once. Not even when she died when I was thirteen.”
I knew it was a bomb to drop and that I should have given her that information more tactfully but the words rushed out. I’d held them inside, never sharing them with anyone, so they took their chance to escape and fell heavily between us.
“Oh, Church.” She sounded like she wanted to cry for me.
I lifted a hand to hold off the rest of her sympathy. “When I was five my mom met a guy named Julian Churchill. He’s now the sheriff in Lowry, but back then he was a patrol cop and he pulled her over for speeding. He told her he would let her go if she agreed to a date.” It was totally unethical and completely illegal, but luckily my mom liked the look of Jules, remembered him from high school, and agreed to go. It was a story they always told with smiles and shared laughs. It made me want to grin but I knew how it all ended and that in turn made me want to break something. I also never talked about the fact that initially I hated Jules. I hated that I had to share my mom with him. Hated that he showed up and took care of her when that was my job. I also resented the fact she picked another man with dark skin to fall in love with. I wanted her life, and mine by association, to be easier and without judgment and speculation and to my immature and untried mind it seemed like she was going out of her way to keep it hard by falling in love with someone who didn’t look a whole lot like either one of us. I was too little to understand why all of that thinking was wrong and that who my mother loved was completely out of my control but there were a lot of years where I was nothing short of terrible to Jules. As an adult I would like to take those actions and a lot of those words I hurled at him back.
“Jules is a good guy. He took me as part of the package without blinking an eye. They got married a year later and he asked if it was cool if he could adopt me before the ink was dry on their marriage license.” I remember trying not to cry when he asked me if it was all right. My mom was good. My mom and Jules together was better. No one other than my mom had ever wanted me, in fact I spent most of my childhood feeling distinctly unwanted, but there was Jules, big, badass Jules, telling me he was choosing me to be his son despite the attitude and anger I so carelessly tossed his way. It would go down forever as one of the most significant moments of my life. “They had a perfect marriage and I thought we were a perfect family but Mom wanted more kids and struggled to get pregnant for a long time. Jules just wanted to make her happy, so he consoled her through several miscarriages and a round of failed in vitro treatments. Right about when she resigned herself to the fact that it wasn’t meant to be, she got pregnant. She called it a miracle.” Really it was a curse.
I rubbed a hand over my face at the memories of how happy she was, how excited she was for the little blessing to join our family. “She spent most of the pregnancy on bed rest but it was touch and go the entire time.” I remembered being scared because she seemed so weak, but the truth was I hadn’t been scared enough.
Dixie’s eyes were twice their normal size and she had a shaking hand covering her mouth. She could see where my story was going and even though I wanted it to have a different kind of ending, it didn’t.
“She went into labor early. It was obvious something was wrong as soon as it started. There was way too much blood and even though she didn’t want me to worry I could see how much pain she was in. I called an ambulance and Jules met us at the hospital but it was too late.” So much blood. I remembered the way it covered everything. I remembered the way I could literally see the light blink out of my mom’s eyes as she told me she loved me. She told me to be a good boy for Jules and to help him take care of my little brother. She would be so disappointed to know I hadn’t done either of those things. “The placenta detached and she bled out. They barely managed to save my little brother’s life. He was in the NICU for almost two months and when he got out Jules found himself stuck as a single dad with two kids that he never necessarily wanted and definitely wasn’t prepared for.”
Dixie gasped and didn’t bother to wipe away the single tear that escaped her eye. She looked as injured as I felt on the inside. Even after all these years the memories sliced to the bone and left jagged tears across my soul. “You have a little brother?” Her voice was rough and I could tell she was holding even more emotion back since we were in public.
I nodded jerkily and rubbed my face again. “Dalen. He’s in high school, plays football, gets good grades, and Jules couldn’t be prouder of him if he tried.” The kid had worshipped every move I made when I was around when we were younger but I hadn’t heard from him in over two years. I couldn’t say I blamed him.
“You haven’t seen him since he was five?” The way she asked it made me feel about as low as I could, but I deserved it. I had a little brother that was well on his way to becoming a man and I hadn’t been around for any of it.
“I haven’t seen either of them since they dropped me off at Camp Shelby for basic training.” And that was something I would have to live with for the rest of my life. I was waiting for the questions about why I left and why I stayed gone but they never came. That was Dixie, always giving the benefit of the doubt.
She pushed her half-eaten burger away and folded her hands on the top of the table in front of her. “So your dad and your brother are there, but who is the other woman you mentioned? Caroline?”
I grunted and felt memories and pain slide icily down my spine. Talking about my mom was hard, talking about Caroline was harder because I was older and totally knew the way I acted while she was still alive wasn’t okay. I missed my mom but cherished every minute I’d had with her. I missed Caroline as well but all I could think about when it came to her was regret. “Caroline was one of Dalen’s NICU nurses. She took care of him while he was in the hospital. She watched out for him while Jules and I buried my mom.”
I heard her gasp but I couldn’t look up at her.
“Jules spent a lot of time with Caroline while Dalen was getting healthy enough to come home. Like I said, neither one of us really knew what to do with a newborn, and Caroline stepped in to teach us the basics.” I kept my gaze on my plate. “It took a year or so. Dalen had just started to walk when Jules realized that he was feeling more than gratitude towards her. He asked her out on a date and I think she’d been in love with him from the first minute she saw him hold that baby, so of course she said yes. They got married a couple of years later when Dalen was a toddler. She was a good woman and she loved us hard. She was sick when she was younger, so she couldn’t have kids of her own, but she always said it didn’t matter because she had us. She was a good mom to Dalen, and I loved her because she never tried to replace my mom while she loved me. I was super lucky to have been raised by two special women.” I loved her but by the time I realized it, it was too late. I spent more time resenting her and keeping her at an arm’s length because I was scared to care about someone so deeply after losing my mom. I’d also been bitter that Jules had moved on even though he had every right to find happiness. It felt like betrayal until Caroline left me no choice but to love her. Again there were too many wasted minutes and moments I wanted back.
Dixie’s tiny hand covered mine where they were clutched together on the tabletop, my knuckles white as I squeezed them together. “You don’t have to tell me the rest if you don’t want to, Church.” She wanted a happy ending and I couldn’t be the guy to give that to her because I’d never experienced one myself.
“I had just turned sixteen when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was the second time I saw Jules cry. She’d been in remission for years and years but as soon as she became a part of my family, as soon as I let myself love her she got sick again.” I bit out a tortured laugh and threw my head back so I was looking at the ceiling. “She fought. She fought harder than I’ve ever seen anyone fight for anything, and I’ve seen war up close and personal. She didn’t want to leave us, but it was no use. I watched her lose her hair when she started chemo. I watched her get skinnier and skinner as she tried to keep taking care of us and the house. She was determined to make it to my high school graduation. She wanted to see me in my cap and gown.”
Dixie’s hand tightened over mine and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to comfort me or herself.
“Did she make it?” Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear her.
I shook my head and cleared my throat as emotion threatened to choke me. She hadn’t made it because when good came into my life it left before I could fully appreciate it.
“No, she didn’t. Neither did I. I enlisted and was at boot camp the day after we put her in the ground. I didn’t stick around for graduation.” I didn’t stick around for Jules or Dalen either because they still had a shot at something good and I didn’t want to be around to taint it.
She let go of my hands and leaned back in the booth. Eyes wide and her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. “Wow. Is that all?” She sounded bewildered and a little baffled, not that I could blame her. It was a lot and none of it was particularly pleasant.
“Not quite. There’s Elma Mae.” If there was one thing in the world that actually made me smile it was Elma Mae. I couldn’t stop my lips from twitching when I thought of the feisty older woman who had lived across the street from me for as long as I could remember.
“She lived down the street from me and Mom when I was growing up and when my grandparents didn’t want anything to do with us she made sure to fill in for them. She took care of me after school when Mom worked. She helped Mom and Jules out with whatever they needed and she was there when Dalen was a newborn and Jules was in way over his head. She always had homemade cookies and cold sweet tea ready and waiting. She is the epitome of what a proper southern lady should be and she taught me more about family and forgiveness than anything or anyone else has.”
Her head cocked to the side and she considered me thoughtfully. “Why couldn’t you tell them the truth, Church? Why couldn’t you just say you weren’t ready to come home yet? Surely they would understand.” It was a reasonable question but my reasons for not doing exactly that were anything but.
“I never told them when I was promoted into Spec Ops. I always let them think that I was still in infantry or that I was doing guard duty. When I went in I was an MP for the first few years, so I let everyone back home keep right on thinking that I was still doing nothing more than watching the gates at the base and regulating unruly soldiers. I didn’t want them to worry. Everyone had suffered enough loss and I didn’t want anyone to lose any sleep wondering where I was and what I was doing. So no one back home knows how desperately I really needed the downtime. They have no clue that I came back a different man than they remember.” I carried a lot of heavy shit around inside of me and there was no way the people that loved me were going to miss the way I was weighed down. I blinked at Dixie realizing in the twenty minutes or so we had been talking that I had given her more, shared more with her than I had with anyone since I left home. Not even Rome knew the reason I kept communication to a minimum back home was for them and not for me.
She made a face at me. “You should be honest with them. They’ll understand.”
They would, but the way I left, the way I shut myself off from them and the grieving and healing we should be doing together, that was going to be harder for them to forgive and understand. “Are you ready to go? I want to get on the road pretty early in the morning and I know you aren’t exactly the type that likes to rise and shine.” There was also only so much of my heart and soul that I was willing to show her at one time. Turned out I had a lot to say when I was talking to someone that looked at me the way she did.
I hated feeling this exposed and raw. I knew the sun could burn when you let it shine on your unprotected skin for too long. That’s what it felt like after giving Dixie so much and having her still look at me like I was something special.
She nodded and made like she was going to reach for her wallet but I waved her off and tossed a couple of bills on the table, sure to leave a tip that would make the waitress having to stay late sting a little less. I slid out of the booth but almost fell back into it when Dixie suddenly launched herself at me.
I wasn’t used to being hugged. It wasn’t something that happened when you kept everyone at an arm’s length and made sure that a scowl was your default expression. Her arms circled my waist and her cheek rested right over my heart as she squeezed me tight. I curled an arm around her shoulders and let the fingers of my free hand twist and twine in the endless curls that cascaded down her back. They felt like silk as they wrapped around my knuckles and tickled my palm.
“What’s this for?” I wasn’t surprised that she was a hugger but I was surprised that she was hugging me for no apparent reason. That wasn’t the type of relationship we had, at least it hadn’t been before she gave me that kiss that I could still taste and feel.
“It’s for the little boy that lost both his moms and for the man that hasn’t seen his family in a decade. No one should go through the things you’ve been through without a hug, Church. Everyone needs one every now and then, even big, badass former soldiers.”
I couldn’t remember the last time someone had hugged me. It might have been Jules and Elma Mae when they dropped me off for basic, because I sure as hell wasn’t into hugging the women I took to bed or the men I’d been deep in the trenches with.
I hugged her back but it was awkward and stiff. I wanted my arms around her for something other than comfort.
We broke apart and headed for the doorway. The waitress gave a wave from where she was standing behind the counter.
“You were right, darlin’, he is pretty but he does need to smile more. You two have a good night.”
Dixie laughed and pushed the door open and since her back was to me she didn’t see it but I almost very nearly did smile. It was impossible not to around her.