Merit
Granite Harbor, Maine
Present Day
We’re on the porch. It’s almost four in the afternoon. Ryan said he should just check on Dubbs. Why he has compassion for this man, I’ll never understand. Ryan seems to have a spotty memory. Perhaps it’s the old friend in me, the girl who wanted so badly to keep Ryan safe. That part of me doesn’t want Ryan to forget. And that same part of me wants to remind Ryan of the cigarette burns Dubbs gave him on his twelfth birthday. The ones I cleaned, so they wouldn’t get infected. The only reason I’d found out about them was because the pain was almost unbearable, and Ryan almost couldn’t take it. He made Eli and I swear that we wouldn’t breathe a word.
I look through one of the front windows of Dubbs’s house, pushing back the memory. It’s actually relatively clean. Picked up. With a couch, a recliner, and a coffee table. A television. Even a flower. A dead one at that but still a flower.
“What?” I ask as Ryan jumps off the front porch and walks to a side window of a bedroom.
“That’s not like Dubbs.”
“The flower? I know.”
“No, the fact that it’s dead.” He peers in the window.
I lean off the porch and watch him. Ryan jumps back up to the porch and tries the front door.
“How long’s it been since you’ve been inside?”
He shrugs. He knows, but he’s not willing to share. Not that it matters.
There is a lamp knocked over in his room. The door opens, and the stale odor of cigarette smoke fills my lungs.
“Big change from the last time I was here. There was shit everywhere.” I follow Ryan inside.
He’s wearing his game warden hat right now. His investigative nature has the best of him. Ryan’s looking for something.
“What are you looking for?”
He stops. “Something happened to Dubbs. I don’t think he left this house willingly.”
“He shouldn’t be making bad debts. Karma’s a bitch.”
Ryan carefully places his finger against his lips because he hears something.
It’s a phone. A ringing phone.
We follow the ringing and find a flip phone in a wire basket along with a pack of cigarettes and a set of keys.
“He definitely didn’t leave willingly.” Ryan picks up the phone, but we hear footsteps and talking outside.
He grabs me by my arm and pulls me into the pantry, shutting the accordion door behind us.
It’s a cramped space, and my backside is against the front of Ryan’s body. The same body I’ve touched with my hands—the seventeen-year-old body, not the manly body that rests behind me. I’m careful not to move because I don’t want to bump his arm or his ribs.
“Are you all right?” I whisper.
“I’m just fine.”
I feel his good hand attached to my waist, and my entire body breaks into chills, remembering the ache inside me that he caused. Him between my thighs, carefully pushing and thrusting in a way of love.
There’s a tiny crack in the accordion door that we can see through, to Dubbs’s phone that we left out on the counter.
“It’s here. I got it,” a man says into his phone.
It’s the man from the porch the other day.
“Fucking liar,” he seethes as he shoves his own iPhone in his pocket. He looks around and stares straight at the accordion door, as if he can see right through it.
Ryan’s grip on my waist tightens. His fingers press into my skin, and I feel it between my legs and in my breasts.
He takes a step closer to the door we’re behind, but his phone rings which makes him stalk to the front door.
Ryan and I stay put until we hear the front door shut. Until we can’t hear footsteps anymore. Until it’s quiet, and all I hear is the blood rushing in my ears.
Ryan’s hand is still on my hip.
A big part of me wants to stay put, to feel him against me again. The other part of me screams, No.
But Ryan’s grip changes. It tightens and loosens and tightens and loosens.
My breath hitches.
With his broken ribs and a shoulder injury, this isn’t the best-case scenario—for him or for me.
Desperately, I want to rest my hands on the door in front of me and allow myself to be in this moment with Ryan.
It will only end in heartbreak, Merit.
It won’t end happily.
You can’t get past the past.
I don’t know if it’s the increasingly warm pantry or his breaths on the back of my neck, but I fall forward, resting my hands on the accordion door, just as I shouldn’t.
I hear the air suck between his teeth as his hand opens up, as if I’m giving him the go sign. His good hand slides across my waist, down my backside, against my jeans. So badly, I want the jeans to be removed.
I get lost in his touch, as I always do, and allow my eyes to close for just a moment.
Stop, Merit, my heart says.
Ryan turns me around to face him.
Face him.
Face our past.
Face what happened.
He takes his hand and places it on the spot between my neck and cheek, against my jaw.
Chills spread across my skin, against my own will. As if I can control what my body does when Ryan touches me. As if I can control what my body says it needs.
The light from the outside seeps through the long crack of the door. His jaw is tight, his eyes wide.
There isn’t space between us.
Ryan’s hand slowly moves from my jaw to down my chest to around my breast, and my nipples grow uncomfortably hard. His hand drifts down between my breasts to my stomach and my waist, as if he’s remembering not only what my body looks like, but also what it feels like beneath my clothes. But he doesn’t look anywhere but my eyes. He’s gentle and firm at the same time. His jawline tightens as his hand moves back up to my chest and then to the back of my neck, and he pulls me to him without question. I feel his firmness at my stomach, and I feel his lips against my ear.
My hand moves to his good shoulder while I’m careful about his ribs. I push my body into him, my traitorous body defying what my head is saying.
Stop.
Don’t do this.
But my heart says otherwise.
“Merit, I will always belong to you. And I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
His lips barely graze my lobe, and then they slowly make their way down my neck.
I let out a sigh as my nipples grow hard again.
Urgency grows inside me.
Desperation.
The intimacy between us right now, the way our bodies stand, tells a story that extends just beyond our reach.
How will it end?
But again, my body has defied me. It has its own mind. Slowly, I slide off my shirt, desperately wanting his touch.
His.
It’s always come down to him.
Ryan’s look changes. As if I’m giving him something, a secret. A second chance. He grows protective as he helps me pull it over my head and drops it to the floor of the tiny pantry.
He pulls me to him again, but this time, he takes my mouth. He gives my lips a purpose as he pushes against mine. My tongue pushes into his mouth. The familiar, yet new mouth. A mouth I spent time exploring, defining the limits. A mouth that has been between my legs, a mouth that I never quite got enough of, and a tongue that is magnificent.
“Oh my God, Merit,” Ryan whispers against my mouth. He rests his forehead against mine. “Please,” he begs, “take off your bra.”
And, just like that, my body defies me. I reach back and unclasp the hook. One thing it seems I’ve always been cursed with is big breasts. Big for my body anyway.
Ryan moves me against the wall, so he has more stability. He takes me in, his eyes still wide with curiosity yet familiarity. His good hand rests against the wall over my head.
“There’s a reason that our timing is off. That I’m in the arm brace. That my ribs are healing. Because, Merit, right now, all I want to do are all the things I shouldn’t.” He kisses the spot just under my earlobe, trying not to bend his waist, knowing the pain will meet his nerves.
I feel some of the weight of his body against mine. I feel his ever-growing hardness, and air escapes my mouth, pleasure disguised as surprise.
Gently, he takes one of my breasts with his hand and puts it to his mouth, and I almost come off the wall as the ache between my legs only worsens.
“Ryan,” I sigh as my head falls back against the wall, and I struggle to find air.
His tongue flitters around my nipple, and then he softly bites down.
Then, he takes my other breast with the same hand but not before meeting my eyes with his. “Is this all right?” He’s breathless, his look hooded, as if he might not be able to control himself.
I nod quickly, withering against the wall as if my free will has disappeared and I don’t know what my body will do next. This time, not so gently, he takes my nipple between his teeth and flicks it with his tongue.
“Oh, God.” The ache only worsens, and I feel myself growing wetter and wetter.
But I reach down and give him the help that he doesn’t need, taking my breast into my hand. I watch him as his mouth takes as much as it can. I grab the back of his head. I want to tell him what I need. I want to tell him what I want.
My head screams, Merit, you’ve got to stop. The last time you fell this hard was for the man standing in front of you. And then he broke your heart.
Then, his lips trail kisses from my breasts to up my chest and against my collarbone until he finds my mouth again.
But life has a funny way of working itself out because Ryan’s phone starts to ring.
His head falls to my neck. His breathing is ragged, and I feel his heart slamming against my chest.
It takes us both a minute to regain whatever reality sits just outside this pantry. And the truth that lies just outside that.
“It-it’s your work phone, Ryan. You have to answer it,” I say, trying to catch my breath. My mind is spinning.
Ryan peels his body from mine. Stares at me and then looks down at my half-naked body.
I go to grab my shirt, but he holds me back from grabbing it, still staring.
“This one-handed shit really sucks.” Ryan looks at me. “Warden Taylor,” he says as he stands over my body, staring down at my breasts and then to my eyes.
Badly, I want to reach up and run my fingers along his jawline as he talks to whoever is on the other end of the line.
But I don’t.
Though I can’t feel him anymore because he’s given us some space, the ache between my legs hasn’t left.
I reach up and cover my breasts with my arms. Ryan gently pushes my arms away just after he takes the phone between his cheek and shoulder, adoringly looking down at me.
Smiling, I roll my eyes and feel my face grow hot.
I try to regain my thoughts, staring up at Ryan. This isn’t, will not, be easy from here on out. There’s no smooth sailing, and I will have to face my past, our past, head-on from here. I will have to take a look at us, what happened, my part. Eventually. Soon.