Chapter 13
I couldn’t pretend to hide my relief when Adam told me his mother and sister wouldn’t be visiting, after all. “Did they say they’d make it another time?” I settled my tote bag, filled with reading material, some work and the scarf I’d been knitting for a million years, onto the recliner.
“No.”
I didn’t look at him as I arranged the small table next to my chair and refolded the afghan. Friday night rituals I didn’t have to think about, so used were my hands to performing them. I picked at a small hole in the arm of the recliner, where something had snagged the material. I’d have to repair it before it got bigger.
“I’m going to get a needle and thread,” I said, turning, but Adam’s gaze stopped me.
“Sadie.” The way he said my name was the iceberg that sunk my heart. “I told them not to come.”
The knitting needles in my hand clattered as my fingers squeezed, and I put the mess of yarn aside. “Did you? Why?”
“Because I don’t think I can deal with them right now.”
I’d been relieved more than was kind to learn they weren’t coming. Hearing Adam had been the one to decide it made me feel marginally better, but not much. I moved to his side and stroked my fingers through his hair. His skin was warmer than I liked, and I shifted the sheets off his body to help it cool.
He was silent while I fussed. Again, his gaze snared me tighter than if he’d been able to reach out and grab me. I laid my hands flat on the crisp white sheet and ran the edge of it through my fingers, back and forth. This would have annoyed him had he been able to feel it; it annoyed him watching the repetitive motion of my arms, and I stopped abruptly.
His eyes looked me over, up and down, peeling away my layers and leaving me naked in front of him. “I’m sorry, Sadie.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” I said this firmly, allowing no argument. “This is what it is. We’ll work things out, Adam, like we always have—”
“No.” He bit out the word.
I leaned in, unwilling to give up. “Yes.”
In the past, if I’d won any arguments it was because Adam had relented, not because I’d been better able to plead my case or because I’d been the one throwing the bigger fit. When we fought, it was spectacular and sometimes messy, but Adam was the sound and fury and I simply waited quietly until he’d finished.
Not this time.
“I am not giving up on you.” I shook my head to emphasize my point. “No matter how much of an asshole you are.”
I’d hoped to get a smile from him, but his gaze just went darker.
“I’m not playing around, Sadie. This—all this—”
“All this what?” My fingers crumpled the sheet. “Our marriage? Our life? What, Adam?”
It felt good to push at him. He glared and made a rude noise. I glared, too.
“Yeah, all of it.”
I wasn’t about to let him stop there. “What about it?”
I’d never seen him without words. Either he had them to spare or he doled them out as rewards, but he alway had them. I felt triumphant and destroyed at the sam time, watching him struggle.
“I think…I want a divorce.”
I reacted as if I’d stepped on a rake, recoiling. “What?”
“I want a divorce.” It seemed saying it the first time hd been difficult, but the second was a piece of cake.
“Absolutely not!” I put my hands on my hips to keep from making fists. “Go to hell! Fuck you!”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” he shouted, voice hoarse as if it tore his throat. “I can’t fuck you! Not now, not ever! Not for the rest of my fucking life!”
I said nothing in the face of this truth. Heat had flared between us. My breath came faster, driven by my fury.
“You can,” I muttered finally. “You just won’t, you selfish prick.”
Adam blinked. His mouth thinned, grim, straight, like he meant to force back his retort. In the next moment, though, he let it all out.
“I want to put you up against a wall and fuck you until you scream, Sadie. How ridiculous is that?” He looked down at his immobile body, then back up at me. “I can’t even take care of myself, much less you.”
“I know.” I kept my voice hard, though I wanted to soften. “And it sucks. A lot.”
His voice cracked. “I thought I’d always be able to take care of you, Sadie. That you’d always need me more than I needed you. And now, you go out every day and live a life I have no part of, and I…I don’t know how you can not need me, anymore.”
I kissed him, then, no longer angry. “I still need you.”
He shook his head a tiny bit. “No—”
I stopped his movement with another kiss. “Yes, Adam. I still need you.”
“But I can’t—”
I shushed him. “You can.”
We looked into each other’s eyes. I let my fingers stroke down the sides of his neck, where he could feel my touch, and he sighed. I slipped a hand inside the collar of his pajama shirt to trace the ridge of his collarbone. Adam’s mouth parted and I kissed him, waiting for his tongue to delve into my mouth before stroking it with my own.
“I love you,” I whispered against his lips. “That hasn’t changed.”
My fingers shook as I pulled down the covers and unbuttoned his shirt, folding it open to reveal his chest. I’d seen his body plenty of times, assisted with showers and changed his clothes. I knew the changes in it. They no longer frightened me as they had the first time I’d seen him, unconscious, rubbed raw and bleeding in places that now bore faint white scars.
I traced the line of the largest, where a tree branch had gouged him from just above his right nipple and around his side to the jut of his hipbone. I bent to kiss the small, puckered star of scar tissue at the top, and when I did, Adam groaned. I slid my lips down along the line, pressing gentle kisses to his flesh.
It had been years since I’d kissed him anywhere but the mouth, neck or hand. We’d never spoken about his feelings about his body, or why in our sporadic lovemaking we both chose to focus on what I could do to myself rather than what I could do to him.
My hands stroked his skin as I moved my mouth upward again to find his mouth. I kissed him softly as I rubbed his chest and sides. I slid my hand into the elastic waist of his pajama bottoms. The brush of his pubic curls against my fingers made me gasp a little, my knees weak with longing.
“Will you touch yourself?” Adam whispered, voice thick.
I shook my head. “I want to touch you.”
His eyes fluttered closed, but when he opened them, the lust in his gaze seared me. We kissed again, mouths open and hungry, while my hands roamed every place I could reach.
I rediscovered his body, its curves and lines. It wasn’t the same as it had been before, but what ever is? And if I had to struggle a bit to ease down his pants to reveal the rest of him to me, well, a prize is always sweeter for having to work for it.
Adam laughed when I told him that in a voice slightly out of breath from having to move his body in order to pull down the pants. “You’re optimistic.”
“Shut up,” I ordered from the foot of the bed, where I was lifting his feet to take off the pants.
He lifted his head to look down at me. I imagined myself framed between his thighs as I moved up the bed, my own clothes already shed before I crawled. I rubbed his legs, thinner than they’d ever been. I kissed his knees and brushed my cheek against his thighs, then crouched between his legs and reached for the bed controls to lift him higher.
“I want you to be able to watch this.”
“Sadie—” He sounded alarmed.
I looked up. “I want to do this.”
And oh, how I did. Though much about him had changed, Adam’s cock remained the same. When I reached to stroke him, he turned his head away and closed his eyes, mouth turning down like my touch hurt him.
I murmured his name. I bent to brush my lips along his pubic hair, the soft flesh of his lower belly, his thighs. I kissed his penis at the base and let my mouth whisper along it while I slid a hand beneath to cup his testicles.
There was much I couldn’t do for him, but there was also much I could. I could lick him. I could stroke him. I could kiss him all over and let my hair trail over his body the way he’d once loved.
I heard him say my name, and when I looked up, saw tears gleaming. He licked his mouth. Beneath my hand, his penis stayed soft and still.
It didn’t matter. Naked, I eased my body along his, skin to skin in a way we hadn’t been since before the accident. I stretched out beside him, my thigh over his, my cunt snugged up tight against him. I licked his shoulder at a place I knew he could feel, and Adam groaned.
“I miss touching you,” I told him. “I miss you holding me, yes, but I miss touching you just as much. And you never seem to want to let me.”
His breathing was hoarse. I thought he might not answer. “You touch me all the time. Every day. You feed me, you dress me, you wipe my ass. Your hands are always all over me, Sadie, and I can never feel them.”
I caressed his collarbone and the tops of his shoulders. “I know.”
“No,” Adam said through gritted teeth. “You don’t.”
With conscious effort, I timed the in and out of my breath to his, so our chests rose and fell in tandem. I kissed his shoulder and kept my lips there, feeling the warmth of his skin. My hair had tangled beneath my cheek and I lifted my head to smooth it.
Adam looked at my face. “If you had a lover, I wouldn’t blame you.”
Shame shot heat through my entire body. “I don’t have a lover.”
I caught a glimpse of the old Adam, the man who’d have called out any man who dared look at me with lustful intent. Just a glimpse, but it lifted my heart. I leaned in to kiss him.
“Good. Because I can’t exactly beat the shit out of him, can I?”
I shook my head, putting aside thoughts of Joe. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
Adam tipped his head a bit, seeking my mouth, which I gave him. “Get on top of me.”
The edge in his voice sent a thrill through me. I sat, running my hand down his body, over his stomach. “You want me to…”
“Straddle me. Sit on my cock.”
Desire flooded me at his words, the words of the Adam I knew before, who’d never hesitated to tell me what he wanted. I got up, put my leg over his abdomen, his penis nestled between my thighs.
“Kiss me,” he demanded, and I bent to do that, too.
Adam took command of the kiss, caressing my tongue with his until I gasped. I was timid, fearful of leaning too much of my weight on him, but his growl convinced me to lean closer and open for his kisses.
“Stop thinking.” He came after my mouth again, and though his hands remained at his sides, I felt them on me, one on the back of my neck to hold me to him. “Kiss me.”
We kissed for a long time, the way we had that first time in his apartment. With the bed upright I could straddle Adam’s lap, my knees clamped tight to his sides, my pussy rubbing against the bulge of his cock and his belly. He kissed me fiercely. Hungrily. He was in charge, and I let him take control.
“Rub yourself against me,” he ordered. “Are your nipples hard?”
“Yes…”
“Let me suck them.”
I lifted my breasts to his mouth, one and then the other, and he lapped and suckled them until I cried out and shuddered on the verge of climax. His mouth slowed, tongue slipping out to stroke my tight flesh before his lips closed once more over my nipple. I arched into his mouth, lost in the ecstasy of being touched this way. He paused, teasing me. Pleasure built with anticipation and I moaned. Then, slowly, he sucked a little harder, a little harder, until I could no longer keep still.
“That’s it,” he said against my skin. “Come all over me, Sadie.”
Rubbing my clit against him had brought me even closer to the edge. At his words, and the following stroke of his tongue along my breasts, I came.
I didn’t breathe while eternity revolved around me. My entire body clenched, released, my cunt contracting in spasms of pleasure so intense it was almost pain. Sex noises are never pretty, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t have held back the moans shuddering out of me if I’d tried.
“Come for me, Sadie.”
Adam’s voice cracked and broke, and I opened my eyes to look into his as I tumbled over the edge. It was more intimate than anything we’d ever shared, looking into his eyes at climax. There was nothing he did not see in me then, and nothing I wanted to hide.
He grinned after a moment and slid his tongue along his lips. “Next time, I’m going to taste you.”
The breath I’d forgotten to take rushed back into my lungs. “Let me recover from this, first. Okay?”
“Wimp.”
I kissed him slow and tender. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I hugged him, my head nestled into his shoulder, feeling boneless and satisfied. When he yawned, though, I knew I had to move. Reluctantly, I did, making sure to touch and stroke him wherever I could reach as I did.
“Quit fondling me, you brazen hussy.”
We laughed. His cheeks flushed, and his eyes sparkled in a way I hadn’t seen from him in far too long. Love for him rushed over me in a force so strong I would have staggered had I not been holding on to the edge of the bed. Now was not a time for tears, and I held them back.
Adam was effusive as I brought warm washcloths to wipe him clean and rearranged his pajamas. He talked about his lectures and students, about his plans for next year…about taking a vacation.
“Really?” I paused in buttoning his shirt. “You want to go on a trip?”
He nodded. “Think we can manage it? Someplace with a beach? I could look online for disability-friendly resorts.”
I’d never been the one to deny Adam the right to leave the house. He’d always chosen not to go anywhere, claiming even going downstairs to the garden outside was too much of a hassle. For him to express interest in taking a much grander trip so surprised me I didn’t know what to say.
“No? Yes?” His eyes followed me as tucked in all his limbs and smoothed the covers over him. “You hate the idea? What?”
“I think it’s a fine idea.”
He enthused further, talking rapidly, words tumbling one over the other while I listened and put on my nightgown. He talked while I brushed my teeth and tied up my hair, while I folded out the recliner and settled into it with my blanket and pillow, while I set the alarm to wake me so I could turn him.
“It’ll be work for you, Sadie, I know it,” he said finally. “But maybe we can take Dennis with us. So you can get a break. Go to a spa, sit on the beach. It could really work.”
“It could really work,” I agreed, content to listen to his enthusiasm.
“I’ve done my best to drive you away, Sadie,” he said suddenly. “But you’ve never left me.”
“No. I don’t want to leave you.” I smoothed a hand over his hair, letting it tickle my fingers. “I’m not going to leave you, Adam.”
He paused for a moment, his expression serious.
“Things are going to be different from now on, Sadie. I promise you.”
I got up to kiss him again. “Lots of things will be different.”
And for a while, they were.
Adam was noticeably cheerier. Flirtier, too. He even started talking about looking into erectile aids, a prospect that intrigued and concerned me, since drugs could always have side effects.
“Just think,” he said with a wink one night as I lay beside him. “A four-hour hard-on.”
“I wouldn’t need four hours,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Jesus, Adam.”
He wasn’t deterred. “If I can get hard, Sadie, then…there’s a chance…”
I propped myself up on my elbow to look him. “Yes?”
“We could have a baby.”
Stunned, I sat. “Do you want a baby?”
“Don’t you?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. I didn’t know if I did or didn’t…but the fact he’d brought it up meant things had changed, indeed. I could only shrug in response.
“Lots of quads have been able to have children,” Adam told me. “It’s just something to consider, that’s all.”
A child. A son, perhaps, with Adam’s wicked grin. Maybe a daughter with a sense of practicality. A baby? Years of responsibility, of diapers and vomit. Of sweet baby hugs and childish kisses.
A part of Adam I could keep forever.
“Hey, hey,” he said, alarmed. “Don’t cry, Sadie-me-love, don’t cry!”
I wiped my tears at his command. “Do you really think we could?”
“Sadie,” Adam said in a voice that left no doubt. “I really think we could.”
That night was the first since the accident that he licked me to orgasm. After, sated, the room filled with the scent of sex, he whispered poetry into my hair and we spoke of the future as something bright with possibility.
* * *
I did not intend, on the first Friday of October, to return to the bench. Joe had made his intentions clear by bringing Priscilla to our place, and the new start with Adam had left me not needing Joe’s stories.
When I kissed Adam goodbye that morning, he’d tilted his head to sniff my neck, giving me a look I wasn’t sure how to interpret.
“Have a good day,” he told me.
I meant to. With sunshine and warm but not blistering weather, it was a good day to eat lunch outside. I didn’t have to go to that bench. There were plenty of places to enjoy, some along the riverfront, where I could enjoy the early October sunshine.
I had the best intentions, but as I shrugged into my light cardigan and grabbed up my lunch box, my feet refused to take me in any direction but toward the park where I’d spent my first Friday for the past two years.
All things must end, I told myself. Resolution.
I didn’t mean to meet Joe again.
But in the end, I did.