Chapter 28
“You have no idea how good it feels,” Zack said half an hour later, when breaths were regained and thoughts clear again, “to get shit off my chest.”
Rachel curled her hand beneath this throat. For the past ten minutes she had been comfortably wrapped around him, fingertips lightly playing with the hairs on his chin. “I have a good idea. Feels like I got a whole load off my chest.”
“Nah. That’s not what I mean.” He continued to absentmindedly stroke her hair as he spoke. “I mean it feels damn good to open myself up like this again. It’s been years since I last let myself make love to someone like that.”
“You mean since your college girlfriend?”
“Yeah. Since Sadie. She really fucked me up.”
Rachel nuzzled her nose against him. “I’m sorry. I know how it feels to get played like that.”
“I still see that guy around, you know.” Zack paused, chewing on his lip. “The guy she cheated with. I have no idea what happened to her, but that guy and I both live here.”
“You said it was a guy in your frat, and that your frat was for rich kids.”
“Lot of hazing happens in rich kid frats.”
“I see.”
Zack continued. “Making you eat weird shit. Making you run around a frosty campus buck-ass naked at five in the morning during midterms. Making you the official guy at the party who has to pick up chicks for the head senior honchos to bone in their rooms, like you’re some roadie on a rock concert tour.” His hand tightened on Rachel’s shoulder. “If you make it to the final round, they make sure you walk in on them fucking your girlfriend.”
What a memory to have shortly after making such fantastic love to Rachel. It was like Zack insisted on self-sabotage. One of the brothers texted me to say they really needed me for something. Then they told me to go up to his room. There they were, Sadie and that shitfuck.
“I know it took two to tango. Sadie wasn’t forced. She sounded almost gleeful after I confronted her. I knew we were having some issues because I couldn’t give her as much attention that semester, but… did that make it okay to sleep with the first guy who offered? How many other guys did she sleep with when I was distracted with rushing?”
Rachel placed a firm hand on his chest. “Don’t do that to yourself. It was years ago.”
“Not that long ago when you think about it.”
“I’d rather not.” Rachel rolled onto her back. After being in constant contact for the past hour – even when they went to wash up in the bathroom before falling back into bed – it felt strange to no longer have her skin against his. Every time she moves away from me, I become convinced that it’s the end. Zack could still remember the last time Sadie touched him with any affection at all. Every woman since then had been nothing but a Band-Aid on his heart.
The thought that Rachel could be the first one to rip off the Band-Aid and make him try the whole relationship thing again nearly bowled him over. Then again, wasn’t that the first thing he thought of when he saw her all those weeks ago?
A beautiful brunette sitting in a café.
A beautiful day shining through the window.
A beautiful summer waiting to unfold.
Zack was wrapped in a tender warmth the day he first saw Rachel Taylor. Tender enough to open the world of love to him again. The man he was at twenty was not necessarily the same man at thirty.
Besides, maybe it would be good for his art if he embraced that emotional side of himself again… the good emotions. Because even though the art he created in the wake of Sadie’s betrayal was some of the best his instructors claimed to have ever seen, it was not who he still wanted to be ten years later.
Listen to me… I’m not even thirty yet, and I’m talking like this! He had been hanging around Seth for way too long.
“I know what it feels like to have your heart utterly broken like that. I know what it feels like to have the person you love destroy your ability to trust people. It’s awful. It changes who you are and how you view the world, and it takes a few years to bounce back. But you can’t dwell on it every day.”
“I don’t, really. But I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately.”
“Because you see that dickweasel around?”
Zack snorted, unable to suppress the smile threatening to cut through his gruff demeanor. “No. Because you make me think of Sadie.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t mean that in a bad way. If anything, it’s good. I want to treat you the way I used to treat her. I haven’t felt that way about someone since… well, since her.”
Rachel propped herself up on her elbows, fingers combing through her tangled, sweaty hair. We need to shower before going to sleep. God, I hope we get to shower… Showering with Rachel had been fun before they got serious. Zack had a feeling it was about to get even better. “You keep buttering me up to ask me something, don’t you?”
“Ah, damn.” Zack slung his arm across his face. “Why do I have to do all the work? This is so patriarchal. Thought you were a cool and hip feminist, Rachel Taylor.”
“Just do it already.”
“Careful. All this begging you’ve been doing tonight is going to go to my head.”
“Who’s being patriarchal now?”
Zack peeked through his spreading fingers to make sure she was smiling. “Fine.” He matched her stance, elbow digging into his bed as he pushed himself up and came this close to her lips once more. God give me the strength to hold back from kissing her like she so desperately deserves. “Rachel Taylor, will you be my girlfriend?”
She grinned as if it were her birthday. That’s right, baby, I’m the only present you’ll ever need. Zack couldn’t help but grin back at her. “How badly do you want me to be your girlfriend?”
“Badly.”
“No dating other women? No fooling around behind my back? You and me for as long as we can go?”
“I don’t ask a woman to be my girlfriend unless I can foresee us going for a long time.” Zack wouldn’t say the F word. Not… forever. It was too soon to say that. He may be open to a serious relationship again, but he still needed to protect his heart in other ways. This was the man who had elaborate plans to propose to Sadie on graduation day – he was making those plans while they were still sophomores.
Rachel buried her face in the pillow, composing herself before she was able to look at him with a straight countenance. “Okay. I’ll let you be my boyfriend.”
“That is a helluva way to put that.”
“On one condition.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“You have to promise that, should you want to break up with me one day, you don’t do it in the middle of sex.”
“In what crackpot of a universe would I want to stop having sex with you, let alone once we got started?”
She shrugged. “It’s happened before.”
“And it’s never going to happen again.”
“You promise?”
Zack slowly rolled on top of her, giving Rachel plenty of time to push him away if she wasn’t in the mood. Instead, she easily fell onto her back and allowed him to loom over her like the primal shadow of their collective pasts. It’s only forward from here. Her and me. It’s going to be amazing.
“I promise. I love you so much that I can’t fathom wanting to hurt you in any way.”
He lowered his lips to kiss her. Rachel placed one finger on his mouth and said, “I could never hurt you, either.”
She didn’t have to explain. They both knew. It was something Zack needed to hear before he could fully give his heart to any woman again. Yes, even to Rachel.
But once those words were said, everything was fair game. Especially when she said, “I love you too.”
They made love once more before Rachel rolled over and fell asleep. Zack remained wrapped around her for a few minutes. Eventually, the call of nature pulled him out of bed and into the other room.
When he returned, the moonlight from his bedroom window shined so illustriously on Rachel’s skin and hair that Zack couldn’t move from where he stood in the bathroom doorway.
It was the same angelic image he saw the first time his eyes fell upon Rachel Taylor in that brightly lit café. Only now she was stripped bare and in the most vulnerable state a human can embrace.
He pulled on a pair of clean boxers and grabbed his drawing pad from his bedroom lightbox. Quietly, he perched on a chair next to the window, careful to not awaken Rachel as he slowly pulled back the curtains, letting more moonlight in.
The blankets covered the lower half of her body, except for her foot poking out from the bottom. Her back, and the glorious curve it created from hip to neck, was where his eyes continued to look. Not even the soft swish of her long hair as it settled on his pillow was enough to draw his attention away from her body.
Zack wouldn’t be able to sleep until he caught this moment for posterity. A camera wouldn’t do. The only thing that could accurately capture the essence that was Rachel in his bed was a sharpened pencil on drawing paper.
One day, art students would study the differences between that first sketch and this one. “Here, we can see the flutter of a man’s heart… and here we can see where those flutters transformed into the steady beats of love.”
In that moment, Zack knew he had found the one he was destined to love.