26
(Garrett)
As it turns out, figuring out how to free yourself from someone else’s heart sucks. There’s no way to detach and disconnect without acting like a jerk most of the time, and if you’re still having sex with that person, it’s a hundred times worse.
But it’s working. So well that by today, the day before Cara is set to leave, I manage to leave the house for work without the two of us saying anything more than “good morning” to each other. My plan to cut ties is a complete victory. Which should be a good thing, right? But instead, it feels like I’m an evil genius who’s hell-bent on triumph and getting exactly what he wants, but can’t quite deal with how all his success feels so fucking shitty.
Cara’s spent most of the day packing up boxes and loading them into the storage pod that’s sitting outside the farmhouse, ready for them to pick up and transport back to Chicago tomorrow morning. When I pull down the driveway after work, the door on the storage pod is up and the front door to the house is wide open. Cara emerges carrying a large box, peering around it to make sure she doesn’t trip down the porch steps. The storage pod is nearly full with her belongings, including her reformer.
She slows to glance my way but doesn’t stop, stepping into the metal crate and setting the box down in an open corner. I make my way over to her as she’s headed back into the house for another load.
“How in the hell did you get your reformer out here? Did you dismantle it?”
Cara skirts past me and clears the porch risers with one long jump. “No, Brooke and Corey stopped by earlier to say goodbye. I conned Corey into helping me wrangle it in there.”
“Oh.” She sidles past, carrying another box, and doesn’t even look at me. “That’s good. Probably helped you get a head start on loading the rest of this stuff.”
All I get is an offhanded mumbling as she rearranges a few plastic bins to make room in a corner. She steps back and surveys the pod, then it’s back into the house. Not a second wasted to stop and look me in the eye, or do anything other than act like I’m in the way of what she’s trying to do.
When she saunters back out, I step into her path and reach for the box.
“Here, I’ll take this one. How many are left? If we get this knocked out quick, I’ll go get us some barbeque and we can watch Real Housewives while we eat. I can get you wine, too, if you need some.”
I set my hands to the sides of the box and make to take it from her, but her grip tightens and she takes a half step backward.
Cara’s eyes shut tightly. “I’ve got it.”
“I know you’ve got it; I can see you holding it. But I can help. Just hand it over and the two of us can tag-team the rest. It’ll go quicker if we do this together.”
“No.” Her eyes flip open. “No tag-teaming, no doing this together, no you helping me. I need to do this myself. Without you.”
My hands fall away helplessly. “What? Why can’t I help you load these boxes?”
“Because . . .” Cara takes a long inhale, holds it, finishing her thought on an exhale. “Because after tomorrow, I won’t have you around anymore. No more Garrett to help me find my way or fix my electrical problems or talk me down off a ledge when the words aren’t coming or buy tropical Popsicles for me when I’m sick. Tomorrow I’ll be Garrett-less. And I’m feeling a little screwed up over how much that’s going to suck.”
She long-steps to the side, ensuring she can move around me. I hear the box drop to the floor with a thud, and then she’s stomping toward the front door again. She stops at the threshold, keeping her back to me.
“Go shoot your bow or something. Do whatever it is you did before I showed up in town. Because if you think I didn’t notice what you’ve been doing, you’re an idiot. You have to get used to being without me, too—and you picked a shitty way to go about figuring out how to deal with that.”
The front door slams shut behind her.
My work is done here. Things have unraveled; the ties are cut.
And it’s a total clusterfuck.
I don’t go shoot my bow. I do, however, lie on my couch in the dark and stare at the ceiling like a weirdo, bogged down by the idea that Cara is leaving, right at a time when she doesn’t seem to like me much. The shitty reality of losing her had been hovering under the surface for weeks, and I’d wasted our last days together, thinking if I held her at arm’s length, that would make it easier. Instead, things were harder than they ever needed to be, and it’s all my fault.
At midnight I try to force myself off the couch and into my bed. But I can’t, because in my bed, Cara’s scent will be there, along with every memory of us together in my sheets. By one a.m., I’ve completed a depressing jerk-off session inspired by one of those memories, a particularly long and filthy night that included Cara using my headboard to balance herself as she rocked her pussy against my face. She came so loudly I thought she was about to stroke out.
By three a.m., I’m in my truck and on my way back to Cara. I kill the headlights when I pull down the driveway, slowing to keep the motor from roaring. I find the front door unlocked, a sign that either Cara was waiting for me, knowing I’d come to my senses—or that she’s truly one of us now, distanced enough from her old life to feel safe keeping her doors unlocked. Both theories help me from feeling like a creeper when I slip inside the house, drop my coat and toe off my boots at the bottom of the staircase, and make my way up to the bedroom.
When I step into the bedroom, though, I’m not sure what to do. Is it OK to crawl in bed with her? Naked, like I normally would? Probably not, given that when I last saw her, she was pissed at me and I deserved every bit of it.
I should wake her up first. But how? Should I sit on the bed and wait until she opens her eyes? Maybe not. That seems a little sparkly-vampire-stalker-ish.
“Cara.” I whisper loudly, hoping it’s enough to wake her. She doesn’t move. I lean forward. “Cara.”
I notice how the bedcovers are rumpled and one of her feet is peeking out from an upturned edge. This I can work with, because my sweet Cara is crazy ticklish.
A few featherlight traces across the sole of her foot inspire a twitch. I try again. “Ca-ra.”
Suddenly, she startles, half shooting up from the bed and throwing one hand over her chest. She adjusts her eyes to the darkness, leaning forward to focus on me.
“Garrett, what are you doing?”
“Trying to wake you up.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to get in bed with you, but I didn’t want it to be creepy.”
She flops back to the bed with a huff. “Why would it be creepy? We’ve slept together nearly every night for the last eight weeks.”
“Because I screwed up and you’re mad at me. Because you told me to leave earlier.”
Cara flips the bedcovers back. “Just get in here.”
“Can I be naked?”
“Well, seeing as I’m currently naked because I was waiting for you to come back, I think it’s fine if you are, too. Ideal, really.”
My clothes are off in a flash, unzipping and tugging until everything is in a pile on my side of the bed.
Before I slip in, my eyes linger on Cara’s naked body, exposed where the covers are pulled back and highlighted by the slivers of moonlight peeking through the window shades. She’s lying on her side with her back to me, and like always, she’s so beautiful it turns my breath harsh and desperate. I calm the urge to grab her roughly and hold her tight until I’ve smothered away all the distance I forced between us over the last few days.
Her fair skin combined with the moonlight means she almost looks like she’s glowing, all the way from the taper of her slim calf, up and over her taut thighs and the dip of her waist and up to her shoulders, broken up only by her dark hair against the white pillow. The length of her bare back is both pretty and sexy, and knowing the softness of her skin there so well, means I immediately want to rub the head of my dick across the entire span of her lower back and tease the crease of her ass.
Cara turns in the sheets, tips her head back to look my way. “What are you waiting for?”
My hands ball into fists at my sides. “I’m looking at you.”
“Will you be done soon?” she whispers. “Because I’ve been waiting for hours.”
I give in and release my balled-up hands, put one knee to the mattress, and slide in to lie down on my side, my chest to her back, one hand sliding over her hip. I dip my hand low on her belly, then spread my fingers wide so my hand covers the entire space from hip to hip. I kiss her cheek, then pause, breathing deep to pace myself. We’ve done this so many times before, so many different ways. We’ve fucked hard, fucked slow, banged dirty and rough, and been so gentle with each other that it doesn’t feel anything like fucking.
But no one of those ways will be enough tonight. I want all of it at the same time. A rough fuck that’s as slow as it is dirty, as heated as it is wild. I want to get so deep she thinks she feels my cock in her throat, then pull back to give her just the head, my thumb over her clit when I do. I want her to feel all the things I’m feeling. The heat, the disappointment, the ache, the hunger, and the regret.
Above the rest, I want her to feel one thing.
Me. Taking her, loving her, and asking her to forgive the way I’ve ruined these last few days by trying to forget how it feels to know her.
Cara starts to move restlessly, her ass nudging back toward me. I meet the press and rub my dick across her soft skin, letting my hand slip lower still, leaving her belly and teasing between her legs. She moans and tilts her hips back again.
“Are you still mad at me?”
She exhales heavily. “I wasn’t really mad at you to begin with. I’m sad.”
I bury my face in her neck and drop a soft kiss under her earlobe, taking in the sweet Creamsicle scent of her hair and skin. “I screwed up. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she whispers.
Cara puts one of her hands over mine, urging them lower. I slip my middle finger to the space where I’m used to finding evidence of how good I’m making her feel, but tonight she’s nowhere near ready. All her sadness, the hurt I caused, is showing up here. Another wash of regret settles in my chest. I swallow hard and let the feeling sit there.
“Cara.” My voice cracks because I’m pleading with her, just by saying her name. Asking for forgiveness.
She lets out a slow breath and sinks her body closer to mine, like she’s turning everything over to me. I draw my hand out from between her legs and wet my fingers in my mouth, keeping my touch slow when I slip them back in place, shifting my other arm around her so I can cup one of her tits. My palm meets her nipple and finding it pointed and hard is a relief. Rolling her tight bud between my fingers helps, a slickness building between her legs. I wet my fingers again. A few more well-paced teases and she’s there. A fucked-up sense of accomplishment rages through me—because I fixed this, gave her what she needs instead of taking it away.
I start to extract my hand and her entire body stiffens. Her hand latches on to my wrist. I drop a kiss to her hair.
“It’s OK, I’m not going anywhere. Just need to get wrapped up.”
“You don’t have to,” she whispers, her hand still holding mine.
My entire body freezes in place. She can’t be saying what I think she is.
Tonight? This is when she decides to toss out the option of letting me have her that way? Bare and deep? Tonight?
My mind starts to battle with my dick and my heart, all at odds with each other. My dick is all but screaming his agreement. My brain says that we haven’t talked about this and now, with my dick leaking precum against her soft skin, is not the time to try and make a sound decision on the topic.
But most of all, my heart has one thing to say. Fuck no.
We cannot go without this time. Not when this is it for us. Going bare inside her would be for the moment we decide this isn’t the last time—when we know there will be so many more times, we’d go broke from buying condoms. Feeling Cara that way, while knowing it’s a one-time pleasure? That would gut me.
I shake my head almost imperceptibly, not even sure she can see my response in the semidarkness, and reach over to the nightstand, groping blindly until my hand finds the box we put there. Cara’s hand is on my dick, stroking slow and tight as I fish around, finally grabbing the box and shaking it so a foil wrapper lands on my chest. Gently, I remove her hand and slip the condom on.
Cara starts to twist my way, but I stop her. Missionary might seem like the right way to say goodbye, her underneath me, our chests close while I drive deep and hard. But just like the idea of having her bare, it’s too much.
I use my weight to put us back where we were. My chest to her back, one arm tucked under to reach her breast, the other over her waist. I grab her thigh just above the knee, pulling her leg back so she can hook her ankle behind my leg, opening her to where my demanding cock has already settled, the head slipping across her palm when she tries to guide me inside, but I put my hand to hers. She moans as I try to keep from doing this all wrong, too hard or too fast for what tonight is about. Finally, I let go and push inside.
One stroke and everything snaps apart. She’s pushing and urging herself back to me, I’m shoving and driving forward, both of us breathing hard. She says my name, begging for more. When I give it to her, my hand leaves her breast, moving up to find more leverage. My hand lands between her neck and shoulder. I set it there as loose as I can, but pounding into her drives my grip higher. To her throat, where I falter. The wild impulse to hold on to her there, hard and tight, surges up, and I try to push it away, slowing the pace of my thrusts and stroking my thumb across her neck, still fighting the craving to claim her and hold on for as long as I can.
And when Cara arches her body, moving her hips back to take my dick deeper and pushing her throat into my palm, I know she feels what I do. No fear or panic. No demands or control. Just the give-and-take of two people who aren’t sure how they’re going to go on without each other.
My pace kicks up and Cara starts to make the sound she does when she’s close. Her sounds, her pussy clenching tight around me, the rush of heat that comes when she’s there . . . all of it sends us both over the edge, both of us loud and wild, alive and savoring.
My hand remains high on her throat, nearly cupping her chin. And when I come back to myself—the daylight me—I try to pull away as quickly as I can, without scaring Cara more than I probably already have.
But she puts her hand over mine, keeps us there for a moment, then urges our intertwined hands up to her mouth. A kiss to my palm follows.
And my fucking heart cracks open.
An hour later, we’re both still awake, knowing sleep will mean we’re losing precious minutes and hours together.
Cara has moved onto her belly, her arms up and resting around her head on the pillow, the bedsheets pushed down to her waist. I’m on my side, my hands tracing her skin. I draw the sheets down all the way, leaving her naked down to her ankles, and start to take inventory with all of my senses. Starting at her right hand, I trace the back of her hand with my fingers. Then her wrist, her elbow, her upper arm. I kiss across her shoulders and her back, soaking up the feel, the sight, the smell of every inch of her skin.
She twists her head a bit to see me better. “What are you doing?”
I slide my hand over the curve of her waist and the sweet roundness of her ass, then start down the backs of her thighs, making sure I take my time with her legs.
“Memorizing you. So I don’t forget a thing.”