“If you think that scares me away, you’re wrong.”
She stares at me. “What’s wrong with you? Truly. What’s your diagnosis?”
I laugh. “Same as yours, probably. Delusional. But, I’m not. I’m innocent, officer!”
Her lips curve up and she chews delicately.
“My brother Finn died. My mother died, too. I have my father, but we’re not close. Not anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because he can’t bear to see me here,” she says, and her face is so pained.
“So change it,” I suggest.
She levels a gaze at me. “If I could figure out how, I would.”
I can’t tell her how, or she would truly think me insane, so I bite my tongue and stay silent.
“Tell me about you,” she says and she’s firm.
“I’m from England,” I tell her. She rolls her eyes.
“That’s obvious. Tell me something I don’t know.”
I think on that. She knows everything about me. She just doesn’t remember. I try to think of something she likes… then it occurs to me.
“I have a tattoo,” I tell her, and she’s surprised by that.
“Of what?”
“Words. It says LIVE FREE. It’s on my back.”
“Show me.”
Without pause, I lower my hospital gown and turn my back to her. I feel her fingers tracing the large letters.
Her skin is warm against mine, her fingers curious. She touches my shoulder blades, my spine, my neck. I feel the electricity in her touch, it’s a current that flows beneath my skin, connecting us, holding us together.
“Live free,” she whispers, her words so soft. “I love it.”
Her fingers stop moving and I turn around, pulling my gown back up.
“Do you?” she asks. “Do you live free?”
I shrug. “I try.”
She’s still now, and her eyes are glassy. “I feel… I feel like we’ve been here before somehow,” she murmurs. And she’s confused.
“Déjà vu?” I suggest.
She ponders that. “I don’t know.”
“Do you feel this way often?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead she says, “I hate this feeling.”
I so want to take away her confusion and her displeasure that I do the only thing I can think of.
I kiss her.
Her lips are soft and they mold with mine, and her hands… they come up and grasp my back, her fingers digging into my ribs. She clings to me like I’m a life-raft, and maybe I am. She sighs into my mouth, and this is what I live for.
She folds into me, and I’m holding her up, and we kiss and kiss in the morning sun.
And then, we’re pulled apart by orderlies and nurses, because kissing is against the rules.
She’s bustled out by nurses, and she looks over her shoulder at me and her eyes are so big and so familiar.
Her gaze meets mine, and we’re connected.
They can’t keep us apart.
I hope she knows that.
Four
“When you smile at me, I feel like you’re daring me to do something,” Calla says, and her words are so rhythmic, so soft.
We’re sitting in her room again, both of us on the floor. Our legs are both in a V, our feet touching. We listen for the nurses as we quietly talk.
“Maybe I am.”
She pauses. “What are you daring me to do?”
I lean toward her, my hand on her knee. “Everything.”
She draws back, as she pulls a breath in over her lips.
“There’s something about you…” she whispers. “I know you. But I don’t. I feel like I should trust you, but I also feel like I shouldn’t. It’s… you’re an enigma.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“You are,” she insists.
Her hand clutches at mine now, and I love everything about it. I love the warmth of it, the shape of it, the strength of her fingers. I know these fingers like I know my own.
I raise her hand to my mouth.
She blinks, and her skin is alabaster.
She keeps her hand there, her fingers trembling as she outlines my lips. I close my eyes, and her touch is electric.
“Can I?” she whispers, and before I can say anything, her warm lips cover my own.
She’s timid at first, soft and sweet. This kiss is a myriad of things. It’s warm and familiar and wild and electric. It’s standing in the rain with lightning crashing around us and it’s curled up by a crackling fire. It’s everything.
Calla’s arms reach around my neck and she pulls me ever closer, and the chemistry, lord almighty, the chemistry. I can feel it. It hisses in my veins, and it’s overwhelming.
She breathes quickly into my mouth, in tiny pants, and her eyes open up wide, looking into my own.
She pulls away. “I don’t want to let go of you,” she admits. “I don’t want to lose you.”
I know why she feels that way, and I feel the same, and I grab her and hold her in front of the window.
She’s so slight, so feminine, and her long red hair spills over my arm.
My hand strays along her arm, along her fingers, along her thigh. She pushes herself into me, her hipbones poking into mine, and she thrusts and whimpers, and stares at me.
“I want to do more,” she tells me. “But I’m afraid. I’ve never…”
I stare into her blue eyes. They are so dark right now that they look black. Dark with the night, dark with wanting me.
“You’ve never made love?” I ask, my voice is husky.
She shakes her head.
“No, I haven’t.”
She’s embarrassed, but she shouldn’t be.
She has made love. To me. But like everything else, she doesn’t remember. Like everything else, we’ll be doing it again for the ‘first time’.
“It’s ok,” I tell her. “We won’t rush.”
She nods and her head drops to my chest. She listens to my heart for a moment, then tilts her face up.
“I’m impatient though.”
I chuckle, because she is. I tuck a tendril of her hair behind her ear. Even her ear-lobe is delicate.
“I know.”
Her hand is suddenly on me, on my manhood, and I suck in a breath, because it’s so brazen, and so startling, and she smiles knowingly.
“Do you like that?” she whispers. She moves her fingers, kneading them against me. “Do you like it when I touch you?”
She’s not teasing. She’s asking a sincere question.
I can barely answer.
“Yes,” I manage to say. “Very much.”
She sighs in relief, and I can’t breathe at all, as she slides her fingers along my length on the outside of my hospital pants. The material is thin, and her hand is warm, and Lord God.
I groan and pull her hand away. It takes everything I have to do it, but I do.
Because even though this isn’t our first time, she thinks it is. And it’s not going to happen on a waxed hospital room floor.
“Did I do something wrong?” her brows knit together, and she bites her lip.
“No,” I rush to reassure her. “Not at all. It’s just… let’s wait. I want it to be more special than… this.”
I gesture at the floor and she smiles, a soft grin.
She pauses, then nods.
“That’s really sweet,” she decides. “Thank you.”
She rests against me again, and her hip is against my crotch and I have to grit my teeth to not flip her onto her back and take her here and now.
I might be a gentleman, but I’m still a man.
Five
I find Calla in the Commons room, sitting in a window seat, her forehead pressed to the glass, one leg tucked beneath her, one leg dangling.
She’s waiting on someone.
Her brother? Or me?
There’s only one way to find out.
I cross the room quickly and sit next to her.
&n
bsp; “Miss me?” I ask casually. She startles, then relaxes, her gaze sweeping me head to foot.
“Yes,” she admits.
She reaches for me, like I’m air and she needs to breathe.
I hesitate though, as a counselor eyes us.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I suggest instead. “Do you have time?”
She nods and slips off the seat, and grabs my hand on the way outdoors. I don’t want to raise the suspicions of the staff because I don’t want them checking in on us more than usual. But I can’t pull my hand away, either.
Our intertwined hands feel like an unbreakable bond.
I tighten my grip.
“The flowers are blooming,” she points out as we walk down to the pond. It’s more of a puddle, but it’s got ducks, and Calla likes to watch them. “They weren’t yesterday.”
“Spring is coming,” I agree.
“I hate it when things change,” Calla tells me seriously, as she pulls out a crust of bread from her pocket. She tosses it to the birds, watching them descend upon it.
“Change can be good,” I tell her.
“Sometimes.”
“Take me, for example,” I say. “I might change everything for you.”
Her lip twitches. “Everything? That’s kind of cocky, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I agree. “It is.”
She laughs, and she likes my answer. She likes me. Still. Always.
“I dreamed about you last night,” she tells me quietly, like she’s confiding something secret. I study her. She’s serious, pensive.
“Did you?” I reply. “What was I doing?”
She smiles. “Bad things. But very good things.” Her voice is suggestive, and my crotch tightens in response. I can’t help but wonder if she was dreaming memories, or if she was dreaming wishes.
“I’m good at making dreams come true,” I offer, and she giggles.
“I bet.”
“Seriously, I am.”
She rolls her eyes, and picks up a stone, skipping it across the tiny pool of water.
I taught her to do that.
“You were licking me. In my dream.” She says, and she darts a glance at me, and her cheeks flush.
Sweet Jesus. I swallow.
“Licking you?”
She nods, her cheeks bright red. “Yeah. Down…there.”
“That’s the only place to be,” I offer. She flushes even more. “Like I said. I’m good at making dreams come true.”
She pauses. “People really do that?”
“Of course they do,” I assure her. “It’s very normal.”
“I’ve heard of it, obviously,” she says primly. “I just have never done it.”
Yes, you have. But I don’t say it.
“Well, I’m a very good teacher.” That’s what I actually say.
“There’s on outing on Friday,” she says, changing the subject. “They’re taking us to a little craft festival. Are you going?”
“I am now,” I tell her.
She smiles.
Six
I’m the one dreaming tonight.
I toss and turn, and dream my memories.
Calla and I are on the boat, tossing on the ocean swells. She’s wearing a sundress and a floppy hat, and my head is in her lap.
“Do you love me?” she asks, and she smiles because she knows the answer.
“More than there are stars,” I tell her, like I always do.
She’s satisfied with that, and because the sun is setting, she pulls off her hat and tosses it down. “Have you ever heard the story of Perseus and Andromeda?”
Of course I have. I’m the one who first told her. But I humor her, and let her tell me.
“They were lovers,” she says in a hushed voice. “But Andromeda’s mother insulted Poseidon, so she was condemned to die by sea monster.”
“That hardly seems fair,” I say, nibbling at Calla’s fingers.
“I know,” she nods. “But don’t worry. Perseus saved her, and then he married her. They live in the constellations in the sky now, their love is immortal.”
“You don’t think that love ends?” I ask curiously.
She shakes her head. “Of course not. It’s forever, Dare.”
I smile a little, because that makes me happy, and then her hand is trailing down my arm, and I know what she wants.
I flip her over, and my weight presses her into the cushions, and she nips at my neck, her lips soft and warm.
“I want you, Dare,” she whispers. “I want you. You’re mine. Always.”
“Yes,” I agree. “I am.”
I’m just sliding into her, her warmth engulfing me, when I look up and a giant wave is crashing down on us. We don’t have time to react.
We’re hit, and we’re forced apart, and Calla is swept away from me.
“Dare,” she calls, and her hand is outstretched, and I can’t reach her. “Dare!”
I awake with a start, covered in sweat, my breathing quick and raspy.
That didn’t happen.
She didn’t drown.
We didn’t capsize. The rest was real.
The end was not.
It wasn’t real, I assure myself. It wasn’t real.
But that awful empty feeling stays with me and I can’t shake it. The cold empty feeling I get when Calla is not with me.
I try to reason with myself, I try to use logic, but I finally give up. I’ve got to go check. History has taught me that.
I creep down the hall, hiding from the nurses on the way, and finally, finally, come to her door.
I peer in the crack, and startle.
Her bed is empty.
It’s rumpled and empty.
My breathing quickens and my heart pounds.
She’s gone.
Seven
I throw the door open, and burst in, and the room is empty.
Moonlight shines on the bedcovers, illuminating them silver, and she’s not here.
I sit on the edge, my knees weak.
This can’t be happening again.
Not so soon.
I stare at the pillow, at the indention her head had made, and I reach out and touch it. She was here recently.
“Dare?”
Her voice is soft, and my head snaps up.
Calla lingers in the bathroom door, a curious look on her face.
“Calla.”
Relief floods through my every pore, my every cell.
She’s not gone.
“You’re here,” I whisper.
She cocks her head. “Yes. Where else would I be? The real question is… why are you here?’
In her room.
I can’t answer that without sounding crazy.
“I missed you,” I tell her truthfully.
She smiles.
“You did?”
“Always.”
“You can’t miss me always,” she reasons. “You don’t know me well enough.”
“I do, too,” I argue and she sits beside me.
“Are we doing this again?” she asks, rolling her eyes.
“No. I know that I know you. It’s enough.”
She shakes her head, but she grabs my hand, and leans her head on my shoulder.
“Maybe we knew each other in another life,” she suggests.
“Maybe.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she decides. “I know you now. That’s enough.”
“True.”
Her hand is on my thigh. Her fingers twitch and she wants to move it, she wants to touch me, but she’s afraid.
“Do it,” I suggest.
She glances up at me.
“Do what?”
“Touch me. Wherever you want.”
“I don’t want us to get out of control,” she whispers. “Not yet.”
I smile. “Trust me. I’ll be a statue. You can do anything you want. I won’t move.”
“Not a muscle?”
“Not even a twitch.”
She pauses, but then
decides to trust me. Her hand slides along my thigh, her fingers light and tentative.
She glides along the curve of my muscle. Her other hand skims my chest. Goosebumps form where she touches, and her fingers pause at my groin.
Her other hand stops at my hardened nipple.
Her mouth is a perfect rosebud, pursed in concentration. She’s timid, but she wants to.
So she does.
My brave girl moves her hand, and touches me.
She outlines my shaft through my pajama pants, and sucks in a breath as I harden beneath her fingers.
“You twitched,” she breathes.
I grin. “He’s got a mind of his own. I apologize.”
“Don’t,” she says. “I like it.”
“So do I.”
Her lips curve up, and God, how I wish she’d use that mouth on me.
True to my word, though, I remain still. I make no suggestions. I say not a word.
Her hands trace my body, every muscle, every bulge.
“You’re strong,” she points out.
“Yes.”
“I feel safe with you.”
“Good.”
I’d protect her with my life.
Her breath is coming in tiny pants now. She wants me.
I want her.
She stretches up on her tiptoes and kisses my mouth. I want to pull her close to me, but I’m true to my word. My hands stay by my sides, and she plunges her tongue into my mouth, exploring, sensing, seeking.
She moans.
My groin tightens.
I want to roll her over and plunge into her.
But I don’t.
I practice restraint.
“Touch me,” she pleads, releasing me from my promise.
I don’t hesitate.
I gently push her back onto the bed, and hovering next to her, I slide my hand into her panties, seeking her warm center. Her eyes flutter when I reach it, when I slide one then two fingers into her.
She whimpers.
I ache with want.
I circle her with my fingertips, then thrust them into her again.
She cries out.
I continue.
She arches her back.
Her fingers grasp at the sheets.
I know her.
I know her body.
I know what she needs.