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“Oh, so apparently you have had the desire to punch me,” he questions, his eyes narrowing.
Desire is the right word, but to punch him, no, that’s not my first choice.
Chapter thirteen
I glance at my watch as I snap the metal closed around my wrist.
2:15.
Seriously. Fuck. This watch gobbles up batteries, but I can’t part with it. My dad gave it to me. It had been his. It isn’t fancy, although it was back then. It’s a good old-fashioned silver Seiko with a black face. I’m sure it cost my dad a couple of hundred bucks at the time, and he had to save up for it. He gave it to me to wear to my first hockey awards banquet in college. The first time I put on a tux. It’s been mine ever since.
I take it off and tuck it into my pocket to drop at the jewelry store for a new battery. Opening the drawer back up, I search for the backup watch, a Tag Heuer, and no, I don’t own a smart watch. I pull it out of its box and as I slip it over my wrist, something catches my eye. The nondescript paisley pattern peers out at me from where the box had been. The neatly folded tie has been tucked away there for years now.
But the memory of that silk sliding away from Carter’s shirt, his hands unbuttoning one more button on his dress shirt… that memory is as vivid as ever. Carter balled the tie up but had missed when he reached for his pants pocket. In his drunken haze, he neither noticed, nor cared. I found it in my car the next day. It smelled like him for a little while. I’d tucked it into the bottom of this drawer when I couldn’t stop thinking about him, couldn’t stop feeling him inside of me. I’d reached for it even when the scent of him was only imagined to still be there. I finally put the tie away, buried it deeper in the drawer, believing his memory would disappear with it. Oh, the things we try to tell ourselves.
“Hey C,” I say when I catch sight of Carter exiting Levi’s office. The greeting had the desired effect. He busts out laughing. The sound fills me with joy.
“Seriously!?”
I smile.
“Got a minute?”
He cocks a brow at me, but doesn’t answer as I continue my march toward him. I breeze past. “Come with me. Grab your coat.” I pause by his office door and wait. He furrows his brow, but surprisingly, doesn’t question me.
Having retrieved his coat, he quickly joins me and matches my steps down the hall. When I continue our furiously paced walk toward my motorcycle, he comes to a screeching halt.
“Hell no,” he barks.
I grab the helmet I’d brought for him and thrust it into his gut. “Come on.”
He holds the helmet, only to keep it from hitting the ground. His eyes are fixed on my bike, but he makes no move to get any closer to it.
“Don’t you trust me?”
Carter doesn’t respond. Nor does he move. His eyes drift across the bike and then settle back on me. Still no movement to join me. So, I wait.
He has lost his ever-loving mind if he thinks I’m going to get onto the back of that bike. And yet…
I will myself forward and climb onto the back with way more confidence than I feel. Motorcycles are not really my thing. This is not the usual sporty crotch rocket most professional athletes choose. Nor is it the big touring bike you see old couples tooling down the highway on. This one falls somewhere in between.
While I will never call a motorcycle luxurious, this one is certainly suited for a second rider. Provided that second rider is willing to cling to the body in front of him, that is.
Davey opens the throttle as we reach the highway and head east. Not toward the mountains, but out into the wide-open plains. Out of the city, past the airport and into the vast nothingness of prairie. The fields are barren for the winter, yet still beautiful in their own way in varied hues of gold and tawny browns. There’s nothing out here. Nothing. Nobody will find my body before the coyotes do.
I chuckle at that thought. A little too much true-crime TV, ya think? The fields are swishing by at a speed that is probably not nearly as unreasonable as it feels. The further we get from the city, the more my blood pressure dips. My eyes drink in the underappreciated beauty of these plains, constantly upstaged by the Rocky Mountains rapidly vanishing behind us and I cling to Davey’s body tighter than I need to. I have been longing for this. I’m willing to take any chance to hold him again. Press against him again. Inhale him. Feel him. The tenseness in his body releases.
Did he press his body back toward me? I must have imagined that. The speed of the bike eases just a tick, and his shoulders ease with it. I don’t lighten my grip, my hold, my chest pressing against his solid back.
I love the way this man feels under me.
He pulls the bike to a stop along the side of the road and before I can register what he’s doing, he escapes my grasp, dumps his helmet to the ground and thunders off into the field.
What the fuck is he doing?
He screams. No, he roars. He lifts his face to the sun and fucking roars.
And I feel it. All of it. Every goddamn feeling he is trying to let go of. We are the same, he and I, carrying the same guilt over a situation neither one of us ever had control over. A situation neither of us had the power to change. We were fucking scared confused kids. We can’t change any of it. But we can change how we react right here and right now.
