Read My Lips: Restricted Version

RML: Chapter 27 (R)

Chapter 27


After packing a  backpack with some peanut butter sandwiches, bottled water, and a book of William Blake’s poetry -- stuffed in there by Amber with a jaunty wink at Linc -- they set out in his truck to the back end of his pasture and headed toward the trails that led into the nature park.  From there, they took a short hike to a small oxbow lake, where Linc spread out a quilt he brought along -- this one in a red and white checker pattern; he couldn’t bare to look at the blue one from his bed while he was with Amber -- and laid there with her, staring up through the branches of the trees.  For a long while, they did not speak much more than a few words.  It was a comfortable silence, and Linc was happy to just relax next to her.  Her head nestled into the crook of his shoulder and the wind fluttered strands of her hair across his neck.  With his fingers entwining those soft curls around and around, the warmth in each of their bodies told the other that the moment was perfect.

Amber read contently from the Blake book, flipping through pages until she found a poem or composition she enjoyed.  At times, she read aloud, and Linc listened to the sound of her voice more than the words.

“‘When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hills laugh with the noise of it...’”

She sighed when she finished that passage.  “I remember my mother’s laugh,” she said softly, sadly.  “It was beautiful, like a bell ringing.”

Linc heard her, heard the sad yearning in her voice, and swallowed roughly.  Dear God...  

“My father had this rumble when he laughed,” she went on, the book forgotten for the moment against her stomach.  She gazed up through the swaying branches of the trees above.  “After I stopped hearing it, I would climb into his lap and lay my head against his chest when he laughed.  I could feel it...feel how happy he was, even though I no longer heard it.”

Linc shifted so that his head rose above hers, looking down into her pansy blue eyes.  She smiled faintly at him.  “What is it like?” he asked her.  “To not hear anything at all.”

She searched his face, looking for the reason for this question, but Linc only waited patiently for her to explain.  “It is like...it is like a goldfish swimming around in a bowl.  I can see the world around me, but that is it.”  She lifted a finger to his jaw and traced a line down his throat.  “I would like to hear you laugh.  I bet it sounds wonderful...like you, handsome and gritty and sexy.”

Linc chuckled, thinking she was joking with him, and she smiled in return.  "Yes, just like that," she told him. “Very sexy, very...you, Lincoln Martin...you are one handsome man when you smile.”

He faked a scowl.  “And what about when I frown?”

She grinned wide, scratching her nails through his rough whiskers.  “You are still handsome...just not as sexy.”

Linc laughed and gave her a kiss, a soft one, barely on her lips, and she breathed beautifully against his mouth.  “So tell me, my little goldfish, does the world seem different to you?  Since you can’t hear it?”

“I do not know,” she answered, her hand falling to her side and her gaze turning inward.  “I do not remember much from when I could hear.  This one,” she pointed to her right ear, “is completely gone, but sometimes...”  She tugged on her left earlobe.  “Sometimes, I hear a humming sound in my left.  It does not happen a lot, so I think I am imagining it.”

“This ear?” Linc asked before he bent to nibble on it.  Amber giggled, but she angled her head to give him better access.  

“Yes, that one,” she said, laughing as he sucked on the lobe.

“So...nothing out of this one?” he inquired as he moved around to the other side of her head, pausing to speak within her sight.  His mouth and tongue played with her right ear in the same manner as the other, and Amber laughed and squirmed under him.

“Not a thing,” she told him.  He lifted his head to look into her eyes.

“Hmm...then I think I prefer this one,” he informed her before dropping down to suckle on her left ear again.

“Linc!  That tickles!  You make me think you would rather I could hear you!”

She was joking, of course, but Linc heard the wistful tone in her voice...almost as though saying, Would you love me if I wasn’t deaf?  That made him pause.  He raised his head again.

“Amber...you are perfect, just the way you are,” he said seriously.  She blinked and lost her smile.

“Am I?” she whispered.  “Am I perfect in general...or perfect for you?”

Linc sighed and laid back down.  She twisted around to look at his mouth as he spoke.  “Amber...please...you said we didn’t have to talk about this right now.”

She rested her chin on his chest.  “Was Macie perfect?” she asked, a stubborn persistence in her words.

He answered her honestly.  “No, Amber.  She wasn’t.”

“So, you do not want perfect?” she asked, still talking about it, though he closed his eyes in the same way she did when avoiding a conversation.  Too bad, he couldn’t close his ears, too.  “Linc?”

He inhaled and ignored her.

“Linc?” she said again, and his eyes flew open and landed on her.

“What, Amber?!  What?”

“Tell me about her,” she insisted.

“Why?”

She shrugged and tilted the corner of her lips upward.  “I am taking notes.”

“I don’t want to talk about her, Amber.  I don’t want to think about her when I’m with you,” he said, getting frustrated and angry.  This was supposed to be a peaceful day...just the two of them together, not talking about themselves as a pair, and not thinking about Macie!

“Why not?”

“Dammit, Amber,” he growled and sat up, scrubbing his hands through his hair.  She scrambled up to her knees to look at him.  He sat there, breathing in and out, trying like hell to get a lid on his temper.

“Do you ever talk about her?” she asked softly.

“No.”

“That is not good.”

He shot her a sideways glance full of scorn.  The morning was going so well...now this.  “How is that not good?  Do you want me pining over her while I’m with you?”

“No,” she admitted, “but you cannot keep it all inside.  It is not healthy.  I know this.  I was angry for many years after I stopped hearing.”

“This is not the same thing!”

She raised her eyebrows at him.  “And how is it different?  I lost something -- a part of me -- that I cannot get back.  It is dead.  Gone.  Forever.  I wish I could hear again, but I never will.  It is the same with you and Macie.”

A part of himself realized that she spoke the truth, but most of him didn’t want to acknowledge that.  What he felt inside was nothing compared to what she experienced when she went deaf.  It couldn’t be.  Or she wouldn’t be this happy all the time...this sweet and perfect and beautiful.  Losing something the way he lost Macie did crazy, evil things to a person.  It tore them apart...from the inside out.  

He turned to face her.  “Amber, I buried the woman I love.  My child was in her belly.”

She laid a hand on his arm.  “I understand, Linc.  I know it hurts.”

“Do you really?” he asked sarcastically.

“Yes, I do,” she said calmly.  “I was only three when I stopped hearing.  Then I did not understand.  I grew up and still I did not understand.  Why did this happen to me?  What did I do to deserve this?  When I started school, kindergarten, I became very angry.  I did not want to go to the special school.  I wanted to go to school like my sister.  I was a very bad child because I did not understand, Linc.  I grieved, just like you do, for my hearing.  I was mad all the time.  I would hit my sister and my mom and dad when I could not understand what they were saying to me.  I would scream and yell because it was not fair.  It should not have been me that it happened to.  I did not understand then, and I rarely do now, but I have learned to not keep it inside.”

Linc watched the flicker of emotions crossing her face, saw the way her hands jerked in action during some words that were especially difficult for her to pronounce, looked into her eyes and witnessed the peaceful way she had accepted her fate on this day.  It wasn’t fair, but she had found a way to live regardless.

“What changed all that?” he wanted to know...God, how he wanted to know peace again!

She looked away for a moment and smiled.  “It was something my daddy did...I was still learning to write and read, and it was hard for me because I fought against it for so long.  Daddy gave me a book for my eighth birthday.  It was The Seraphim, and Other Poems by--”

“Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” Linc interrupted.  Amber nodded, slightly surprised.  

“I have a copy,” he told her.

“Oh?  Do you have a favorite poem?”

“Not particularly.  I haven’t read all of it yet,” he said, his mouth twitching at this small turn in conversation.  Amber did that...she made him forget for just a moment.

Her blue eyes drifted away, and she spoke, “’Which is the weakest thing of all mine heart can ponder?  The sun, a little cloud can pall with darkness yonder?  The cloud, a little wind can move where'er it listeth?  The wind, a little leaf above, though sere, resisteth?’”

“I am not familiar with that one,” he said, loving how her voice took on a whole other dimension when she recited the verses of the poem...almost as if she herself wrote it.

“‘The Weakest Thing’,” she informed him.  "The common belief is that the poem is about death being the only sure thing in this world...but I like to think that no matter how bad things seem, there is always something worse."

Linc stared at her.  "There is always something worse," he repeated in a deadpan tone.  "I fail to see how anything could be worse than Macie dying."

"This is true," she said, looking down at her fingers pulling on a loose thread at the edge of the quilt.  "You loved Macie very much.  You had only a short time together.  You were getting married, starting a family...life was perfect for you..."

Linc looked out across the lake, remembering the woman he lost.  Life had been perfect.  Amber sat quietly for a moment.  Then she said, "I am glad that you loved her so much, Linc.  If you did not, I think that would be worse."

He glanced at her.  Worse?  "What do you mean?"  She wasn't looking at him.  He rolled to his knees, tipped her face up, saw the sheen of tears glistening in her blue eyes.  "What do you mean, Amber?"

"What is worse, Linc?  Loving her and losing her?  Or never knowing her, never loving her?"

He couldn't believe she would ask him this.  She claimed to be in love with him, and now she actually seemed to praise the fact that he loved another woman.  The sight of her tears just about drove him mad.  Surely she wasn't crying because he had lost Macie.  Maybe, she was upset that he refused to talk to her...or that she truly was bothered by his inability to devote all of himself to her.  In any case, he just had to ask, as he wiped a wayward tear, "Amber, why are you crying?"

A brief smile graced her face.  "It makes me sad...one of those is worse than the other.  Neither should be a choice for you."

Linc searched her expression with a frown.  Here she sat, insisting that he talk to her about Macie, telling him that losing Macie shouldn't have even happened, and still looked at him with those big, blue eyes overflowing with love, just for him.  She couldn't be real.  She couldn't be this guileless and precious and sincere.  He knew she wasn't a real angel -- he had spent the night making love to her and witnessed her very bad sad -- so he didn't know what to say to her.

"Amber..."

She patted his hand, giving it a squeeze.  "I am fine."

"Don't cry for me, Amber."

"Then talk to me, Linc," she pleaded.  "Tell me all these wonderful things you loved about her.  Make me smile with you."

"Do you understand what you are asking from me?" he asked.  "We spent the whole night, naked, together, you and I.  Do you really want me to describe the things I love most about another woman?  One I also spent many, many nights with naked?"

She sighed heavily.  "I do not wish for you to compare us, and I am not trying to find ways to seduce you or anything, or to even find a loophole to your heart...but I do want to hear about her.  You loved her very much.  She must have been wonderful.  I wish I could have known her."

Linc groaned.  Imagining Amber and Macie as friends did nothing for his sanity.  Just thinking about the woman he loved and the woman he recently slept with...together...ah, hell, he felt like a freaking adulterer.

“I can’t, Amber,” he said.  “It’s too painful...it isn’t right.  Me talking about her, telling you everything I loved about her.  Please...just drop this.”

A spark of stubbornness ignited in the corners of her eyes, looking just like that Amber he met at Wil's wedding...a woman who wasn't taking shit from anyone.  “I will not ask another question about her today...if you answer just one.”

“One question?” he asked warily, but thankful she was relenting.  “It depends on the question, Amber.”

Amber smiled tenderly.  “Her laugh...tell me about her laugh.  It is the one thing I wish I could still hear...people laughing.  I see their smiles and I see the motions of laughter, but...please, Linc?  I miss the laughter most of all.”

Sweet Jesus.  Linc couldn’t swallow past the gigantic lump in his throat.  How could he deny her this one thing?  The sound of a laugh...Macie’s laugh, but he could see the desperate yearning in her sweet face, hear the grief in her tone.  It’s just a laugh.  

Taking a deep breath, he thought back, pushing aside the pain of remembering Macie when she laughed.  “She had a deep laugh,” he began, and Amber’s smile perked up.  “Sultry and throaty...like a slow, wet kiss...like the hot wind on a summer’s night...”  He closed his eyes, remembering...  “And there were times when she laughed with her whole body...it was amazing to watch.  Her smile, her eyes...the flush of her skin...she could warm me up on the coldest days when she laughed...God, it was beautiful...”

A soft, gentle hand laid on his wrist.  “Thank you, Linc...I can almost hear it...”

He looked at her.  A quirky, sad, dreamy expression ghosted through her gaze.  He cupped her jaw with his palm.  “Shall I tell you what your laugh sounds like?”

Instead of answering, she pointed to the trees above them.  “Is that bird chirping?”

Linc glanced up, confused about her change in subject.  “Yes, I suppose.”  He nodded with his words because she wasn’t looking direction at him.

“What does it sound like?”  

For a moment, he just studied her.  Why the bird?  Sometimes he wondered what was really turning the wheel in her head.  Then it hit him.  She did not wish to compare herself and Macie.  That revelation wrapped around his heart and gave it a squeeze.  Amber sent him an encouraging smile.  And another one of those blasted chain links inside him burst.  He leaned forward to kiss her lightly, delicately, which she calmly accepted.  Intoxicated by her taste, he forgot about Macie.

He pushed her down to the quilt again and reclined over her face, so she could read his lips as he talked.  He tried to explain the song of the horned lark perched in the elm tree, and she’d smirk and shake her head when he told her it sounded like the taste of her kisses.  Then he kissed her sweetly again to prove his point.  When a pigeon cooed, he told her it was the same sound she made when he nibbled the sensitive area behind her earlobe...which he gratefully verified.  And soon, he was comparing her sighs to the whisper of the breeze moving through the rushes by the water’s edge.  The passion in her eyes was like the gentle lapping of the lake against the shore, liquid and continuous and too damn hard to ignore.  Her moans from his caresses were the rumbles of fishing boats drifting by, and of course, her laughter sounded akin to the croak of a toad nearby, which earned him a playful punch in the ribs and more laughter.

And as they laid there, she signed words for the things around them, her fingers magically speaking her language.  She taught him ‘tree’ and ‘lake’ and ‘bird’, among other signs, and he plucked a star-shaped flower from the base of a tree and feathered it across her face, asking her to describe it.  She started out with the obvious -- color, shape, smell -- but as the pale pink petals kissed and stroked her skin, she closed her eyes and allowed the sensations to guide her hands.  They flowed sensually through her words...arching and swaying and flowing like a lover’s summons.  Linc lost himself in the movements and the tiny expressions on her face as she explained what she was feeling, sensing, enjoying...not seeing.  She was so precious, so beautiful, so delicate like this...as though an extension of the bloom between his fingers, resting on her cheek.

That chain around his heart creaked once more, and another solidly welded link snapped.  He let it.

“...when her life and happiness means more to you than anything else in this world, including whether you love her or not, then you’ll know...”  Damn his brother for being so smart.

Tucking the flower behind her ear as she opened her eyes and smiled at him, Linc smiled back.  He could see her love shining in those blue depths.  And he could see himself loving her back.  But there was one thing he needed to do first.  

Macie...

I have to purge Macie and the torment of losing her...I have to forgive myself...and I don’t know how...

Amber leaned over to touch his cheek.  “Linc?  What is it?”

He pulled her to him, touching his forehead to hers and inhaled her sweet scent.  Savored her love’s warmth.  Kissed her perfect, pink lips.  He framed her face with his hands and said, “Nothing...it’s nothing.”

For Linc, that Sunday blossomed into hours of laughter and smiles...and lots and lots of touches and kisses.  There was no more obvious pressure to secure his heart, and there was no more talk of love.  Amber kept her promise to him.  She never so much as hinted at being in love with him, and she didn’t mention Macie again.  No more questions about her.  It was almost like the days before, when all they had between them was a fragile friendship, bordering on a deep, mutual desire.  But Linc could not quite forget how she looked naked in his bed, how she felt in his arms, how she tasted and moved with him as he made love to her last night.  And he couldn’t stop touching and kissing her anymore.  He was addicted to her, and he wasn’t sure if he even wanted to be cured of it.  Amber basked in the warmth of his attentions, and Linc enjoyed attending to her. 

Yet, however he tried his damnest to keep the lurking disappointment out of her eyes, he kept seeing it.  It wasn’t often that she pulled away from him and stared off into the trees, but she did do it.  She always came back to his embrace with eagerness when he diverted her attention back to him, but he knew she was bothered by their talk this morning.

She shared herself with him last night, and it hadn’t been enough to make him love her yet.  And he regretted that.  But he knew now what he needed to do.  The doing part was what he still had trouble figuring out.  How was he to stop loving Macie?  Just the thought made him sick.  Macie had been a part of his heart for so long, he might as well cut off both his arms when letting her go.

Amber, on the other hand, he wanted so bad, he probably would cut off his limbs for her.  Yet, the man inside him refused to love two women at the same time.  It wasn't right.  Something had to be done.  Amber was so giving and sweet, and he hated himself.  But not enough to make himself give her up while he searched for his solution.  And she wouldn’t allow him to dwell on his regrets.  Whenever she sensed his thoughts turned dark, she’d kiss him and make him forget them.  

They stayed next to that lake all afternoon, drifting in and out of conversations, and soon, Amber fell asleep in his arms.  Linc couldn’t seem to relax.  He held her tight.  With a whisper she could not hear, he vowed, “I will try, Amber.  Don't give up on me.”