*another hilarious banner by Takestututango (Livejournal)
Things got intense. Soon we were sitting up and I was yanking at the bottom of his Georgia T-shirt. When I finally got it up and off of him, I had to stop. And gasp.
"What?" he said, looking at me like he thought I was having a heart attack.
"When did you get those?" I cried, pointing at his chest, where my eyes refused to leave.
He looked down and then back at me, looking a little scared. "When did I get what?"
"Those big . . . nice muscles you got there," I said. The room felt like a furnace all of a sudden.
He looked down again and back at me. His scared face stretched slowly into a huge grin.
"I mean when I last saw you like this," I said, my mouth wagging and my eyes still staring without shame, "you had a flat stomach, skinnier arms and even some of your ribs showin'!"
He laughed a little, curling some of my hair around his finger before tucking it behind my ear.
"I mean, holy damn Bennet, you've gotta six pack!" I pointed to the six tight muscles in his stomach.
"I know," he said, chuckling. "It's a smart thing for a cop to stay in shape, work out–"
"But you've got chest hair!"
"That I didn't get from workin' out," he said, smirking at me. "That just came with growin' up. You all right there, Natty Jean?"
"Wow," I breathed. I had to run my hand down his chest and stomach.
His breath caught. He let it out slowly, shuddering, as my fingertips brushed lightly down the center of his torso. I watched his stomach muscles tense.
He reached out, grabbing the bottom of my shirt while pushing the tip of his nose against mine to make me look at him.
"How are you lookin' these days, Natty?" he grinned at me, lifting my shirt a little.
I gave a sigh, coming to with some disappointment.
"About the same," I said as my shirt crept up and his hand began to rub against my bare belly. I couldn't stop staring at his eyes. "Like a twelve-year-old boy. No boobs, no ass, no hips, skinny as ever with the knobby knees to prove it."
He snorted and pressed his face against my cheek, laughing quietly.
"Well, I can't say that I like twelve-year-old boy bodies, because then it should be me bein' locked up, but . . ." he said, pulling the shirt up and over my head, tossing it on the floor. "I can say there isn't a body I've ever loved lookin' at more than yours."
"Liar."
"No lie," he whispered, his eyes falling from my face to look over my bra and stomach. His hands slid down to my hips, squeezing them as his eyes rose slowly back up the way they came. He let out a gruff breath. "Natty, I've been wantin' to get you naked and in my arms since the second I walked into Della's that first day."
Another hot wave. "Is that right?" I whispered.
He nodded. "And I've been fightin' the urge like crazy since. Horny as hell for you. You didn't remove that mole on your thigh, did you?"
I blinked. "Oh my God, how do you remember that?"
"I always loved that mole." His smile was so wide and so beautiful, I missed his hand going to my pants. "Can I see it?"
He tried unbuttoning them, but I smacked his hand away. He raised a brow, looking at my smirk and returning it. "Lookin' for a fight, Little Red?"
"Maybe."
Growling, he jumped on top of me, sending the two of us into a wrestling match. Instead of the dog-eat-dog matches we did as kids, we had pinching and tickling, laughter and squeals. He took every opportunity he could to bite at my neck and my mouth, then would lean back with a triumphant smile and wide giddy eyes, like he had won something.
We rolled and bucked, getting tangled in the sheets, groping and giggling like two lunatics, until he was able to undo my pants. Then he jumped off the bed, grabbed the bottom of my jean legs, and whipped my pants off in one quick movement. I watched those amazing muscles of his flex and stretch, losing my head as he went. He jumped back on top of me, straddling my knees and pinning down my arms.
"There it is," he whispered, spotting the famous mole on my thigh that he was apparently so in love with. "Oh good God, I missed it."
He kissed the mole on my thigh long and slow. The furnace turned up. When he shifted to let go of my hands, they jumped right to the back of his head, yanking him up to kiss him long and hard as his fingers hooked the band of my underwear and began to slide them slowly down my legs.
***
We lay on our backs, side by side, barely able to breathe and just numb the whole way through. The only thing I could do was stare at the ceiling with stars in my eyes.
Bennet let out another deep and satisfied breath before turning his head and looking at me. I looked at him. He grinned like he had never been so happy in his life.
"Remember our first kiss? When you kissed me?" he whispered.
I let out a snort. "I didn't kiss you, you kissed me."
His grin grew as he wrapped a finger in a strip of my hair. "Oh that's right."
"Yeah that's right," I said, shaking my head. "You shoved me and forced me to kick your ass only to tell me you wanted to be my boyfriend."
He chuckled, very proud of himself. "What else was I supposed to do? I was eleven and head over heels for a girl. You were supposed to be gross, not the thing that took over my thoughts. It wasn't normal."
I rolled my eyes. "Such an idiot."
"Plus, now I know I had every right to be jealous of you talkin' to Gordie, since you went and married the bastard."
I whapped his chest and he chuckled away.
He kept grabbing my hair and letting it slip through his fingers, watching it lift and fall, lift and fall.
"Remember the first time we did this?" he whispered, pointing at our naked bodies. The blanket ended up on the floor somewhere, so everything was out in the open, no shyness there.
This time I tsked. "We were way too young."
"Yeah, we were," he laughed again. "We didn't do it again for a whole two years we were so traumatized."
"Even then we were too young," I said, loving how his playing with my hair sent happy chills through my head and neck.
I shook my head again. "Thirteen, Bennet. Damn it, thirteen and havin' the gall to lose our virginities."
"We were kids." He shrugged. "We were stupid, we were confused, we were curious and, most importantly, we were bored."
"That's a dumbass excuse, thirteen or not."
I grabbed his hand skating through my hair and kissed the fingertips. He sighed, letting his eyes flutter shut and, for a second, I just stared at him. I looked him over good and hard and felt my heart swell up.
"Remember the last time we did it?" I whispered.
He did a small Nose Laugh and kept his eyes shut. "Burty's barn. It was cold as hell and we spent half of the night tryin' to make our own sparks to stay warm."
I kept my stare on him as I felt my throat shrink. "That's not the only thing we made that night."
His eyes popped open and his grin fell. He shifted, rising slowly to prop himself up on an elbow, he put a hand on my cheek.
"The baby," he whispered.
I nodded.
He copied my nod, the pain leaking quickly into his expression as he looked down at my hand on my stomach. He traced circles around my knuckles with his fingertip.
"What happened?" he said, his voice shaky and soft.
I shrugged. "It wasn't meant to be, I guess."
Suddenly I had tears in my eyes and I was mad about it. Seems all I had done the last few days was cry. "One day she was there and the next she was gone," I said, trembling.
"She?" He lifted his head. He took one look at my wet eyes and got some himself.
I took a deep breath, begging myself not to break down. "A lil' baby girl."
He paused for only a second before his face changed.
"Julianna Malene," he whispered so quietly I almost didn't hear it.
The little pink envelope he had found in his Bennet Box popped up in my mind's eye. I gave him a sad smile. "I just thought it was a pretty name."
He started to tremble. "You said six months."
I only nodded.
"So, did you . . ." he stopped himself, closing his eyes and taking another breath, still shaking. "Natty, did you have to . . .?"
I watched him. He couldn't say the words, but I knew what they were.
"Yes," I whispered gently. "I gave birth to her on my bathroom floor. She was already gone by then."
His face crumpled as his head fell forward. "Oh God," he shuddered. "Oh Jesus, Natty."
He lifted his head, face streaked with tears. "You weren't by yourself, were you? Please tell me you didn't go through that by yourself."
I knew the truth would upset him even more, but I couldn't lie. I shook my head. "Nobody ever knew. Mama was working at the time so I was alone and able to take care of everything."
His face seized up, a new wave of tears drizzling down his cheeks. "All by yourself?"
"I had to," I said, a strange hollowness in my voice. "At least, I felt I had to."
"Why? You had Della, you had people who could have helped you–"
He stopped when he saw my face crumble, as I began to shake myself.
"I was so ashamed," I whispered, a hot tear draining down the side of my face. "I thought it was my fault she died."
He wiped away my tears. "Why would you think that?"
"I didn't take care of myself. I was so depressed over you I barely ate, I barely slept," I said to the ceiling. "Even when I figured it out, I couldn't pull myself out of the funk, I could only add panic and fear. I froze up. I didn't know what to do."
I closed my eyes, exhausted, letting the breath push slowly out of me. Then another tear broke loose.
"It could've been my fault," I said. "It probably was."
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you, nobody does, but it's still there. It'll always be there."
He reached forward and pulled me to him, and I smashed my face into his chest, letting out a few tears as he ran his fingers through my hair, holding me tight.
"Even if it was, you didn't mean for it to happen like that," he said, kissing my head.
"I know I didn't," I said. "I know I was stupid and messed up, that I panicked, I've told myself that a million times. If I had known anything about pregnancy I would've snapped out of it, but I didn't, so I just kept slipping further until it was too late."
"Oh God, Natty." He rested his head against mine, shaking. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. If I'd known–"
"You would've been more torn up when Stanley made you leave," I said. "It's probably better you didn't know. When you left I didn't know anyway."
"You shouldn't've had to do it alone, though," he whispered. "So young, so scared."
"Well," I sniffed, pulling away a bit, finally able to dry my eyes. "You went through a lot then too and you were alone. Seemed only fair I got my share too."
It wasn't a very good joke, but I smiled a little anyway. Bennet wasn't amused.
I sighed. "I went through a lot of things alone. You disappearin', the baby, Mama dyin', marriage, divorce. You get used to it after awhile."
He raised a hand to grab my cheek, running his fingers along my temple, and pulled me closer.
"You're not alone anymore," he whispered, his voice husky and low. "Neither one of us is. Not anymore. Not ever again."
Again, those damn tears sprang up. "Yeah?" I said, my chin trembling.
"Yeah."
I let out the relief in a sigh, closing my eyes and feeling happier than I had in almost two decades.
"That's so nice to hear," I said.
Then he folded me up in his arms, laying us back on the bed. He lulled me to sleep by stroking my hair and whispering in my ear, holding me tight.
The stars were still twinkling in my eyes as I slipped happily into my dreams.
***
I turned over – half-asleep, half-awake – and found the other side of the bed cold and empty.
My eyes popped open to see I was the only one in the bed. The memory had me flying out of bed. "No."
Not this time. Not now. He wouldn't, he couldn't.
I tore through the house, my eyes going in every which way, checking every corner, until I reached the kitchen and stopped dead in the doorway.
"Bennet," I said before I could stop myself.
He looked over his naked shoulder at me like a curious child would. He was sitting on the linoleum floor in front of the trashcan and half buried in open envelopes and unfolded papers.
"Hey baby," he whispered. "You okay?"
I rushed to him, fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around his neck, hugging him so hard I thought we both would shatter.
"Don't scare me like that," I said.
"What? – Oh, I'm sorry," he said, rubbing my arm and then kissing it. "I couldn't sleep and I didn't want to wake you. I'm so sorry, baby, I didn't even think of that."
"It's okay," I said, loving to hear him call me "baby" again. The nickname always made me sick when other couples used it, but when he used it on me? I was a goo puddle.
I pouted a little so he grinned at me.
"But if I keep doing it, will you keep rushin' up to me butt-naked and ready to hug me like a fool?" he said. "'Cause I might make this a habit if that's the case."
I couldn't help it. I had to kiss the bastard. I did walk right into that one, seeing as I was ass-naked and clinging to him like my life depended on it. I couldn't even turn it back on him because he had slipped on his boxers at some point.
I relaxed my hug on him and only then did I finally take in what he was doing. He had dug the Bennet Box and its letters out of the trash and had read a good amount of them, judging by the number of opened envelopes. The little pink one was unopened and set off to the side.
I stared at the mess of white paper.
"Don't get mad, Natty," he said. "I had to read them."
"Why?"
"Because they're letters," he said, getting a little defensive. "Letters addressed to me, that's what you do with letters addressed to you, you read them."
I sunk down until my butt was on the cold floor. My arms slid down from his neck and rested into the crook of his arm. I didn't speak. He gave me a look.
"Don't be mad, I had to," he whispered again. "Don't you understand I had to?"
"Yes. And I'm not mad," I said, and I meant it. "Not now."
"Okay," he said.
"So," I said, resting my cheek onto his muscled shoulder. "What do you think of them?"
He smiled at me and then held one of the open letters up. "They reminded me how bad your handwritin' was."
I punched his arm and he chuckled, scooping me up in that same arm and putting a kiss to my head. He settled and looked at the letter again. I looked too and, after only a few seconds, I knew it was one of the last ones I had written, when I was beginning to doubt my fantasy that he was coming back. It was a classic note written by a young and stupid broken-hearted girl: with big, mushy and dramatic words, declarations of not being able to go on, even a few smudges in the ink where tears fell. At the time I was pouring out my heart and pain, letting it out on my poor pen and paper, probably crying my eyes out, scared and alone. Now it seemed overdone. "Melodramatic" Della would've called it.
"And," he said, "it made me see how scared you were and how much you missed me."
"Because you doubted I was or I would?" I said, hardly believing him.
"No." He shook his head slowly. "I knew you'd miss me, but it's a lot clearer when you see it like this."
"Well, there you go," I said, sitting back. "There's your proof."
He folded the letter up and slipped it back into the envelope. He set it on the floor, in the middle of the mountain of paper. Turning his entire body, he faced me, looking at me. I could see the color of his eyes through the shadows.
"It feels good to know I was missed so badly," he whispered. "It feels real good."
He leaned forward and put his lips to my neck and then my jaw, making a trail along my skin.
"Was I missed that bad?" I breathed, barely able to speak as his hands began to wander over me.
"Like a drownin' man misses air," he grunted as he bit at my shoulder.
"Good," I said, pushing his boxers off and taking a seat in his lap.