Damage Done (21 page)

His heart
grew sour with sorrow over Michael, and he held Rachel tighter as they
embraced, lying on the soft cowhide rug. She'd interrupted his grief long
enough to make him hopeful, and though he'd sworn to let her come to him when
she was ready, he knew now he would make her his again, and this time, he'd
kill anybody who tried to get in his way.

He pushed himself up on an elbow and looked down into her
face, toying with her long curly hair, still damp from the shower. There was
conflict in her eyes. He felt his own heavy burden as he reflected on their
reunion and the circumstances that inspired it.

"I won't lose you
again, Rachel."

She began to interject and he put his fingers to her lips
to quiet her, "No. Listen to me, I have to say this. When I first saw that
article, and I'd waited all these years to run into you, I knew I had to talk
to you. I thought I'd only wanted closure, to understand why. But I've been
fucking obsessed, and now I see, I was just deluding myself. All this time I've
been waiting, knowing that inevitably, you would find your way back to me. I
know you’re married, and I should feel conflicted, but I don’t. You’re mine
again. I don't care what it costs me."

"Dylan, let me- "
she interrupted, but he shook his head, untangled himself from her naked body
and stood to continue.

He had to get this out.

"No, let me finish. I
don't expect it will be uncomplicated, or painless, and I will give you time to
think about everything that has happened, time to determine what you think is
the best way to move forward. But I won't give you forever, Rachel. You belong
with me. You know it, or you wouldn't be here. I've lived without you for too
long, it's our turn now."

"Dylan, you have to
understand. We've been apart for so long- "

She was stalling.

"But now we're here.
And my universe hangs in the balance, waiting for you to say you’ll stay, to
make me whole again. I can live without you, Rachel. I know I can, I've done it
for sixteen years. But I won't do it without telling you how I feel, how I have
died a little every day without you. Michael is the only exceptional thing I've
had in my life and I'm losing him now, too-"

That's not what he'd wanted to say.

He bit his lip and ran his
hands up to his hair before he continued, "I'm sorry. I don't want to make
this about Michael. It's not. This is about you and me. And I'm making myself
vulnerable to you, I'm putting it out there because I know it's right, Rachel.
”

“How do you know it’s right
though?” she asked, “I’ve been here for two hours, how could you possibly know?”

“Because I’m not afraid to
ask myself what makes me happy. Find the courage to look at yourself, Rachel,
ask yourself what makes you feel passionate and alive. You have the power to
make your life whatever you want it to be, stop being afraid to take control,
to be honest with yourself. What do you want, puss? Not me, not Kenneth, nobody
else- ask yourself what it is that you want. And then reach out and take it."

“I have to go.”

He watched her leave, he
didn’t argue

***

“What do you want?” he’d
asked her.

She wanted Kenneth to
finally be happy. She wanted her children to feel safe and whole, protected.

And she wanted to love Dylan again, loving him had been so
easy. But she didn't know how to begin fighting for what she wanted without
damaging the people she loved.

Rachel had never been a fighter, she gripped the steering
wheel and yelled at the windshield, "Fuuuuuuuuck!"

The trip back to Harrison
Township went by too quickly, she needed more time to reflect on the morning
and figure out where to go from here. The rain receded, but the storm still
left its dark clouds hovering over the metropolis, stagnant, ominous.

Where was the resolve to gain control over her life she’d felt
hours ago? Happiness was up to her, she had to be the architect, she knew that.
But knowing and feeling competent were two different things. She’d always been
able to be strong for her clients, why couldn’t she do it for herself? Why
couldn’t she stand up for herself?

The rage returned almost
instantly, as soon as she'd left him she started thinking of how to confront
Savannah. She wanted to drag her mother into that enormous dressing room of
hers and brick up the doorway,
à la
The Cask of Amontillado
, listening to her scream for mercy all the while.

Rachel had always excused her mother's interference in her
life as being well intended, she rationalized the petty criticisms and unjust
demands as those of a woman who'd suffered too many wrongs in her early life.
She'd long learned to accept Savannah's refusal to allow her any kind of
self-directed happiness, her inability to show her any real affection and her
disinterest except when it pertained to superficial and material things.

"She did the best she
could," Rachel always told herself.

After lengthy therapy
sessions, she'd decided Savannah's maternal failures were a result of never
having been given the proper tools to care for her, something she'd had no
control over. And Rachel committed over and over to breaking the cycle with her
own children. She hadn't always succeeded.

But it was better late than
never. It had to be.

She pulled up to the
daycare and waited in line patiently for other parents to make their way out of
the parking lot before slipping into a free space. She was alert and unafraid
to feel, she didn't feel like the same mind-numbingly overwrought basketcase
she'd always hated.

Her confidence slowly rose, even as she prepared for the
pain she knew would eventually come in breaking apart the little family she'd
created. She thought of her two precious loves, Hunter and Lauren, and her arms
ached to hold them when she thought about Dylan never being able to hold
Michael again, never being able to feel his warm breath on his face or see him
smile with wonder at some new important discovery. Michael would never laugh or
feel joy, never fall in love. She prayed she and Kenneth would never understand
or experience the pain of losing one of their own children.

Kenneth loved Hunter and
Lauren as much as she ever had, and she knew she'd have to bend over backwards
to soften the blow he would feel in splitting their time with the kids. But
divorce was inescapable.

There were too many wounds left untreated, and now that
she was ready to accept it, she'd never loved Kenneth the way he'd loved her.
Or the way he'd wanted to love her. Where she'd been restless beside him,
always waiting for a crescendo that never came, he'd always been complacent,
never missing anything or wishing for something more.

They'd recently celebrated
his parent's fortieth wedding anniversary, and unlike Rachel, a lot of
Kenneth's identity was wrapped up in not having been a child of divorce. He'd
wanted to emulate his parents in every way. Kenneth was the type of man who'd spend
his life with a woman he loathed if it meant maintaining the honor of his
commitment, no matter how miserable it made him, he'd suffer through it.

There was a small part of her that understood, and
respected him for it. But she'd decided she would no longer be the kind of
woman who spent her life with a man who was just good enough. Not when she knew
there was something more waiting for her, something exceptional.

***

The crackling her heavy
tires made as they pulled onto the crushed stone circle-drive in front of her
old house took Rachel somewhere else, she'd heard the crunch of the gravel and
went running to ask her father if he'd bought the new horse he'd promised her.
Sugar Babe. She was another thoroughbred, only a few years old, and Rachel wanted
to train her herself. She'd been expensive, and Rachel already had Icarus, but
her father had promised to buy her anyway, a consolation prize for refusing to
let Rachel get her driver's license.

But it hadn't been her
father that day when she'd heard the crunching of the gravel, it was a truck
she didn't recognize. A blue Ford pickup truck. She'd peered through the
freshly cleaned glass in the bay window, squinting to see who was inside when
an eighteen year old Dylan stepped out.

Raw teenage adrenaline filled her as she'd watched his six
foot two inch frame make his way around from the driver's side. He'd been
growing his hair out and it almost reached his shoulders. He saw her in the
window and smiled, his bicep flexing as he'd reached up to wave her outside,
his body ripped from hours spent swimming every morning before school.

He was sexy as hell and she'd lived and breathed him for
what felt like her whole life.

Rachel ran outside to see
him, bouncing in the way only a giddy teenage girl in love will do and asked,
"What is this? Whose truck is that?"

Dylan's father made enough money to care for his family of
five, but she hadn't thought it was enough to buy his teenage son a brand new
truck, and Dylan only worked part-time at Ginny's nursery. And it wasn't a big
money-maker either.

"My dad brought it
home today, can you believe it? He said as long as I keep my grades up and stay
out of trouble that it's mine when we go to college next year, I just have to
help my mom run errands and drive my sisters to school," he told her
excitedly, his gorgeous smile on overdrive.

His dad had taken out a loan, so proud of his son, the
academic and the athlete. She jumped in to go for a ride, and they drove for
hours, flipping through the radio and laughing.

They'd gone out to Lake
Carrington where he let her drive on a back road, then they'd parked in an old
camping ground, away from the rest of the park and listened to the radio until
Dylan worked up the nerve to pull her close and kiss her.

"Rachel, you know when
I tell you that you have my heart, it means forever, right?"

She looked up and kissed
him softly, "I know, I love you, too."

"No, I mean I can see
my life with you, and I fantasize about how it unfolds and all of the things
we'll do together. I never want to be without you."

"I always want to be
with you, too, Dylan."

"Promise?"

"I promise,"
she'd grinned up at him.

"Tell me something
sweet."

He pulled her into his lap to face him, her back to the
steering wheel. His thickening erection grew underneath her, and he grinned
when she blushed. Dylan was never ashamed of how she'd made him feel, he'd
always been comfortable with his attraction to and love for her.

His eyes, those rare
amethysts twinkling in the light. She would never meet anyone more undeniably
charismatic. Or lovely to look upon.

"You intoxicate
me," Rachel whispered.

Pleased, he flashed her a wicked smile and pulled her in
for a kiss.

"That's pretty sweet," he laughed. "Hasi
nilahasi," he said in his mother's language.

"What does that mean?"

"It means you are my
sun and moon."

Then he'd kissed her again,
and her hands went to his thick hair, the smell of jasmine strong on his skin
from hours in the nursery. His lips moved across her neck, she felt the
goosebumps surface across her in waves of excitement and her nipples flew to
attention, almost painful to bear.

"Dylan- don't."

"Rachel, stop fighting how your body feels," he
whispered, "It's okay if you like it."

It was Dylan, she'd had to learn to trust him, and stop feeling
guilty for the pleasure he brought her.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, puss," he told her, "But
stop telling me you don't want it when your body screams you do, how do I know
you better than you know yourself?"

She kissed him then and let him go back to kissing her
neck while she focused on letting go.

"Consider hues of
iris," his voice vibrated into her ear, "petals multiply, nothing
more rare than our love."

His hands found their way down her back and over her
skirt, lifting her until he could push the skirt up. She rested against him
while his warm hands explored her skin, up and down her legs, under her shirt
and up her back, down again to feel the satin panties tight across her ass.

"Is that a backwards
haiku?" she'd laughed.

"Did I do it backwards?"
he hummed into her neck.

"You inverted the
syllables, goofy ass."

"Alright, so I wrote
you an inverted haiku," he'd said proudly, brazen in his romanticism,
"I thought of it this morning at the nursery while I was counting the
reasons why I love you. Wanna hear another one? An inverted perverted haiku?"

"Of course," she
blushed, "I love your poetry."

His lips found her neck again and she'd moaned
unexpectedly.

"Rachel, God, I love
when you do that," he growled, driving his hips up to meet hers.

He bit her neck gently and moved his fingers down her
back, sliding his hands gently underneath her panties until his hands cupped
her bare ass. He looked into her eyes, mischief in his smile.

"Come on," she
said, "let's hear the inverted perverted haiku."

"Creamy skin awakens
it, blooming in your sight, need your pussy in my mouth."