Life Interrupted (17 page)

             
“I can’t apologize enough for what I did.  There’s no excuse and I guess the reason I didn’t come after you then was because I felt like being without you was my punishment.  So, if you really want to hurt me you can tell me no right now.  You can tell me that it doesn’t matter that you feel the way about me that I feel about you because you’ll never trust me again, that you won’t ever be able to be with me.  If you want to hurt me and make me suffer, tell me you won’t have me, Rachel,” he finishes and his voice is tight with emotion.  “But if you’re afraid, if you’re thinking of walking because you don’t think I want you
and
Gracie, don’t.”  He closes his eyes and I see the tightness in his jaw, the struggle he goes through before opening them again.  “Don’t you dare fucking walk on this because you think I’m too much of a pussy to see that your life is hard, to want to help, to hold you up when you need it, and don’t tell me you can take care of yourself because I know you can, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to take care of you, too.  I love you, Rachel, I’ve always loved you and I need you to tell me if you’re going to let me have you.”

Yes.
  Everything in me screams yes, but there’s still that part of me that understands my choices can’t be forgotten, that my life is no longer my own.  “Tripp, I have Gracie.  My life isn’t normal, will never be normal, not again.  That was my choice.  I won’t ask you to deal with it, too.”

“You’re not asking, I’m telling.  Rachel,” he says and stops me.  “I don’t know everything that you go through every day, what you hav
e to do, but I know a lot of it and I want to be with you.  I know it’s not easy, but neither is being next to you and not being able to help.  I want you, all of you,” he says and I feel my resolve weakening.  “That means I want to help with Gracie, be a part of your life and hers.  Don’t say no,” he murmurs and leans forward enough to brush his lips over mine.  “I love you.  Trust me to love you, Rachel.”

“I already do
.”  The words are there before I can think about them, and without warning he’s standing and I’m being lifted until I’m cradled against him.  When he kisses me long and deep I’m lost to him, in him, and everything he makes me feel. 

“Is your mom home?” he asks and I shake my head.  “Gracie’s asleep?” I nod and then he’s walking down the hallway, his feet soft and light on the carpet, his lips on mine as he carries me into my room and sets me down so he can close the door. 

I stand where he places me, unable to move or look away from him.  He’s real, this is real.  He’s everything I’ve ever wanted and he’s standing in front of me, looking at me in that way that tells me I mean something, something more than I could have ever imagined.

“
I want to touch you, Rachel, but I need you to be sure.”  He steps toward me and I tilt my head up to meet his lips as they cruise over mine, down across my cheek, under my jaw to my neck.  His hands smooth over my hips and slide up, bringing the hem of my t-shirt with them as he rides them all of the way up my sides, over the slight curve of my waist, my ribs, the sides of my breasts until he’s raised my hands over my head and pulled it all of the way off.

I stand in front of him in my simple bra and cutoffs, wat
ching him as he looks his fill.  He doesn’t touch me, though, and I know he’s waiting for me, waiting until I tell him I’m sure.  My eyes on his, I reach for the hem of his shirt, going through the same process of sliding it off, taking it one step further as I follow the journey of the shirt over his abs and chest with my lips, smiling when I hear his slight intake of breath.  When I throw his shirt behind us he’s scooping me close, pulling me against him and fusing his lips to mine, his fingers playing over my skin until I feel like I may come apart right here.  I come alive when he touches me, and when I hear the zipper of my shorts lower, I instinctively reach for his and pull it down, laughing lightly when I hear him hiss out a breath. 

Our hands are urgent but the tone is different.  We’re no longer desperate, no longer fighting our way through to the finish line, no longer
hurting because we know what we’re doing isn’t right.  Right now, we’re right, its right, and when he touches me everything inside of me goes liquid and I’m no longer afraid of it or him. 

My hands skim up his body from his hips
to the smooth skin of his torso, to his ribcage, his chest, behind his neck where I pull his lips down to mine.  This time when I pull back to meet his eyes, I grin and leap at him, hearing his laugh as we topple to the bed.  Then he shifts and I’m pinned beneath him while he holds himself above me. 

I wait for him to make a move, to reach for me, kiss me, for the sensations to begin, but he just holds himself there staring down at me, his eyes so intense that I almost have to look away.

“Tripp,” I say, but he just shakes his head. 

“I don’t know when I fell in love with you,” he says quietly and my breath catches.  “I don’t know when I realized you were everything I’ve ever wanted, but I know now.  I love you, Rachel.  I swear I’ll never make you doubt it again.”

Tears threaten and I blink them away, mortally afraid of crying and ruining this moment.  “Damn you, Tripp,” I say and he smiles.

“You love me, too, Rachel, I know you do.”

I shake my head to deny it. but the gesture is lost when his lips find the skin on my neck and I tremble.  “Are you going to tell me?”

I shake my head again and then gasp when his teeth graze the skin he’s just kissed.  “Afraid?”

“Of you? Please.”  But my body is trembling and I can barely contain the desire coursing through me. 
Everything I’ve ever wanted. 
I believe him because I can see what he’s feeling as he looks at me and as much as it terrifies me, it makes me happy, too, as if something that was missing just fell into place.

“Then tell me.  Tell me you love me, Rachel, so I can tell you again.”

This time his fingers brush my nipple, his mouth making a trail from my neck to my shoulder, down my ribcage to the waistband of my panties where he strips me of all barriers, his lips trailing with his fingers, igniting fires everywhere he touches.  When his lips come back to mine, brushing, testing, I almost drown with need.  For him.  It’s always been for him.

“I didn’t want to love you,” I tell him and his head raises a fraction so his eyes can meet mine.  “I hated that you could be with someone else when I was right here and all I wanted was you.” 

“Say it,” he demands.

“I love you, Tripp, but I swear I’ll kick your ass if you hurt me again.”

His lips are on mine and they are no longer patient, the feeling familiar now as he touches me everywhere, lighting fires, inciting sensations that overwhelm me until all of my thoughts, feelings, needs are consumed and overridden by my need for him. 

This time when he puts on a condom, he rolls us so we’re sitting, my legs wrapped around his waist, and his eyes never leave mine as we move together, our bodies
bowing as one with their motion.  I can barely breathe, barely think as my body climbs higher, higher still until I’m saying his name, falling into the abyss where he catches me, his lips on mine as he comes with me.

~

              A stark contrast to one week ago when we were in bed together, I’m wrapped in Tripp and he’s wrapped in me, our arms and legs entwined like vines from different plants, snaking over and around until you can’t tell where one begins and the other ends.  I’m sure with a shorter girl he’d envelope them, cradle them on his chest and make her feel protected.  I feel protected, but I’m also doing my share of protecting with my leg thrown over his, my arms around his waist, my head on the pillow next to his.  We’re only three inches different in height, but I’m pleased to say after this last round of frolicking, whatever Tripp weighs, it’s definitely more than me.  And he doesn’t appear to have trouble moving me around on a whim, so there’s that, too.

             
I smile thinking about everything we just did, how it feels to know that he cares as much as I do.  Watching my lips curve, his do, too.  We’ve been staring at each other for the last little while, our hands making small discoveries of their own—his in my hair, mine on his neck—but our eyes have not left the other’s.  Now we’re practically nose-to-nose, grinning at one another like idiots. 

             
“I’m glad you’re still naked.”

             
A laugh escapes my lips.  “Back at you.”

             
“I almost cried when you got out of bed and got dressed last weekend.  I’d finally gotten you and there you were, putting your clothes on before I’d even recovered from what had happened.”

             
“Almost cried, please.  I
did
cry, so your sob story means nothing to me.”

             
“Then you’ll enjoy the image of me walking home with jeans and shoes and no shirt on because you stole mine.  Do you know how creepy I looked leaving your house after you, only wearing half of my clothes?”

             
“Serves you right for making me cry,” I say, laughing at the image.

             
“God you’re tough,” he says rolling over so he’s on top of me, supporting himself on his forearms as he looks down at me.

             
“Speaking of, how’s your jaw? I got you good last weekend.”  I reach up and rub his face and he takes his revenge by leaning down and rubbing his day old stubble on my cheek.  I squeal—
embarrassing
—and try to reach down for his ribs, a weakness I know he has, but he sees my move a mile away and has my hands pinned before I can wiggle enough to meet my target.  I continue to thrash, twisting my hips and arching my back, doing my best to move so much he has a hard time holding on. 
Hard
is the word I would use to describe him a minute later, but it doesn’t have anything to do with difficulty holding onto me.

             
When I stop moving, I meet his eyes and they’re heavy again, their look predatory, as if he could swallow me where I lay.  My breath is starting to back up in my lungs as I whisper his name. 
              “Again,” is all he says before his mouth takes mine.             

Pregnancy is like your period on steroids.  There’s cramping, bloating, sore nipples,
an aching back, the list goes on.  The only upside of your period is that you can take drugs.  Oh, and that it goes away.  Pregnancy is the slow build where one moment you feel like,
okay, aunt Flow (ha-ha) is coming to town, stock up on Snickers and Hohos
, and then the next you’re like,
hmm, I don’t want that Hoho anymore, but I sure wouldn’t mine shoving my head in the toilet to throw up
. 

M
y pregnancy was never really great, but from things I’ve read, it could have been a whole lot worse. (Fun fact: they describe “blood clots” after you have the baby as something the size of a lemon.  Go ahead and throw up with that image, I did.)  The hardest part of pregnancy was during my last month when I suffered from chronic back pain and insomnia.  Nothing eased my discomfort, nothing satisfied me and made me even remotely comfortable enough to get into bed and sleep.  I took to sleeping on the couch, propped in the corner of the sectional with my feet out in front of me on a pillow so when sleep found me it was a simple slide into it and back out of it, not a restless tossing and turning. 

During the hours that I didn’t sleep, those weird hours after two a.m. and before five, I watched a lot of odd things on television because even DVR’d re-runs of
Pretty Little Liars
weren’t plentiful enough to fill my time. The NAT GEO and DISC channel were always where I found myself landing, watching in horrified rapture as some tribe initiated a member or some animal fought for his mate by standing at ten paces and ramming his head against his opponents until one of them fell down, leaving the other victorious (which was a lot like the parties I’d been to at that point).  One such program was about China’s Pit Viper, a snake that lies in wait for its prey to come to it, making its patience and cunning as great a weapon as its venomous fangs and ability to strike quickly. 

The Pit Viper is quiet and deadly; he can stay still and lie in wait until the right moment, never giving himself away to his prey until the deed is already done. 
That’s how I feel Monday morning when I leave the gym around 6:45 after an individual session with Coach, trying to hurry and get back to Gracie before my mom has to leave, barely noticing the white Mercedes SUV idling next to my Explorer until I get closer and the door opens.  I freeze in my tracks when Mrs. Kash steps out.  When she smiles, a perfect and calculated curving of rosy lips, I can’t help but think the viper is about to strike.

“Rachel Reynolds?” My name comes out of her mouth like a question
, but it’s obvious she knows who I am, just as it’s obvious who she is.  We’ve never met formally, but I’ve seen her at Gabriella’s games, and even if I hadn’t, her face is that of her two children, with certain features dominant in my own child.  Heart shaped, pointed chin, perfect doll nose—and her with those ice blue eyes so much like her son’s.  She might not look like me everywhere, but on days like today I’m grateful that Gracie has my eyes, the gray and green, that small connection to how she can see the world and how they can see her.

“Mrs. Kash.”

Her face shows no reaction to my use of her name and I’m again made aware of her similarities to that cunning viper.  This woman is used to being in charge—the power suit in crisp white, the ornate jewelry at her throat and ears, the ring the size of an egg on her finger.  Her husband owns the majority of the timber land in Oregon—I know this because my own mother has been awarded grants by their foundation to study certain blah blah blah after the old growth is cut down and left to biodegrade and do its thing.  To say these people have money is an understatement—their money has money and Mrs. Kash is making it very clear to me.  The way she’s parked, the way she’s standing makes it impossible not to compare myself to her: my tattered car with the car seat showing clearly through the passenger side window in the backseat, my choice of sweatpants and a hoodie, my hair damp with sweat and still banded back with pre-wrap.  My age.  I look like what I am: a teen mom trying to find her balance.  She looks like what she is: wealthy and smart.  She’s put me on the defensive just by saying my name and I don’t like it.

She steps a little closer and I can’t help the automatic straightening of my shoulder
s.  Older and richer she may be, but taller? Not even in the stilts she’s rocking.  She may want to talk down to me, but she’ll have to do it while looking up.

“I’ve wanted to speak with you for a while now, ever since my daughter came home and told me she saw your daughter.  You understand, I’m sure.” 

Her voice is sweet, and though her pitch is higher, it reminds me of Marcus all those weeks ago right before he told me he was going to try and take my daughter if I didn’t start doing things his way.  I don’t know what to say, or even what she expects, so I fall back on my standard no-reply and hope it works as well on her as it does on people like Lauren.  Twenty seconds later she rewards me.

“Rachel—” solid use of my first name to show that she thinks we’re old friends, and that I don’t w
arrant enough respect for the Miss Reynolds anymore—“I’m sorry for how my son has acted.  You have to forgive him, he thought it best to let you raise the child how you wanted, not to step in when you had so clearly rejected him once before.”  I laugh outright at this and she raises a brow, her only sign of having heard me.  “After Gabriella came home and told me, I went straight to him and he spilled everything, you see, and while I admire your courage and his bravado,  I think it would be best if you let us help you, and let Marcus see his daughter.”

“She’s my daughter,” I say automatically.  “And whatever your son told you, he rejected her before she was even born, and he made it very clear that he didn’t want people thinking she was his.”

She smiles and I feel like I’ve mis-stepped.  “But she
is
his and he does have rights.”

“Not from where I’m standing.”

She doesn’t acknowledge this, only continues to smile.  I know she has an agenda and she hasn’t reached it yet—her patience is doing its work, causing panic to start in the pit of my stomach and work its way through my body like poison, quick and paralyzing.  “Gabriella tells me your future is bright, that you have a lot of opportunities coming your way that may take you away from Corvallis.  I’d like to assist you, to offer you my connections and my influence.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve chosen a school then? I hadn’t heard that you had any definite future plans.”  My face must give me away, because after a second she nods her head and her smile is patronizing.  “I see.  It’s difficult, isn’t it, to think forward when you’ve got so much responsibility? My son would like to ease some of that burden, to take over and care for…”

“Gracie.”  Her name comes out as a whisper. 

“Gracie,” she says with a nod.  “Beautiful name.  My daughter tells me she’s a beautiful girl.  I don’t suppose you have a photo on your phone you could send to me so I could show my husband?”

I shake my head slowly, not even sure where my phone is.  Mrs. Kash is aware of what she’s done and she smiles.  “Next time then.  We’d like to meet her, to get to know her and spend time with her.  We’d like to make your life easier, Rachel,
and come to an arrangement that suits us all.”

I’m frozen, unable to move or respond as it hits me all at once.  I never expected this, not even when Marcus threatened me almost two months ago.  I’m not an idiot, I knew he would do something so I’ve been waiting for him to make a move, to come at me, and I’ve prepared
, done my research.  In issues of custody and rights to a child, the most important thing you have to do is show a clear effort of the father to get in touch with the child to be a part of her life.  Marcus never has.  They aren’t going to take away my daughter and make me share her with a father who’s never once tried to make contact. 

But what about his rich and influential parents?

They say that fear is perceived, that it’s something that builds in us because of an impending threat, someone or something that has the ability to harm or hurt us.  I’ve never known fear like I know it right now, staring at Mrs. Kash as she looks at me with a smile that says she’s hit her target.  I’m immobilized, the poison is spreading.  My breath is backing up in my lungs and my vision blurs and clears, everything in front of me going fuzzy as I blink.

“I can see you need time to think it over.  I’ll be in touch.”

I hear her car door open and shut, am vaguely aware when she whips her car in reverse, but I don’t look at her.  As she drives away, I continue to stand there, wondering if the same thing they say about fear is true about courage, that as my fear builds, so will my courage. I don’t feel courageous and ready to face my fear right now, but maybe that’s because it isn’t a perceived threat.  After one meeting, I know one thing for certain: Mrs. Kash
is
a threat, I just don’t know exactly what she’s threatening yet.

~

              I don’t tell Tripp or anyone else about my run in with Mrs. Kash and I try not to feel guilty about it.  I’m not ready to discuss what the conversation might mean.  Just like I’m not ready to deal with the idea of having to defend that Gracie is only mine, or having to share her.  Or, door number three (gulp), having custody taken away altogether.  So, the youngest child in me pops out and I shove those fears to the back where I can ignore them.  My ability to compartmentalize and not think about things is a gift—of course, some could also argue that
not thinking
was how I got Gracie in the first place, but I choose to see the positive here. 

             
I get home in time to shower and grab a piece of toast before racing back out the door with Gracie.  Even though I’m keeping up a running commentary, trying to act like everything is normal, I know I’m not on my game when G cocks her head at me as I unload Gracie’s things.

             
“Rae Rae, what’s wrong?”             

             
I avoid eye-contact and shove some watermelon slices into the fridge.  “Nothing, just running late.  I had an early workout with coach and I barely had time to shower before we had to leave again.”

             
“You should have called me, I would have come and gotten her for you.”

             
The thought of G driving brings a genuine smile to my lips and I finally glance at her.  Today she’s wearing jeans, but they are most definitely not the jeans with the elastic waist band and pleats that most grandmothers wear.  They’re bright pink and skinny around her even skinnier ankles.  And I believe they’re low-rise, so I’m grateful for the oversized Oxford button down she’s wearing…until I realize it looks suspiciously like a man’s shirt.

             
“New shirt?” I ask as normally as I can.  No big deal, just a couple of gals talking fashion…except one of those gals is wearing a black t-shirt and a pair of converse—clearly no fashion expert—and the other is wearing her walk of shame clothes, so, in that light, it
is
a big deal.

             
I want to cringe when a slow smile spreads across her face and she shrugs.  “Walter left it here last time.”

             
The way she says
last time
has me eternally grateful that I only had toast this morning.  Anything heavier would for sure be popping back up as I swallow the bile down.  Oookay, looks like no question has a safe answer so I just nod.  “Well, um, nice.  Okay.  Um, I’ll be back around five-thirty.  Is that okay?”

             
She waves me off, already settling Gracie into her high-chair for breakfast.  “You go get learned, girl, we’ll be here when you get back.”

             
Despite the awkward conversation, love for this woman flows through me and I lean down to kiss her springy curls.  “Thanks, G.  You’re the greatest.”

             
I kiss Gracie, and when I turn to leave, G says my name.  “Yeah?” I say and turn back around.

             
“Whatever’s bothering you, don’t you hold it in for too long.  You’re a Reynolds, and despite what your father has done to that name, it still makes you a fighter.  We’re all fighters, remember that.”

             
I give a brisk nod and walk out, unsure if she’s right.  How hard will we have to fight if Mrs. Kash threatens what I think she’s going to? And will it matter?

             
Tripp is waiting for me when I pull into the parking lot, and I can’t help the grin that spreads when he opens my door and leans in to kiss me before I’ve even cut the engine.  “Hey. I called you this morning to see if you wanted to drive together.”

             
And I’d ignored his call because it had been ten minutes after Mrs. Kash had left me reeling in the parking lot and I hadn’t been ready to deal with him.  “Yeah, sorry, I had an individual with Coach and then I was in a hurry to get home and change before getting Gracie to G’s.”

             
He raises his brow, his arm resting on the top of the open door as he leans over me.  “You should have called me. I’d have gone over and gotten her so you didn’t have to rush home.”