Double Wedding Ring (14 page)

S
USAN LAY IN
T
AG'S ARMS
, weeping for the losses and laughing for the promise of his presence.

She told him the story as it came back to her, uncertain memories spilling into her head from who knows where. He grew tense, then relaxed, then tense again as she talked. He brushed her hair with his fingers, her forehead with his lips.

“I wish I'd known,” Tag said when she finished, his voice soft in the darkness. “I wasted a lot of time on anger.”

“I'm sorry. But I never knew where you were. And...I wasn't sure it would be...smart. To see you again.”

She heard the rustling of his head on the pillow as he nodded. She took a moment to marvel at feeling so...normal. Lying here with him, curled against the length of his body, his breath on her forehead, the accident might never have happened. Twenty-five years might never have passed.

“You loved him.”

She hesitated. “We had a good life. A daughter.” She breathed in the scent of him. He was denim and soap and night air. “Was yours good?”

“No. It wasn't.”

She kissed him now, on the jaw, jumped at the rough whiskers on his chin.

“Careful,” Tag said. “Sam says I'm a bristly sort.”

“Are you?”

The beat of his heart beneath her ear took on resonance. She lay still and listened to the sound, grateful they were both alive to find this moment of peace together after all these years.

“You wouldn't have liked me when I got back from ‘Nam,” he said. “And I wouldn't have been as good a husband as Buddy, that's for damn sure.”

Susan's heart constricted. She wanted to contradict his words, but more than that she wanted to listen to him talk. Telling her own story had been healing; she hoped it would be the same for him.

“They held me almost three years,” Tag continued. Susan winced, a shaft of pain going through her with his words. “I wasn't a pretty sight. My left leg was so mangled I could barely get around. The docs at VA ended up breaking it again just to reset the damn thing. I've got this one ear I can barely hear out of.” He chuckled, but it had the sound of bitterness to it. “At least it muffles the sound on the track when I'm racing.”

“Racing?”

“Motorcycles. Stock cars.”

The hint that he led an exciting, physically challenging life gave her a moment of dismay, but she decided not to worry about the future or where this would lead. She would enjoy the moment. One of the many lessons of her accident was that she was promised only this moment; nothing more.

And for now, the pleasure of this moment was more than enough.

“‘Course, the docs tell me that kind of noise won't do my other eardrum a lot of good,” Tag continued. “But I'm kind of hard to reason with sometimes. Lotta times, actually. I don't pay much attention to what people like doctors tell me I'm supposed to do.”

The silence grew long.

“I guess I used up what little bit of obliging nature I might've had—and then some—over in the Hanoi Hilton.”

He told her then about the years of captivity. Susan lost herself in his words—how he watched the others die, sometimes swiftly, mostly with agonizing slowness. She felt with Tag the despair of sitting by while others lost their faith, their courage, their will to hang on. She experienced with him the smirking of their captors playing videotapes of protesting students in the U.S., their impassioned young faces filled with distaste for returning soldiers.

“I wondered, sometimes, if anybody would welcome me if I ever made it back,” he said. “But I knew you would. That was the only thing...the only thing I had to hold on to for the longest time. The only thing that kept me sane. Remembering you. Knowing you were waiting.”

Susan felt the tears running out of the corners of her eyes, felt his T-shirt grow damp beneath her cheek.

“When I got back, they said I'd need about a year in rehab, but it didn't matter. I was back and I knew you were waiting. I wanted to tell you myself, wanted to hear your voice for myself. But when I called your house, Betsy answered.”

Susan's heart grew heavy and cold in her chest.

“She said you were engaged. That you were going to be married in a week. That I wasn't to interfere.”

Susan shot up in bed, awash in a tangle of emotions. “She knew! She knew you were back and she didn't tell me!”

She listened, horrified, as he told of the days he spent trying to get in touch with her. But he was stuck in a veteran's hospital bed in Virginia and no one would tell him how to reach Susan. Even his own mother agreed with Betsy Foster that he owed it to Susan to let her get on with her life.

“Almost a year passed before I even found out you were in Atlanta.”

Knowledge of the lost years filled her. She sank back into his arms.

“I feel as if we've been robbed,” she whispered.

“What are we going to do about it?”

She looked at the face just inches from hers. “What do you mean? What can we do?”

He leaned forward, and his lips touched hers. Startled, Susan grew very still. His lips were soft on hers, warmer than anything she could ever remember feeling. This was new, different from all the other new sensations she had experienced since the accident.

She liked this one better than all the rest.

She let her lips move the way his moved, a response that felt instinctive once she started. In fact, instinctive responses began to ripple through every part of her. Heat seared her. She raised a hand to touch his hair, but found that a gentle caress wasn't enough. Without thinking, she threaded her fingers through the silky strands of his thick, long hair, pulling him closer.

His lips barely parted from hers, he whispered, “We can take back what's ours, Susan.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He touched her then, while his lips hovered over her face, her throat, her ears, in the barest of whispers. His big hand explored the curve of her breast beneath her nightshirt. Her body's response was immediate, stunning in its intensity. She gasped. His hand moved on, following the shape of her ribs, her belly.

“I'd know this anywhere,” Tag whispered. “This is just how you felt then.”

“I'm not seventeen now.”

The whisper of a chuckle floated on the darkness. “Thank the Lord for that.”

His touch swept along the swell of her hip, the slender length of her thigh. She tensed.

“What's wrong?”

She turned her face into the darker shadows where his shoulder and chest came together. “My bad leg.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No. It...maybe it isn't pretty. Maybe it doesn't feel right.”

She ached, waiting for his response, hoping for reassurance. When he moved, he lifted her nightshirt. She felt the cool night air on her thighs, then the whisper of his fingers on bare skin.

“You're beautiful, Susan.” Now his touch moved to the inside of her thigh. “Not perfect. But still beautiful.”

Again, tears smarted against Susan's eyelids. She relaxed. “Thank you.”

“Hush. Just feel this. This is how beautiful you are to me.”

And his hand continued to move along the length of her leg, until he reached the juncture of her thighs. He covered her with his palm, pressing against her. She opened slightly.

Tag's voice was hoarse. “I'm going to make love with you, Susan.”

“I...I don't know if I...if I remember how.”

He slid her panties off her hips, tossed them to the foot of the bed. “I'm not sure if I do, either.”

He slipped her nightshirt over her head, then stood and swiftly dropped his own clothes to the floor. Susan's breath caught in her throat at the sight of him. His muscles weren't like hers. They were hard and defined, covered with dark skin and dusted with dark hair. His nipples were tiny, hard pebbles and she wanted to touch them. His maleness reached out, swelling and hard. She wanted to touch him there, too.

“We'll remember together,” he said, putting his knees between hers.

He leaned forward to kiss her, but not on her face. He kissed her shoulder. Her breasts. Her belly. Susan was surprised to realize she had raised her legs—even her weak left leg—to press against his body, to try to bring him closer.

“Can I touch you?” she asked.

“Wherever you want.”

So she did. Tentatively, she felt the crisp hair on his chest, let her fingers linger over the ripple of muscles along his back, the matching ripple along his stomach. His legs, his arms, everything was new and wondrous to her.

Then there was the hard shaft that seemed to seek her touch. She hesitated. He lowered himself, touching his erection to her belly. His flesh was hot. A wave of heat deep inside her responded to the touch.

With trembling fingers, she felt the length of his hardness. He groaned.

“Does it hurt?”

He laughed softly. “Not...not the way you think. I hurt from wanting you so badly. That's all.”

The words were a revelation. This remarkable way she felt must be the same thing. She, too, hurt from wanting him so badly. She savored another tiny promise that she was normal, after all.

Feeling more sure of herself, she touched the swollen tip of his erection, felt the dampness, felt the throb of his response. She looked up, saw his eyes on her. They were dark with twenty-five years of the same unspoken emotions that filled her to bursting.

“I always loved you,” she said. “Every day.”

He kissed her, a long, slow kiss made up of promises renewed and regrets abandoned. She moved against him, brushing her breasts against his chest, her belly against his.

She felt him then, the swollen tip pressing against her, slipping inside her, and a moment of panic gripped her. But he moved slowly, filling her inch by inch until she realized there was nothing to fear.

They were one. The way it always should have been.

Tag moved within her. She moved with him. Slowly the intensity of their movements built, as did the physical sensations, until movement and sensation seemed to disappear. All that remained in the dark room was soaring emotion and a place where Susan felt a part of Tag and he a part of her.

* * *

T
HEY LAY STILL
for a long time, murmuring softly to each other. The words hardly mattered, for each knew what the other said.

Susan felt whole in a way she never had, even before the accident. Scars and weak muscles, the tangled web of her mind, none of that seemed to matter. Even the lost years didn't matter, for right at this moment, all that had been lost was found.

“I feel too many things,” Susan said, wishing she knew how to explain the jumble of emotions filling her. “I don't have that many words yet.”

Tag brushed a kiss over her forehead, where she knew the fine pink line still marked her injury. “Nobody ever has that many words.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Even if nobody's ever conked you on the head, there's never any way to explain about love. All you can do is feel it. And give it away.”

Susan liked the sound of that. She smiled. “Then I give mine to you.”

Tag smiled, too, and she thought it was the nicest she'd ever seen him look. Almost like the boy he still was in her memories.

“And I give mine to you.”

“Do you?”

“I promise.”

She could see the bittersweet expression in his eyes as he spoke those words.

“I'm sorry I didn't wait.”

“I'm sorry, too. But...you waited longer than most would have. I wouldn't have wanted you waiting forever.” He smiled, another rueful smile. “I thought that's what I wanted, a lot of times. But this is how it's supposed to be. Maybe we were too young then. Maybe I came back so crazy and messed up that even if you'd waited, I would have driven you away. Maybe this is the only way we could keep it.”

Susan struggled to understand. “By waiting?”

“Maybe I needed to grow up.” He chuckled. “Maybe I still do.”

The moon set and the night grew darker. They lay together and talked and touched and found the parts of themselves buried in each other's memory. They relived almost every minute of the years they'd been together, all of it fresh and alive again.

“Oh, no!” Susan looked up, dismayed.

“What's wrong?”

“The quilt. Malorie told me about the quilt. It's gone.” Another wave of loss assaulted her. “Lost in the accident. It's gone.” She clutched his hand—and realized she was using her weak one.

“It's okay,” he whispered. “We'll make another.”

“No, but...I used it all the time, after I decided you weren't coming home. I kept it in a box before that, saving it. But when I thought you were gone, when I thought I'd never see you again, I took it out.” She realized she was talking completely unselfconsciously, as if Tag's acceptance made it all right that her speech was no longer perfect. She could talk all she wanted to without worrying how she sounded to anyone else. “Using the quilt was like...having part of you there with me.”

“I'm glad, then.”

“I almost wore it out. Using it on picnics. Taking it to the beach for Malorie to play on when she was little. Wrapping her in it when she had the flu. Oh, Tag, it can't be gone.”

He wiped the lone tear escaping from her eye.

“Right before I...before the wedding...I sewed your ring into the lining, Tag. Because I still couldn't give it up. Even knowing I was going to marry someone else, I couldn't give up the idea that I was promised to you. And that...that promise was more real to me than any of the promises I gave Buddy.”

He wrapped her in his arms and it was better, even, than being wrapped in the quilt she had treasured for so long. “The promises are still real. Even without the ring or the quilt, we still have the promises, Susan.”

* * *