Heart and Home (22 page)

“I don’t want to hurt you,”
he said.

I lifted my hand to touch
his face, and he turned his kiss against my palm. “I don’t want to hurt you
either,” I said. “But if we go through with this, I am not going to be able to
just walk away from here.”

“Even if we don’t,” he said,
“I don’t think I can let you just walk away again.”

I descended into his waiting
mouth. It was like his kiss breathed new life into me, a life I hadn’t even
known existed before Troy. In a slow maneuver he rolled me onto my back, and
then he hovered in above me, just looking into my eyes.

“I want this,” I said. “I
want you.”

His only answer was another
kiss, deeper and more intense than all the others. The final pieces of clothing
separating our bodies were peeled away and the only time our focus on each
other was broken was during the moment that Troy opened up the bedside table
drawer and rooted around for a few seconds for a condom packet. Condom within
reach, he turned off the light and resumed his place in my arms.

In the dark, I didn’t need
to see him. I could feel every flex of muscle as he came into me with a slow
moan that made my already racing heart beat even faster. I gasped with
pleasure, rolling my head back along the pillows behind me and arching my body
upward into his.

We fit together perfectly,
just as I’d imagined we might. We answered each other’s every move as if we’d
been anticipating it, or as though we’d been in each other’s arms a thousand
times and knew exactly how to move to please one another perfectly.

Sure, I’d gone into making
love with Troy with mixed emotions, but not a single one of them was regret. I
didn’t know how much more this would actually complicate things once it was
time for me to head back to my other life, but for the moment there was nothing
difficult about the way our bodies moved together.

Troy was attentive and
accommodating, resting on his elbow above me so he could look down into my eyes
in the dim illumination of the nightlight just inside the bathroom door. I
couldn’t look away, even when he felt so good the only thing I wanted to do was
bite my lip and tilt my head back to feel him. I rolled upward and kissed him,
sweetly nibbling at his lips before darting my tongue between them in a teasing
gesture he responded to in kind.

And for the satisfying time
that our bodies were tangled together I didn’t think about anything but us.
There was no trepidation about how I was going to feel when it was actually
time to go home, no worry about what my mother’s ghost was trying to tell me. I
didn’t think about my tangled emotions about the town I’d fought so hard to get
away from, but was suddenly starting to feel strangely attached to.

I only thought about Troy
and the distinct tenderness of his touch, the calloused palm of his hand
cupping my backside, fingers squeezing my flesh as he guided me above him after
rolling onto his back and positioning me in his lap. We found our rhythm again with
ease, and with me in control all I could think about was how freeing it was to
be with him, how uncomplicated and rare it felt, even though I knew there would
be complications that might very well change my entire life.

In that moment, it didn’t
matter.

All that mattered was Troy
and the heat of his body as he rose into me, the two of us sitting face to
face, him still buried deep inside me. When he kissed me again, his arms tight
around me, my entire body trembled and shuddered in ways it had never done
before.
 

Chapter Twenty-One

There was a nightlight in
the bathroom that provided just enough illumination that long after Troy fell
asleep I lay awake beside him in the dark watching him sleep. I scolded myself
several times to keep from reaching out to touch and make sure he was real, not
that my body hadn’t believed every minute of him.

A natural born cynic, I
couldn’t help the fear I felt. In the aftermath of making love with him I
expected to wake up any moment and find that none of it ever happened.
 
Troy was too perfect and had to be a
dream.

Hours passed as I lay facing
him in the dark. The unfamiliar surroundings made it difficult for me to fall
asleep. Every time the heater kicked on or Troy moved, I woke again and it took
forever for me to fall asleep. The hot water moved through the baseboards with
loud bangs and clangs that disturbed me until Troy finally draped his arm over
me and drew me close, nestling his head next to mine on the pillow. The comfort
of his arms was enough to finally put me to sleep so deeply that I didn’t even
remember dreaming.

When I finally woke to the
sun’s fingers prodding through the curtains, I rolled in hopes of cuddling
close to him only to find the bed empty. I half sat and listened to the silent
apartment for signs of movement, but none came.

Rolling onto my back, I drew
in a deep breath and replayed every moment of the night before. I dozed in and
out of euphoric sleep until I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs
outside. I listened as he let himself in, keys dropped onto the table and boots
across the hardwood floor. I lay still as he came into the room and sat with a
sigh on the edge of the bed. One boot dropped, followed by the other, so I
rolled toward him and laid my hand on the small of his back.

“Everything okay?”

“Fine,” he leaned over his
shoulder to look at me, a half smile lighting his eyes. “I had chores to get
done early. I thought I’d be able to sneak back in before you even noticed I
was gone.”

“It was lonely in here
without you,” I whispered, holding the blankets open for him to crawl back into
bed.

He stood and stripped out of
the clothes he’d worn to work, and then he slipped back into the bed beside me.
He smelled like outside, crisp and fresh and I could feel the cold on his skin.
I cuddled close so I could warm him and tangled together again, we dozed in and
out of sleep for the next hour.

I opened my eyes and found
Troy perched above me watching me sleep. I blinked, a slow smile touching the
corners of his mouth.

“Good morning,” he reached
out and traced a fingertip down my cheek. “Again.”

“Again,” I chuckled. “I
could just stay in this bed all day.”

“That can be arranged,” he
lifted an eyebrow. “I was thinking actually that since it’s your last day
before heading back to the big city…”

“No,” I closed my eyes at
the mere mention of it. “Ugh,” I groaned, “don’t remind me. I was having such
peaceful thoughts.”

“We should do something
special today,” he said. “What would you like to do? We can do anything you
want. Today is your day.”

“Whatever I want to do?”

“Anything you want.”

“But don’t you have work to
do?”

He shook his head, “Did most
of it while you were sleeping.”

“What about the hayride?”

“Ernie’s turn to drive the
tractor,” he explained.

“Anything I want?” I tested
him again.

“Anything at all.”

“And what if I want to just
stay right here all day? Just you and me?”

“I was hoping you might say
that,” he lowered his lips against my brow, his warm hand moving against my
stomach in such a way that I quivered and closed my eyes.

Tangled in the sheets
together, we made love as the clouds rolled in outside and rain pounded away at
the windows. When our bodies grew sore and tired, we lay together in the bed
just talking. We treaded the dangerous, talking about past romances, and Troy
assuaged my jealous curiosities about his last serious girlfriend. She broke up
with him a little more than two years earlier, ending things when he refused to
move to South Carolina with her.

“Why didn’t you want to
move?” I propped my chin in my hands and watched his face.

“What? And give up all
this?”

“Was it your mom?” I traced
my fingertip along the muscular curve of his arm.

“A little bit, I don’t know,
I’m happy here now.”

“Really?” I squinted in
disbelief.

“Believe it or not, City
Girl, there is happiness to be found here.” He rolled onto his side to face me,
a lock of his hair falling across his eye. I watched as he blew it out of the
way and couldn’t stop myself from grinning. “Contentment even.”

“Are you happy running your
daddy’s farm?”

“It’s not so bad. Besides,
it’s what I have to do.”

“Because your daddy said
so?”

“When he died I was young
and arrogant,” he shrugged, blowing at the renegade curl of hair again.
“Really, I was born to it, it’s something in your blood, and I just didn’t want
to believe it at the time.”

I thought about the
furniture he made with his hands, the photographs on the wall in the other
room. “What about being a great architect?”

“Eh,” he seemed distant for
a moment. “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life now. I just
don’t want to pass it off on my own kids one day and make them feel like it’s a
burden. It’s so much more than that.”

“You make it sound noble and
sexy,” I drew my legs up and crossed them behind me.

“Yeah?”

I laughed and leaned in to
kiss him. “Who’ll take care of it after you?”

“Who knows,” he rolled onto
his back and stared up at the ceiling. “Maybe I’ll be a better father than mine
was to me, and I’ll inspire my kids to follow in my footsteps and if not…” He
lingered on that thought, and for a long time we were silent. “I don’t know,
maybe Ernie will get married and have kids someday and they’ll take it over.”

“You want to have kids?” I
tried not to make it sound like I was baiting him into talk of a serious
relationship. “Someday, I mean?”

“Oh yeah,” he was grinning
when he turned to face me again. “And what about you?”

“You know, I never gave it
much thought until this last week. Being around Becky’s boys, and thinking
about everything my mom did for me,” I paused and shook my head. “Now I can’t
imagine not having kids one day.”

“Doesn’t that interfere with
your career plans?”

“Women can have careers and
still be mothers,” I pointed out.

“Well, yeah, but you just
seem so serious about your career, out there taking over the world one exposé
at a time.”

Laughter came so easy when I
was with him. I reached over and shoved playfully.

“I’m just really focused,” I
explained. “When I want something, I focus on it one-hundred percent. When I’m
ready to have a family, that will be my focus and I will put as much of myself
into being a wife and a mother as I do my work.”

“Good answer,” he nodded.
“I’d hate to see you fade away because that’s what society wants you to do as a
mother and wife.”

“You spent a lot of time
with the libbers in college, didn’t you?”

Troy chuckled, “Hardly. I
just think it’s important to stay true to the things you want. Too many women
let their roles define them. Like my mother. She is a mother, that’s all she
wants to be, even though she had other dreams before she met my father. After
that she became his wife, my mother…”

“My mom too,” I noted.

“You’re a damn good writer,”
he said. “I’d hate to see you give up something that has driven you as far as
that talent has because that’s what’s expected of you. The girls here, that’s
what they do, that’s who they are.”

I thought about Amber
Williams, how she once made so many promises about how big and important she
was going to be one day, only to turn out just like all of the other girls
stuck in that town. No identity beyond the fact that she had given birth. She
would flex her personality at play dates and PTA meetings, but beyond her kids,
she was no one. But not Becky. Becky was different, and then what Troy said hit
me.

“You’ve read my articles?”

“Of course I have,” he said.
“There isn’t a curious soul in this town who hasn’t read at least one of your
articles, thanks to your mom.”

I sighed and dropped onto my
back, “That woman.”

“She had every right to be
proud of you, Janice. You’re good at what you do, and you followed your dream.”

“I guess,” I closed my eyes,
holding them closed for a long moment as the stinging of emotion passed. “It’s
still so embarrassing sometimes when I think about her tacking up my articles
on the grocery store bulletin board.”

“It’s that small town
mentality,” he said. “Your successes are the town’s successes.”

“I guess. Did you ever feel
strange when they made you the town’s football hero?”

“Sometimes,” he shrugged.
“But that’s small town life, small town thinking. They want a hero here so
badly they’ll cling to any one of us that brings a little glory and light to
the town.”

“Again, you make it sound
noble and sexy,” I grinned over at him, and he started to laugh.

It wasn’t long before the
two of us were caught up in the freedom of that laughter. The muscles in my
stomach ached from it, but it felt good and when one thing led to another, I
found myself on the receiving end of his embrace again.

God, I was already in over
my head. I could tell by the way my heart started to flutter whenever he looked
into my eyes, and while I stopped fighting the inevitable, going home to the
city suddenly loomed over me like an impossible task bent on making my life
miserable.

It was just around sundown
when we finally hit the shower together and made plans to go out and get
something to eat. Troy followed me home to drop off my car, and then the two of
us headed out for pizza. With very little action in such a small area, we
decided to catch another movie after diner, but it was obvious that we were both
distracted. I actually spent more time studying the perfect fit of our hands
together than I did the screen, and from time to time I felt his eyes on me. We
were silent when we left the theatre and even quieter on the drive home.

Two blocks from my house, he
finally reached across the truck and touched my hand, “I wish I could get you
to change your mind about tonight.”

“Dad will want me to go to
church with him in the morning,” I said.

“Yeah, and I’ll have to take
Mom, but I can tell you right now that I won’t sleep a wink tonight.”

“Me either,” I promised him.

Just the thought of it being
our last night together made me feel sick inside. It made no sense how I
managed to let myself get in so deep in so little time, but the pit I’d dug for
myself seemed bottomless and there was no turning back. My emotions churned
like a ball of nails in my gut.

“Why don’t we take my mom
and your dad out for lunch after church tomorrow,” he suggested.

“Dad would like that,” I
nodded. “So would I.”

The lights were still on
inside the house when we pulled up to the curb and the clock on the dashboard
said that it was only ten-thirty. “Are you sure you don’t want to come back to
my place and stay?” He asked. “I’ll bring you home early.”

“I hope you believe me when
I say that I want to, Troy,” I laid my hand on top of his and squeezed his
fingers. “In fact, I don’t know how I ever slept in this world without you, but
I shouldn’t. I have a lot of things to take care of before I leave tomorrow
afternoon. It’s better if I get them done now.”

“I understand,” he nodded.

The lights inside the house
started to go out one by one just before the front porch light came on. For a
second I thought I saw Dad peering through the curtains at us, and I shook my
head. “You know he’s in there taking notes so he has something to talk about at
work on Monday.”

Troy chuckled, “Well, let’s
give ‘em something to talk about then.”

I unbuckled my seatbelt and
leaned across the front seat to meet his waiting kiss. It started there, and I
am sure my father was long gone to bed by the time it finished. My knees were
weak with want and lament when I finally started up the long walk toward the
front porch. Keys shaking in my hand, I turned at the door and saw him watching
after me. He wouldn’t leave until I was inside which made me never want to go
in. I finally managed to slide the key into the lock and walked into the warmth
of home. On the other side of the door, I watched out the window until Troy’s
truck disappeared, and then I went upstairs to my bedroom and flopped down onto
my bed with the heavy weight of defeat pressing down on me.