The Bond That Built Us (27 page)

Before she can pull away I hold her cheeks and barely touch my lips with hers. I can feel it everywhere in my body so I do it again, and again, afraid this will be the last time. I cling her to me and
desperately refuse to let go. By now she is reciprocating and I begin to scoop her up but hesitate. I can hear something sputtering and hissing from the kitchen.

Aubrey pulls back and says, “
Shit, the pasta.” She wiggles from my embrace and runs out of the room. I am cemented to this spot. If I move then maybe she will change her mind. If I move then maybe it didn’t even happen at all.

“So, everything is over?” She asks quietly behind me. I pivot to face her and she is leaning in the doorway of the kitchen. “It’s all over?”

“Mostly. They said that the men are being compliant so we won’t need to be at the hearing unless we want to.”

“I never want to see them again,” she says with her eyebrows fused together and a scowl on her face.

Neither do I. I would see them enough in my nightmares. I know my dad would argue with me and want me to go. He has a thing for weakness and not facing this fear shows just that. I can imagine the conversation.

“Son, you need to prove to them how strong you are, that you aren’t afraid of them anymore. Plus maybe you’ll get some closure from seeing them get sentenced.”

No offense dad but fuck off.

When I refocus my attention back to Aubrey, her eyes are closed and she has a faint smile on her lips. “It’s over,” she mumbles. She lets out a huge breath, one that she has probably been holding for months.

“What now?” Her eyes pop open and she looks at me expectantly.

I shrug because I have no damn idea what to do next.

“Dinner,” she says with a smile.

We are silent while we eat. I’m still giving her time to process the great news. She seems almost emotionless about it which makes me wonder how much she is freaking out about it on the inside. As I sit there and watch her eat I feel nothing but content and happy. You could strip me of everything; as long as I could be with Aubrey I don’t care about the other stuff. Baseball, my car, a degree… it’s all second to this beautiful girl in front of me.

“I’m still in love with you,” I blurt out.
Wrong move, McCabe!

Her fork stops twirling the spaghetti on her plate but that is the only reaction I get.

“I just wanted you to know that, I guess.” I watch her stoic expression and take a heaping bite of food. If I shove my face with pasta I can’t say anything else stupid.

“Even after everything?”

I don’t know what she means by ‘everything’ but I nod anyway.

“I don’t believe you,” she says quickly.

“What?!” Seriously,
what
?!

She calmly places her fork on the table and wipes her mouth with a napkin before explaining. “There’s no way you can. I’m totally messed up, Kellan. The reason you fell in love with me was because of what happened to us.
You’re a guy, you wanted to protect me. It’s in your blood. But I don’t need protecting now. Now it’s all over and you will realize soon enough that you never really loved me.”

“That’s bullshit,” I argue. “I don’t know what kind of crap Liz is telling you but everything you just said is nothing but bullshit. There were things about yo
u that I loved long before the accident.”

She shakes her head. “I was just a shiny new toy for you back then-“

“Aubrey! Quit it, now!” I yell at her. Her eyes widen and she shrinks into the back of the chair. “Dammit you make this so complicated. I know how I feel, why can’t you believe me? Why can’t you just let go and let this happen because whether you realize it or not, we are perfect together.”

She seems timid to speak but finally does. “I’m just afraid.” Her words are so soft I can barely hear them, but they still cut through my heart. “What if you realize you never really loved me,
that you were just blinded by what we went through? Maybe by then I’ll be so deep I will want to die. I don’t think I can handle it again. You’re my best friend, Kellan.”

She stands and carries our plates to the sink and walks out of the kitchen. I hear her sniffling and I want to make this right. I follow her into her room. She tries to shut the door but I manage to shove my sneaker in the way and the door bounces off of my foot and slowly creaks open.

She is sitting on the edge of the bed with small tears streaming down her face. I crawl to her and kneel in front of her. I wrap my arms around her back and bury my head in her lap.

“Listen,” I start. I need to just pour my heart out and let fate take over. Once I say what I need to say, it will be up to her. “I know what I said bothers you. If you aren’t ready for that then I understand. There are plenty of other four letter words I can use in its place.”

I lift my head and look her dead in the eyes. “I want you. I need you. I like you. Take your pick.”

“I don’t want you to stop saying it if that’s how you feel. I just want you to be sure of it before you start blurting it out.”

“I’m sure. One thousand percent.”

“How do you know?
” She looks skeptical but also hopeful. I look at her face. Her blue eyes are sparkling under unshed tears as they dart back and forth, looking into my own. Her pink lips are trembling slightly as I begin one of the most crucial monologues of my life.

“Did you know
that you snore when you’ve had too much to drink?” She looks offended so I quickly add, “I love that about you. That has
nothing
to do with what happened to us. Or the way you are the clumsiest person I know? I love that about you, and it has
nothing
to do with what happened to us.

“The way you cry when you see ASPCA commercials on TV, how you take nothing for granted, how you know more about baseball than half of the guys on my team, your smile that is fucking contagious, I love all that about you. And none of those things have anything to do with what happened to us in Mexico. Yes, it brought us closer, but it doesn’t define us, Aubrey. We can’t let it own us or affect us more than it already has.
And I promise I won’t let anything bad happen to you again.”

I can’t tell if I’ve said enough, so I continue. “I
first laid eyes on you one hundred and seven days ago. I realized I loved you at day fifty six. I’ve lived without you for the last thirty two. I can’t take one more day of that. I want to go back to day fifty six and relive that day over and over again because we were so happy. I know, however many more days we have ahead of us, I can make you happy. You just have to trust me.”

She sits quiet for a while, and every second that goes by in silence I feel my heart squeeze smaller and smaller. She sniffs and touches her hand to my cheek.
I’m not sure if that is a loving gesture or an apologetic one. The feeling in the pit of my stomach isn’t subsiding, and I can’t stand another second of this torture. If she turns me down again… I can’t think about if that happens. I don’t want to know what I will do, it won’t be pretty that’s for damn sure. I look into her eyes, which are so full of different emotions I can’t read them.

“I don’t cry
every
time I see those commercials,” she jokes. Her smile that I love so much spreads across her face and we both laugh to lighten the mood.

Her other hand comes up and cups my other cheek. She bites down on her bottom lip briefly and sighs. “
Just promise me you won’t ever leave me,” she whispers.

“Never,” I gulp.

She smiles brightly and leans down to kiss me. I crawl up and cradle her in my arms, lying on the bed side by side. I pull away to look at her. The sadness is gone now.

“I love you so much, Aubrey,” I whisper and kiss her again.

“I love you, too,” she says against my lips. Life, right now, is perfect.

25

Aubrey

Over a year later

I see MJ coming toward me in the enormous coliseum. I fidget and sway back and forth in my heels. I haven’t talked to my cousin since Thanksgiving Day, almost six months ago. Josh proposed to her that morning and I congratulated her over turkey and stuffing. They set a date in October and even though we aren’t close, I am extremely happy for her. We got the closure I needed years ago and now I don’t harbor any hard feelings over what she did to me. Her best friend on the other hand…

Cara pops up beside her and instantly my fucking day is ruined.
The tassel dangling in my face suddenly becomes more annoying than before so I snatch off my cap and hold it in front of me. The edges are pretty sharp, I could use it as a weapon if Cara tries anything. I imagine her lurching toward me and me flinging the cap like a Chinese throwing star and imbedding the thing into her thigh so she collapses and skids across the slick floor.

“Hey, AJ. Congratulations,” MJ says politely. She reaches in and gives me an awkward hug.

“Thanks,” I say, equally polite. I smile at her and it drops as I turn my attention to Cara.

“You’re stupid to graduate in four years, but good job,” she says. She laced her compliment with an insult, why am I not surprised? Her comment deserves no rebuttal.
I found out a while back that Cara was sleeping with Corey and conjured up the whole ‘get me back’ scheme. Turns out he really did cheat on me… with her and one of her sisters. He’s been a drooling dog for her ever since. I guess she wanted Kellan and used Corey to try and break us up. Poor Corey didn’t see it coming.

Once she realized I wasn’t going to fall for
Corey again, she dropped him to the curb and ventured on to the next hot shot.

“So what now?” MJ asks inquisitively.

I shrug. I seriously don’t know. I have no plans for the near future. I threw around some resumes but truthfully, I don’t want a big girl job. I want to be free and enjoy my life while I’m young, so why not now?

I see MJ’s glare zip from my eyes to over my shoulder and back. Cara is visibly scowling and I even hear her scoff before I feel arms enclose around me. The smell of his cologne engulfs me and Cara’s ugly ass face evaporates in my peripheral as I focus on Kellan behind me.

He leans down and his lips are on my ear. “Hi.”

I giggle at his simple yet effective
greeting. “Hi,” I say back.

“Excuse me, ladies,” he says as he pulls me away from them. “My girlfriend here is late for her photo shoot.”

I groan as he leads me toward my family, perched and waiting for the million photos I’m about to endure. My mother beams her motherly glow and when I see the DSLR camera clutched in her hands my feet refuse to make forward progress. As Kellan drags me the heel of my shoe catches on the grout of the tile floor beneath me and I fly forward.

Luckily Kellan has quick reflexes and catches me, inches from face planting. I pick up the cap off the floor and blow the hair out of my face with one huge puff. I see everyone trying not to laugh so I curtsy, showing them that it’s okay to laugh.
They should all know me by now and how hurting myself is an everyday occurrence.

Once my cheeks hurt from smiling way too long and the flash spots have disappeared from my sight, Kellan drives me to my house. My parents have to go to the grocery store and pick up
the catering so when we step into the living room, I know we have about twenty minutes alone before they come in.

I literally jump him.
I don’t know if it’s the realization that I am a college graduate or the way he looks in his slacks and dress shirt but even if my parents showed up I’d still attack him.

He picks me up from my butt and carries me into the bedroom, in case they really do come back earlier than we expect. He throws me on my mattress roughly and slips his hand up my dress. His fingers find me immediately and it doesn’t take me long at all to come. If I was a dude it would be embarrassing.

I grab his belt and whip it out of the loops and toss it on the floor. The rest of his clothes soon follow.

As he hovers over me, his eyes
suddenly soften and his thumb caresses my lips before he kisses me lightly. Where just seconds ago we were ravenous, now he is looking at me so sweetly the feeling of crying comes to me. I choke it back and swallow it deep down.

With his lips barely touching mine, he whispers, “I love you,” and slowly enters me.

I end up crying anyway.

My orgasm is so mind blowing I couldn’t have been quiet if I tried. I clutch at his back and legs and any skin I can get a hold of.
I can never get enough of him. I roll over on top and move in the pace I know he loves and within a minute his fingernails are biting into my hips and I can feel him throbbing between my legs.

“Oh, shit,” he sighs and struggles to slow his breath.

I want to lie with him in bed for a couple hours and prepare for round two but I can faintly hear the front door click shut.

“Oh, shit,” he repeats, only this time more urgent as he jumps up and grabs his clothes then scampers into the bathroom.

I rush after him, the wetness on my inner thighs preventing me from walking correctly and a fast enough speed. He slams the door behind him before I can make it in. I reach for the handle but the bastard locked it. My mother knocks twice before opening my door. I quickly wheel around in front of my bathroom and clear my throat. I thank the sex gods that we just did it with my dress on. I smooth it over my thighs and pray that my appearance isn’t completely obvious. I run my fingers through my hair anyway, though that could possibly be a dead giveaway. I bet I look like a hot mess.