thought of it.
Now she was remembering the terrible day she'd taken it off…the day of Tristan's memorial service. It had been hot, she remembered, and humid, with rain threatening and thunder grumbling in the distance. She remembered Sammi June's small, sticky hand in hers, and both of them jerking when the rifles fired their salute… and then the white-gloved hands holding out to her the folded three-corner flag. She barely remembered taking it and murmuring thank you. Later, she'd placed the flag in a drawer in this very dresser-the top one-and had taken off her wedding ring and put it in its box and put it in the drawer with the flag. Later that night, unable to sleep, she'd opened the drawer with trembling hands and taken the ring out of its box and put it back on her finger. Sometime after that, during a spring cleaning-she couldn't remember exactly when-she'd moved the flag to the cedar chest. The ring had stayed on her finger until she'd started working in the NICU. She'd started taking it off when she left for her shift, and then one day she came home and didn't put it back on. Tristan's gone, she remembered telling herself half defiantly, as if she were about to commit a sin. He's not coming back. It's time to move on.
Now, gazing at the ring, her eyes shimmered and filled with tears.
Behind her the door opened. She heard Tristan come quietly into the room and close the door. She didn't turn but watched his reflection come to join hers in the murky, oak-framed oval mirror above the dresser. He was smiling, and when he put his hands on her shoulders and bent his head to kiss the side of her neck, she smelled beer on his breath.
'Hmm,' he murmured, nuzzling her with his chin, 'wha'cha doin'? Ah-' Noticing the ring in her hand, he took it from her, and with both arms encircling her from behind, slipped it onto her finger. 'There,' he said thickly, 'back where it belongs.'
He nudged aside her hair and kissed the back of her neck, and she shivered. In response he chuckled and opened his mouth on her damp nape, at the same time wrapping her in his arms and covering her breasts with his hands. She felt a hot, drawing pressure on her neck, and nerves sang through her skin and hardened her nipples, and arousal pooled between her thighs.
'Are you making a hicky?' she mumbled, already half-incoherent.
'Mmm…so what? Nobody'll see it. Unless you put your hair up…oops, damn. You made me lose my place. Oh, well…guess I'll just have to start over…'
'Tris…' But his hands were under her shirt, cupping her breasts and plucking impatiently between them at the closing of her bra. She released it for him, then gasped when he brushed the bra aside and took each sensitized tip between a thumb and forefinger. The heat between her thighs coiled and writhed, and her legs turned to jelly. This time she whimpered it:
He lifted his head and watched her in the mirror while one hand found her zipper and ripped it down, then slipped inside her panties. His palm was warm, and his fingers splayed over her belly, gently kneading. The other arm, tight across her breasts, held her close against him while he continued to torment one taut nipple. 'I enjoyed today,' he said softly. 'More than I thought I would.' His eyes gleamed like dark pools in moonlight.
'Did you?' She could barely talk, now…barely stand.
'Umm-hmm…more than you'll ever know.' The unfathomable pools that were his eyes darkened…deepened. His lips tightened briefly and then quirked sideways, as if he'd felt a spasm of pain and was determined to hide it.
She wanted to close her eyes but somehow knew he wouldn't want her to, so she fiercely ordered them to stay open and watched herself…watched him…as he slipped his fingers into her. Not gently-suddenly and deeply, and holding her tightly so that the thrust of his hand made her feel his hardness pressed against her buttocks. But she was ready for him, and the gasp that burst from her wasn't pain. Her body liquefied. Her palms and the soles of her feet felt scorched. In the murky glass of the old mirror, her eyes looked wild, and her cheeks glowed as if with a fever.
'Yes-you can.
But her body was already spiraling out of her control-if it had ever been in it-and she was breaking up in a thousand tiny explosions, all cold fire and flooding warmth. She gave a soft, desperate cry and let the kindly darkness come, and as she closed her eyes she felt his mouth, hot and open on her neck, and his fingers inside her, playing her body's sensations like quivering guitar strings, making them last and last and last…
And then he was laying her down on the bed and taking off her clothes…guiding her thighs apart and entering her still-throbbing body. Gently now, he moved within her, braced above her on taut and trembling arms, eyes closed, neck muscles corded. Dazed, Jessie drew her hands down his back, stroking rigid muscles and sliding over the ropy ribbons of scar tissue, rocking with his thrusts, arching her body into his, remembering what it had been like, remembering this…
His climax was restrained, almost…polite, Jessie thought. Afterward, he kissed her, used his discarded T-shirt for a towel, then gathered her against him-her back to his front-and fell asleep, breathing softly…snoring gently into her hair.
It was early, nowhere near Jessie's customary bedtime, and she lay awake for a long time, afraid to move or get up and go to the bathroom or turn off the lights Tris had left burning.
It's going to be all right, she told herself, staring at the familiar room…the wallpaper, the furniture, the curtains she knew so well.
Chapter 13
Gradually the days returned to more normal rhythms. On Monday Max left to go back to his home in Florida, and Sammi June drove off to school in Athens in the little red Chevy pickup truck Jimmy Joe had fixed up for her to use. Her professors were being understanding about giving her make-up exams and extensions on overdue papers. The last of the media people had left; their interest in Tristan's story had waned rapidly when they discovered he wasn't going to share with their audiences any of the gory details about his POW experience.
On Monday Jessie called the hospital to see how things were going in the NICU and found out that two of her nurses were out with the flu and a third had fallen off of a stepladder and broken her wrist. So on Tuesday she went back to work.
Tristan started running every morning with C.J. and working out with weights in his garage afterward. He'd been putting on weight, and was beginning to look almost like his normal self again. In the afternoon and evening he studied flight manuals and answered some of the hundreds of letters that had been pouring in from around the country, and drank beer steadily until he fell asleep around dusk, which in mid-May was about eight o'clock. By the time Jessie went up to bed he was snorin' like a buzz saw, as Granny Calhoun would've put it. He got up early, though, sometimes as early as four o'clock, tiptoeing around in the dark so as not to wake up Jessie while he dressed in his sweats and went downstairs to wait for it to get light enough to go running.
One evening he'd dozed off in Granny Calhoun's old recliner chair, watching the evening news on the TV in the living room. Not knowing what else to do, Jessie left him alone until ten o'clock, when she was ready to go upstairs to bed. Then she leaned over him and murmured, 'Tris? Honey, you need to come to bed now-you're gonna get a crick in your neck.' And she put her hand on his shoulder.
He made a wild, grunting sound and shot up out of the chair so fast the top of his head hit her in the mouth, and at the same time he was flailing at the air with his arms. An instant later he was on his hands and knees on the rug, and his face…Jessie had never seen such a look on anyone's face before, and to see it on his-her husband's- was almost more than she could bear. Shattered, tasting blood, she dropped to her knees and reached toward him in desperate apology.
