“It’s odd...I sort of know exactly what you’re saying. My take is a bit different.”
“Oh?”
He let out a sigh that visibly rattled his entire body.
“When I was twelve, my mother tried to kill herself,” he stated.
His statement rocked her like a thunderbolt. She hadn’t meant to trigger his own bad memories. Damn the Fates. This wasn’t some dimensional misfire. They knew exactly what they were doing when they sent Reed to her. She was right all along, the Fates never made mistakes. Each play they made was for a reason.
She rubbed his forearm. “Listen, Reed, you don’t have to...”
“No, I want to tell you, Sara,” he stressed the words. “I think this will help you. She tried a few times over a few years. Then when I was fifteen, I came home from school one afternoon, and there she was...she finally succeeded.”
“I’m so sorry, Reed.”
“Don’t be sorry, just listen.” He placed a gentle fingertip against her lips. “So afterward, I moved in with my father, then on to an uncle. I just...drifted for years. Unfulfilling relationships, one dead end job to the next, until I found thing I was good at—my writing. I didn’t stop going out, but I just sort of cocooned myself into my own little world, never allowing anyone to get to know me, or to get close.
Then I had an awakening of sorts. I came to realize that what happened with my mother was going to happen whether I was home that day or not. That some things are set in stone and cannot be altered. Sometimes it’s just your time to die, and no one can do a damn thing to stop it. When I accepted that, I was able to come to terms with her death, and in return, my own life.”
It sounded so easy, she thought. Reed found the release for his pain. Still, he didn’t seem finished with his story. “What else, Reed?”
“I woke up not so long ago, and I was thirty-five. I realized my life revolved only around my career, and that was not fulfilling me any longer.” He captured her face in his hands and connected his dark eyes to hers. “You see, Sara-Kate, that is why I was heading to that bed and breakfast the night of my accident. I was trying to jump start the one part of my life that always worked for me in the past. But I ended up here instead.”
What was he getting at? Uneasiness crept over her.
Then he smiled. “Don’t you see? I don’t know how I got here, and I’ve only been around you for a short amount of time. But I love you, and I don’t ever want to be away from you. Even when you’re in the next room...or asleep down the hall from me, my heart, and my arms ache for you. One thing that your doctor friend said today is absolutely true. Just being near you, speaking to you, touching you, makes me feel ten feet tall.”
With those words, she vaulted into his arms and pressed her parted lips against his. Then she said the words she never said to any man before him.
“Would you like to make love?”
He needed no further prompting. Grabbing her hand firmly, he wordlessly led her up the stairs to her bedroom. To Sara-Kate, it was like a scene from a movie, though she was now an active participant.
At the foot of her bed, he tenderly unbuttoned her dress and pushed it from her shoulders. It fell into a puddle of fabric around her ankles. As he unbuttoned her bra, his lips placed a trail of kisses from her neck to her shoulder, and she shivered beneath his touch. When his hands pushed her lace underwear from her hips, her knees nearly buckled. He then stepped back and his eyes took in her body. For a moment, she was self-conscious beneath his scrutiny, not sure how to act...or react.
Then he smiled, and asked, “how can you possibly be so perfect?” His fingers undid her ponytails, allowing her long, red hair to cascade down to her lower back.
His fingers gently caressed her throat, then tickled their way to the curve of her breast. “You’re absolutely perfect, more so than I even imagined. You don’t have even a mole or a freckle, let alone a pierce or a tattoo,” he marveled.
For a moment, she was reminded that once upon a time ago she had a smattering of freckles over her nose, a scar on her knee from a fall on a wet floor when she was nine. There was also once a pulsing, jagged incision along her right side that never healed before her death. She pushed the thoughts of the past away.
Now what? Was she supposed to comment on his observations? Should she undress him now? She had no idea of bedroom etiquette, and she hoped it didn’t show too much.
When he peeled the t-shirt from his body, and his hand pulled on his well-worn jeans, causing the buttons to pop open on by one, she decided to just let him lead her. It didn’t take long. She wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but one moment, she was standing naked before him, and the next, he was on top of her in bed.
Once again, his mouth was on her neck, hot and wet, he then stopped to nibble her earlobe while his hand explored her body. His obvious erection pressed against her belly until his hand pressed her knee up and outward.
Then an overwhelming panic filled her.
“Reed, Reed, wait a minute...I have to tell you something!”
His torso shot upwards off of her, and his weight came to rest on his elbows. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,” she was quick to assure him. “It’s just that...It’s just...” she mentally cursed her stammering.
He placed a hand over her heart. “Sara-Kate, your heart is absolutely fluttering!”
“I’ve never done this before. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do...or not do.” She said the words quickly to
