Page 92 of Falling for Her

“Well, we had different houses.” She feeds me another piece. “My parents met in high school, fell in love, got married, blah-blah-blah.” She licks a spot of frosting off her lip. “Then my mom had me, and my father, well, he never really grew up. I mean, neither did my mother, in his defense. They had me when they were both twenty-one, and they stayed twenty-one. My father had affair after affair. So my mother would move from house to house, just to fuck with him or to get back at him. I don’t really know. I was in boarding school and never knew where she would be living when a holiday or summer break came.” My blood pressure starts to rise. “During the summers, whenever they got bored of using me against each other, whoever had me would ship me off to my grandparents’ house, or my grandparents would feel sorry for me and come take me away for a while.” She shrugs. “Either way, I spent a lot of time with them.”

“Which side?”

“My dad’s parents. I don’t think my mom’s parents lived close to us, or if they did, they didn’t seem to care. I only remember visiting them once. After that, I never saw them again.”

“Where did you learn to ride?” She gives me another piece of cake.

“At my grandparents’. It was my favorite thing to do. It is my favorite thing to do. Getting on the horse and just pushing it.” A smile breaks across her face, lighting her up. “It’s like all the problems you have are gone, and you are all alone. The voices turn off in your head. The bickering that you spend all day listening to is gone, and it’s just you and the horse. I would escape the craziness of my childhood and just ride. I mean, whenever I could. I started boarding school when I was five, and there wasn’t a stable there, so I only got to ride when I was at my grandparents’.”

“At five?” I’m shocked. I couldn’t imagine sending Asa away at any age.

“Well, my parents had just divorced, and my father was more interested in spreading his seed than being a dad. My grandparents loved me, but they weren’t looking to raise another child at that point in their lives. I guess I was too much of a handful.” She laughs, but it’s not a real laugh, it’s a nervous, embarrassed laugh. “My nanny was pregnant with my father’s baby. Not long after, someone else claimed she had had his baby too. My mother would call and rant about it to me when she had hit the liquor a bit too much.

“Of course, after my father, she had her own string of men. Boarding school really was the right place for me. I found out later that Mom had breast cancer and refused to treat it. She was afraid she would go bald. I think she was trying to get as much as she could out of life, but you can’t exactly gallivant around the world with a child. By the time she passed away, she had been married five times . . .” Her voice trails off. “She died at thirty-six.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” I say softly.

“Me too.” She exhales. “When my mom died, my grandparents decided to take me in, and I didn’t have to go back to boarding school. It was as normal a childhood as I’d had, even though by then I was fifteen, almost grown. My father died in a car accident four years later. He’d stopped speaking with me the year before. My brother went to live with his mother full-time. To be honest, we barely know each other. We didn’t really grow up together like typical siblings, but our grandparents tried to get us together for holidays when they could. He’s in college now. I haven’t seen him since our grandparents died.

“Our grandmother went first, not long after I turned twenty-two, and then my grandfather . . . I think he just gave up. Two months to the day after she passed away, he died in his sleep . . .” Her voice trails off, and I have to wonder if anyone ever fought for her, fought to keep her safe. Fought to protect her, fought to put her fucking first. “I have pictures of my mother in my baby books as well as some photo albums that I have in storage, and I look a lot like her.”

“You are your own kind of beautiful, baby.”

She smiles at me. “You know, you’re the only one who has ever told me I’m beautiful.” She blinks away tears, and I want to take her in my arms, but something tells me she wouldn’t want that. “I’ve been called hot and sexy, obviously.” She rolls her eyes, making a joke out of it, and it’s then that I make the decision to push her boundaries.

I sit up and cup her cheek in my hand. “You are those, too, but you are more than just that.”

“Yeah? Tell me.” Her smile beams on her face.

“You are kind and smart.” She turns and puts the box on the bedside table before straddling me. The covers fall to my legs. “You make one of the best chocolate cakes I’ve ever had in my life.” I put my hand to the side of her neck. “You are truthful and don’t take my shit.”

“What fun would that be?” She leans in to kiss my neck.

“You also make me laugh like no one else.”

“A day without laughter is a day wasted,” she states softly. “I’m going to miss this. I mean, not this this, but the getting under your skin.” She’s trying to make a joke out of it and not let me see her vulnerable side.

“I thought I was the one getting under your skin.” I turn her to her back before leaning over and grabbing a condom from the side table.

“I think you’re about to be in my skin in just a second.” She grins as I put the condom on, waiting, her legs open for me. She takes my cock in her hand and guides it to her, and then I slide inside of her. “Yes.” She arches her back.

The next morning, she’s curled up against me as if she were made to be in my bed when the alarm rings.

“Morning,” she mumbles, getting up with me and dressing in her clothes from yesterday. She peeks out of the room and then comes quickly back inside. “Oh, I guess you should have checked instead of me.” She puts her hand on her mouth to stop herself from laughing. “That would have been better.”

I go out and confirm Asa is still sleeping, and we head downstairs together. She starts to make the coffee, and I stand behind her, making sure I touch her. The ticking of the clock is in the back of my head.

“Are you going to make breakfast?” she asks me as the coffee machine starts to brew.

“You want me to make breakfast, baby?” I bend down to kiss her neck.

“I’m not much of a breakfast person, and I still have cake.”

I laugh. “What are you going to do today?”

“Well, we have big plans.” She turns in my arms. “Asa is taking me toad fishing.”

“You mean toad hunting.”