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It also weighed on her. Once she’d flounced into the condo, her sass and backbone had left, just like he had in his truck. She hadn’t faced the main reason she couldn’t afford to get involved with him right now.
She couldn’t handle losing him. The meaningful stuff she left untended while accomplishing her goals wouldn’t be there at the finish. Those essentials would rightly be snapped up by others for the gift they were.
But just for a moment, she let herself believe he’d be waiting at the finish line. Leaning against his truck, massive arms crossed, that body that looked so good…all hers. A crazy, incredible thought. He thought she was beautiful? He took her breath away.
His shrewd regard made her feel like he knew everything this was costing her, better than she knew it herself. Did he know her deepest fear, that when she crossed the finish line, all the things the denial had kept glued together would give way, and she’d fall to pieces?
During the wedding, when the vows were exchanged, she’d made the mistake of glancing toward him. He’d shifted his gaze in her direction. The startling revelation of his kiss tonight had unearthed that buried memory. In that key moment, she’d known he no longer saw her as a child.
She’d been afraid of that look, afraid she’d do something stupid. Fortunately, her maid-of-honor duties kept her busy, or rather, she made sure they did. Next morning, she headed back up the road early. She could only afford to be there a few days, which was why her mother had helped Daralyn with a lot of things the maid-of-honor did.
More memories she wouldn’t be able to share with her family, to strengthen her bonds with them. How many would she lose before this was done?
She was miring herself down in tiresome things she’d thought through a million times before. Put some Zen up your ass, sister. She half-smiled as she thought of Beulah. Then she thought of Brick. Her body was throbbing, but she couldn’t handle getting her vibrator. The idea of the impersonal buzzing, the initial chill feeling of its touch, repelled her.
Her hands were often cold. Dr. Morris, one of the Ob/Gyn residents, joked that it was a doctor thing. When you graduate, the perpetually cold hands are handed out with the diploma.
She could use that chill for another purpose. Leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes. She imagined a crisp fall day, walking with Brick in one of the patches of woods near her home. He backed her against a tree, pushed her sweater up over her breasts, his big hands pulling down her bra cups…
She slid her hands under her sleep shirt, curving them around her breasts. They were his hands, fingers cold from the weather. He drew her breasts together and angled her nipples upward under his gaze, so intense the look stabbed her low in the belly. His voice was in her ear. Capable of bellowing over dancing flames, or dropping to a soothing rumble, offering authority as he calmed whomever he held in a world of fire.
“You’ll stay still, warm my hands with your flesh.”
Not a question. A command.
She pulled her hands away from herself. An orgasm inspired by thoughts of Brick would hamper what she needed to get done tonight, tempting her to let her mind wander into far more distracting places.
But tonight it wasn’t the fantasy of him she was denying herself. It was the too-tempting reality.
He’d said he looked forward to expanding the scope of her reality. His version of that would differ from hers. Because expanding her reality would incorporate another fear. What if it didn’t change at that finish line? What if she had to sacrifice every personal relationship to become the best doctor she was capable of being? Or worse, it took all she had just to be a halfway decent one?
What if she always had to work twice as hard as anyone else, checking and rechecking things a dozen times, to ensure she was giving her patient the absolute best care? While losing sleep to the worry and anxiety that she might have missed something.
If she let herself have a life, divided her attention, she would stumble and fail. She’d let everyone down.
There was no finish line. She wouldn’t ever be able to have him.
She moved to sit on her bed, her bare foot on the braided rug beside it. Her mother had made it for her, a mix of white, yellow and purple. She’d chosen the color of Les’s favorite fall pansies, growing in the nooks and crannies around the farmhouse. A motherly reminder of where she came from, a visual path she could follow home whenever she needed it, even if she only had time for the visit in her head.
The box had included the zucchini bread. She should have opened and shared it with Brick, though she had no doubt her mother had provided him with his own loaf. It had likely been inhaled by the firefighters at the training class.
The cheerful letter she’d expected offered news of how Rory and Daralyn were doing at the store, plus the activities in her mother’s garden and community groups. Clippings about topics of shared interest from the nearest big city newspaper were in the envelope, plus a couple cartoons. Her mother enjoyed sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee and going through the Sunday edition, just the way she had with Les’s father.
Brick’s gift, the slim red box bound in silver curly ribbon, sat on her desk. She’d played with those curls as she studied, letting them wrap and unwrap over her fingers.
He’d said not to open it until her birthday. She’d obey him because... Because.
After another mental struggle, she rose from the bed and verified her door was locked. When she returned to her tablet, she opened the file she only viewed when she was alone.
What would he think of the photos? Deep inside, she thought she knew. It was in his touch, his kiss, the way he spoke to her. She doubted she’d ever be brave enough to ask him straight out.
She’d saved them in a password protected file, using a jumble of numbers, letters and symbols that meant nothing. Except to her, since she’d come up with it. Something I Don’t Want My Mother To Find Until I’m 112 Years Old. Or Dead.
SIDWMMTFUI@112YOOD.
The erotic photos showed males restraining, spanking and psychologically topping attractive females. There were only five pictures, but each one took her into a world of expanded possibilities, a galaxy of stars and planets rotating around a fiercely burning sun.
A woman bent over a spanking bench as the man administered punishment to her raised ass with a gloved hand. Les’s attention lingered on that glove, stretched like a supple second skin over his broad palm. He was a big man, with muscles and dark hair. No need to guess why that appealed to her.
