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Prologue
She's everywhere.
My sheets. My skin. My clothes.
My feet hit the ground as I wind my way around the Charles River. Two-and-a-half miles up. Two-and-a-half down. I plod down the beaten dirt path that runs by the river's edge. I arrive when the water is still smooth, when the crew teams are just starting their morning workouts with early sun gleaming off their oars. I pad up to the Harvard campus and back down to MIT, running away from her face as much as I'm running toward it. Because she's everywhere to me. I can't escape her. And the fucked-up thing is, I don't want to.
It's springtime in Boston, almost summer. The trees and plants in the Commons are in full bloom, a mosaic of color, green, pink, yellow, white, smack in the middle of a city that's mostly brick and stone. This city of mine, a city I love, a city that's as gritty and ugly as it is beautiful. I thought for a long time this city was my heart, more than any person ever could be. But that was until I met her.
My body clock is off. I used to wake up every day at 5:30, like a machine. Now I wake earlier and earlier to catch the sunrise, just to see that blend of red, yellow, and orange as it peeks over the jagged city skyline. Scarlet. Mustard. Burnt Sienna. Crimson. Goldenrod. Butterscotch. Too many to name, but all the same plethora of colors as her hair. It's like my body yearns for her as much as my soul does.
Every day I get up to see that color, no alarm clock, nothing. The same way I did to watch her sleep all those times. She never knew I did that, never knew I'd lay beside her for hours just watching her face, memorizing the maze of freckles across those high cheekbones, the fringe of long auburn lashes that tremble when she dreams, the bee-stung lips that blow kisses in her sleep. Waiting for the moment when she would wake, aching for when I could see her eyes, the color of ripe kiwis, gleaming with everything I'd ever hoped for.
Adoration.
Admiration.
Lust.
Love.
I never knew I was such a fool until now. Not until I managed to fuck up the best thing that ever happened to me.
Now my life is back to normal. As normal as it can be with half my heart, the heart I never knew I had, torn out of my chest. But still I wake, just as the sun seeps through the blinds. And I can only lay in my bed heartsick for so long. So I run to catch the dawn and then continue with my regimen, with the schedule that keeps me in line. Barely.
5:30 AM: Work out with my trainer.
7:30 AM: Breakfast and review the early Tokyo returns.
8:00 AM until 10:00 PM: Meetings. Lunch meetings. Staff meetings. Board meetings. Coffee meetings. Dinner meetings. All. Day. Long.
10:00 PM: Home. Watch the fire. Try not to think of her.
Fail fucking miserably.
The lab used to provide a distraction, but now all I can see is her, stretched out on my work bench, her heart-shaped mouth rounded into that "O" of total pleasure only we can make together. I found a strand of her hair on the table, bronze and bright against the dark wood, the color of the evening sun as it sinks below the horizon.
I tore the fuckin' place apart.
I'd give it all up for her. This house. This life. This business. This firm. And she doesn't know it yet, but that's exactly what I'm going to do. Whatever it takes. Whatever she needs.
But for now, I wait. Because if there's one thing I know about my girl––no, my woman. My perfect, beautiful, brilliant, stubborn, sometimes unreasonable, hot-tempered woman––it's that she can't be forced.
So I'll wait, forever if I have to. Because that's what you do when you belong to someone, body and soul.
And I do, Red. I do.
~
