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By the end of the story, the trees on the side of the road were casting long shadows over the car. Ian and I were both on our sides in our reclined seats, our heads resting on our hands. Though Ian had been facing me the whole time, he’d barely looked at me once. He had been lost in the memory, telling his story more to himself than to me.
“You’re worth loving?” I said. “Those were the last words your mother said to you?”
I expected him to look away, the way he tended to when the conversation got personal. But this time he did not. He looked directly into my eyes and nodded.
I wanted to touch his face. Even if just for a moment. I wanted to reach over, lay my palm on his cheek and run my fingertips down to his chin. And then maybe lean over the console and kiss him. Just for a moment.
But despite his soft expression and the way he was gazing into my eyes, I had no real reason to believe that he was feeling the same way I was. He was just having a moment of vulnerability. And the last thing I wanted to do was take advantage of it.
I stuck to the topic at hand. “Is that why you reacted so strongly when we were talking about Greta? Because I told you that you were worth loving?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But it wasn’t just that. It was earlier, too. When we were at my house.”
I was pretty sure I hadn’t said anything about his lovability at his house. If anything, I’d made it pretty clear I didn’t want to be within a hundred miles of him.
“Really?” I said. “Because if I recall correctly, I quite literally started running in the other direction when you told me you wanted me to drive you back to the city. I don’t think I was making either of us seem particularly lovable at that moment.”
He smiled bittersweetly. “It was before then,” he said. “When I was in the shed.”
“Looking for your keys?”
He nodded. “That notebook I was just telling you about? The one my counselor gave me to write down all my memories? I lost it twelve years ago. I thought it was gone forever. But when I went to the shed to find my spare key, I accidently knocked over a shelf full of boxes. And all of a sudden, there it was, in a box that split open. After all these years, just sitting there waiting for me.”
“Is that why you were in the shed for such a long time?” I asked. “Because you were reading your journal?”
“I only read the first paragraph. I wanted to skip straight to the end and read those last words. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t know if I could handle it.”
“But it’s not like you’d forgotten what she said. How could reading the words on paper be different than hearing them in your head?”
He rolled onto his back and stared up at the car’s ceiling. “It’s hard to explain. When I was in high school, I was constantly rereading it. I was so lonely that first year at boarding school, you know? Everything I knew was gone. Not just my mother. My home, my school, my friends. But when I was writing my memories, it felt like my mom was there with me. Like it was our book and we were writing it together. And every time I would reread it, even years later, I felt as close to her as I did then. It was like she was there with me again and I was hearing her words in her voice.”
“But isn’t that something you’d want?” I said. “To hear your mother’s voice again?”
He thought it over for a few moments. “If you’d asked me that when I was twenty years old, I would have said yes in a heartbeat. I was still young. I still believed everything she’d ever said to me.” He rolled back onto his side to face me. “But it’s been seventeen years. Seventeen years, and I’m still waiting for it to be true. I just don’t know if I can handle hearing her voice in my head telling me I’m worth loving and realizing that I just don’t believe her anymore.”
It’s funny the way a person’s face changes the more intimately you get to know them—how a mean or selfish person becomes less and less attractive and a good and kind person grows more and more beautiful. It’s like you stop seeing a face and start seeing a soul. What’s on the inside becomes reflected on the outside. And at that moment, with his eyes looking into mine and his soul laid bare, no man had ever looked so lovely as Ian Dunning. He was a good person with a loving and lonely heart. When I first laid eyes on him this morning, I thought he wasn’t bad looking. Now he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen.
I touched his cheek with my fingertips. His unblinking eyes were fixed on mine. When I laid my full hand against his skin, he turned his face so that his lips could brush against my palm. Just that tiny little touch of his lips sent a surge of energy through me. I wanted him, body and mind and skin and soul. Almost without realizing it, I leaned over the console, slid my hand around the back of his head, and pulled him toward me. In response, he cupped my head and pulled me toward him. And then he kissed me. And it was no ordinary kiss. It was the kind of kiss I thought only existed in books. Instant fire, all-consuming. I had to have him.
And he was clearly burning with the exact same fire. Hands suddenly at my sides, he grabbed my waist and pulled me over the console. Two seconds later, my whole upper body was draped over his. His warm hands caressed the bare skin of my back beneath my T-shirt, and my hands pulled his shirt out of his waistband. I ran my fingers up to his chest. He was hard, well-built.
I began manically unbuttoning his shirt, and a moment later I was pushing it off his shoulders. When he raised the seat back into sitting position, I straddled his hips. We were now upright in the driver’s seat, engaged in what could only be described as a passionate make-out.
As I ran my fingers through his hair, his warm hands crawled up my stomach and over my bra. I sighed. He moaned. I pulled my shirt over my head as he unhooked my bra strap. And there we sat, skin to skin, his hand squeezing my breast as his lips crept down my neck toward my cleavage. I unbuttoned the top button of his pants and pulled down his zipper.
It was at that moment that we heard a knock on the window. Ian’s hand on my bare breast, my fingers on his zipper, we turned our heads toward the sound.
Outside our window was a very old man in a very blue uniform. He was holding up a flashlight even though it wasn’t dark, and looking at Ian. He did not look happy. He then glanced over at me. Okay, now he looked happy.
“All right, you two,” he said, holding his badge against the window. “Party’s over. Put your clothes on and step out of the car.”
CHAPTER 34
Ian
