talk, I want to hold you and tell you how sorry I am I messed up so badly." I hold my breath. He probably doesn't realize, but we're actually talking. "I don't want to have my eyes on the road, but on you when I promise it will never happen again."
That's the sweetest thing he's ever told me and I badly want to believe him.
"There's no excuse for what I've done. I should have reached out. I should have called you at the bar. At least once... I should have explained."
"Why didn't you?" That's the million dollar question for me.
"I'm not sure."
"You're not getting off this easy," I declare. "You're not a kid who doesn't know why he does things. You're a grown man. A responsible one at that, given your choice of profession. So tell me 'cause..."
He raises a pacifying hand from the steering wheel to stop my torrent of angry words. "All right, all right, gimme a minute."
We're home. He parks in my garage and fumbles with the beeper. The door slides down behind us and he cuts off the engine. I watch him staring at his hands on the steering wheel. His grip is so tense, his knuckles are white.
Time passes and the timer kills the light. Still neither of us makes a move to get out of the car.
"First, I didn't call because I was a dick head."
That's for sure, but not really helpful.
"I missed you so much, calling you was not gonna cut it. It was gonna be like putting salt on a gaping wound. So I decided to wait a bit." He takes a deep breath and in the semidarkness of the garage, I see his hands moving. "Did you ever have to do something so painful that you decided to postpone it?"
My answer is an absolute no. When I have something unpleasant to do, I do it right away to get it over with. No point in having something you dread hanging over your head for days or even hours. But I'm guessing he's not built the same.
"And then the longer you wait the more difficult it gets..." he shifts and reaches out for my hand. "It took me two months to get my head out of my ass. When I did, I swapped hours and rode back to you but you were gone ..."
"That was Labor Day weekend," I whisper putting the dots together.
"How do you know?"
"I left a letter for you with Sam."
"I never got it." He squeezes my hand a little tighter.
"Yeah, he told me. He was out of town that night and no one else knew about it."
We both sigh at the same time and chuckle.
He bends over and brushes my lips with his. His kiss is chaste and pure and ... loving?
"But then Prince asked us to join the Defiance chapter," he says. "Florida was tempting, but what sealed the deal was that he told me you were back in Point Lookout."
He bends over again, and this time, it's a real kiss. One of those that melts my heart. It's not chaste; it speaks of desire.
Doc pulls away, and resting his forehead against mine asks, "Can I safely assume we're done with the talking now?"
I nod bumping our noses together and giggle. Six months of tension have magically evaporated and I'm feeling giddy.
"Can we have sex now?"
"Right this instant?"
The man is incorrigible.
Before I even get a chance to explain that I'm six month pregnant and there's no way we're doing this in the car, Birdy saves me the trouble.
She opens the connecting door and switches on the light. My sister always had a great sense of timing.
Unaware that she could possibly have interrupted something or killed a magic moment, she looks at the washing machine and then at us. She says, "Oh, there you are. What are you doing in the dark? And how come there's not a clean towel in the house?"
16
Doc
" A lone at last ," Bunny says as I close the door on the last departing visitor. Between most of the members of the Ryan family tribe and the Tornadoes who rode over to help Brains get home, we haven't had a second to ourselves.
Bunny gets up from her rocking chair and contemplates the mess. Paper plates and plastic cups, half empty food containers and beer cans. Birdy did offer to stay and help clean up, but I