Those words were a punch in the gut and I could barely breathe as I watched Ben, shaking and in stages, get down on his knees.
Silent, shaking as much as he was, I crouched down beside him.
Shoulder to shoulder, I helped Ben start work on his oven. We mixed the cement with an attachment to his drill and we troweled a thin layer over the cement pad and then slowly, carefully, started to build something. “What are you hiding from?” I asked.
“Done a lot of bad things. To a lot of people. Here’s as safe as anywhere.”
“What are you waiting for?” I asked after we’d been working for a long time.
“Something that’s never gonna come. Not for me.” I wanted to ask more, but we were three layers up and it was obvious he was getting tired.
“You want a break?” I asked.
“No.”
But a few seconds later he was coughing and then he was bent over coughing, holding a handkerchief from his back pocket over his mouth as he hacked away.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said. “But let’s call it a day.”
“Really?” I looked down at the bucket of cement. It was going to harden and be ruined.
He got to his feet, refusing help from my outstretched hand.
“Yeah, too hot.” He walked away, looking bent and frail.
I watched him walk to the trailer and then I bent and kept working a little bit longer, spreading the cement on with a trowel. Placing the bricks, scraping away the curl of excess. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Until the cement was gone and the first few layers of the brick oven were in place.
Ben’s trailer was silent, his hiding spot secure.
—
Later, I took another cold shower and then, still too hot and too out of sorts to eat, I crawled into bed.
I’d made that promise to read the book, but I didn’t want the book.
I wanted Dylan.
In the bedside table I practically heard the phone taunting me.
Annie McKay—runs away from her old life only to keep living by its rules. It was sad.
And it made me angry.
I opened the drawer, grabbed the phone, and made a deal with myself.
If he’d called or texted, I would call him back. If he hadn’t, I’d forget about this whole situation, finish my book, and if and when I felt like it—masturbate on my own like a normal person.
And honestly, why would he call? I wouldn’t call me. I would quickly forget the whole thing.
My first ever orgasm to the sound of his voice probably didn’t even register in his life.
I turned on the phone, my heart pounding in my clumsy fingertips.
Call me.
That was it. One text message.
And say what, I wondered. I’m a freak. A total mess. I don’t know what I want, other than it’s not what I have.
Other than it’s more.
I didn’t give myself a chance to be scared. Or nervous. I called him back. I was utterly and totally compelled by that demand.
“Layla.” He answered right away. How had his voice gotten so familiar? I felt like I’d been listening to his voice on a loop for a week.
“Yes.”
He sighed and that was it. Just a sigh and then silence. And I didn’t know how to fill it. All I knew, really, was to keep my head down and work. I’d done one audacious thing in my life, and that was steal three thousand dollars from my husband and run out in the middle of the night.
And that night—with Dylan. That had been pretty audacious. So two, I guess.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Fine.” My voice was shrill. Strange. And I closed my eyes, praying for some kind of map in this situation. For that voiceless instinct to rise up and lead me out of these terrible, dark woods. But the instinct must have been taking a nap, because it was silent. “I’m fine.”
Memories of that night landed like sparks from a fire against my skin.
The brush of my thumb across my hip bone.
The chapped skin of my lips.
The way the bottom of my foot felt hot.
The quilt against my nipples.
The way I’d felt…for a while there…like I could do anything to myself and it would feel good.
Good. What a ridiculous understatement.
For a while there I’d craved everything. Anything.
The things in the half-read book, the things those girls did in those trucks at the truck stop. The things his voice alluded to.
I wanted all of it. And with equal force I wanted to not want any of it.