Maria opened herself to a monster. It took her life, her soul, and mine, too.
Tainted, damaged, and all laid out on the table in the open, and Tatum still let me in. She let me sink, bury myself in her.
She doesn’t see a murderer. She sees the man I am today, and fuck if I’m not starting to see me, too.
For a moment, I wonder if she knows that she is the first woman I have been inside. A younger man may have burdened himself with worry that he didn’t perform adequately. She came hard, just as hard as me, so I will be damned if I let that bother me.
Son of a bitch. Tonight really fucking happened, and with a woman like her.
Restless, I finally give in and lift the small journal in my hands. I almost give in to temptation and open it, but then I decide I am going to sleep so fucking well tonight that I don’t need it. I will wake up and open it tomorrow, craving her words, her desires.
***
I sleep like a fucking baby, and when I awake, I can damn near feel the shit-ass grin of a kid who just hours ago came inside a woman.
I wrote it, she made it happen, and I am going to read what the hell happens next before even taking a piss.
Tonight, after Jonathon and I ate dinner, we had made love.
It was the type of making love you know forever changes you.
He had watched my every reaction, his rough hands caressing my body as his impressive length impaled me. Only, it hadn’t been like I was being impaled, fucked, used, simply seeking a release. It had been a lifelong connection. One a person sought, needed, and desired their entire life.
From childhood, it was family. When you were school aged, it was your very best friend. As young adults, it was that first crush or, as we called it, your first love.
It had been the type of connection that was revered, cherished, sought after, and found throughout so many steps in one’s lifetime, yet too quickly became a part of a past we looked fondly on in times of reflection or times like this, when one was surrounded by something more beautiful than they ever dared dream could be part of their reality.
The fairy tale. The connection, the fall, the acceptance that only in books comes so easily. It was not fiction, not now as I lay here, feeling his breath against my skin, smelling his manly, earthy scent.
The moment we had come together for the first time, I had felt the presence of all those I had loved and had loved me all meld into one. In his arms, I had felt invincible, whole, treasured, and safer than I had in my entire life.
He was asleep now, his arms wrapped around me tightly, and I wanted for nothing more than this. But the ache of knowing it would come to an end when I left to go back to California coursed through me. The thought of this moment becoming a memory was unfathomable.
I took a deep breath of what was real and beside me now—him. Then I exhaled the painful thought of what was near.
In my heart of hearts, I lived with not a single doubt that this man, this strong, beautiful man, would be one of those memories I cherished until age erased the memory or time ended.
“Well, I guess I should have taken a piss,” I grumble as I get up and toss the dose of reality on the new mattress.
***
Coming out of prison, I needed a place. Shaw asked me to move in with him. I told him I couldn’t, so he offered what used to be an apartment over the gym that he used for storage and gave me the space to sort out my shit.
The boxes in the main part were cleared out. The bedrooms, however, were not. I never went into the other rooms. I slept on the mattress in the living room, never in the room Shaw stored his and some of my family things.
That room with a small kitchen was bigger than my cell. The bathroom had walls. It was fucking paradise compared to my cell at Central Michigan’s Correctional Facility.
When Shaw died, Jagger and Tatiana moved into his place next door and offered to help revamp my dingy digs on several occasions. I never wanted it before. I still don’t want it for me, but now I have no choice since Buck’s here. Like me, Buck needs a place. It’s time to pay it forward.
I stand in the doorway I have avoided for far too long. I don’t want to see Shaw’s stuff. I don’t want anything to resemble a home in this godforsaken state I exist in.