“Wait!” she said, but only so she could put Gracie in a cage.
“I’m not a virgin anymore,” she whispered, as he backed her toward her house.
“Neither am I,” Mitch whispered back, as he followed her into her home.
Seventeen years before, they might have been deliberate, careful, gentle.
Seventeen years later, they were in a rush, for fear of whatever might still come between them. Neither of them was going to let that happen. This time, nothing was going to stop them. By the time they reached the edge of her bed, a powerfulness of emotion took them over, a furiousness. They pushed and pulled at each other as if they were angry-at life, at fate, at each other. They made love as if they were arguing, as if they were battling over who was to blame, and who would pay, and whether anything could ever make up for what they had lost, and whether terrible, soul-crushing debts could ever be paid in full.
He pulled her T-shirt up over her breasts. She worked her hands between their two bodies, until she could find his belt buckle. He ripped at the button and zipper on her shorts until he got them loose. She got his belt off, got the button and zipper of his jeans open, and pushed her hands up his bare skin under his shirt, onto his chest.
He rolled her roughly onto her back.
She grabbed the back of his head and pulled his face down to make him kiss her.
He pushed her legs apart with his knee. He pushed his hands down under her panties, down onto her thighs, between her legs.
He pushed into her, she pulled him into her.
They were violent with each other, and wild. Abby felt a great pressure build up in her chest and then it burst out in a great cry that felt as if it scraped the bottom of her soul. Her tears started flowing halfway through their passion and then wouldn’t stop, but just kept coming out of her in painful sobs. When she cried, he held her tighter, so tight it hurt her, but instead of fighting against the pain she welcomed it and let it hurt without telling him to stop. She heard him say her name over and over, but was afraid she was only imagining that he sounded as if he was pleading. When it was over, when they were panting and exhausted, they still clung together as if their sweat were adhesive. Finally, they relaxed their grip, and let each other go.
Mitch rolled over, onto his back, and stared at the ceiling.
Abby moved a few inches away from him, turning her face to the wall.
After a few minutes, she said, “Why did you leave?”
He didn’t answer.
Both of them thought, This was a huge mistake.
“I take the pill,” she told him, after their silence had gone on way too long.
It would be all right if you didn’t, Mitch almost said, shocking himself.
He didn’t say it. Instead he turned toward her in the bed and started to reach for her.
She stopped him. Pushing her hands against his bare chest, she worked herself up into a sitting position above him. “You have to go.”
“What?”
“People are coming early, to help me clean up and rebuild. You have to go.”
“You don’t want them to know I was here?”
“No,” Abby said, turning to face him. “I don’t want anyone ever to know.” She swallowed, ignored the renewed pain in her heart, made her voice go firm and confident, made herself remember the pain he had caused her. And still refused to explain. “It was just one time, Mitch. That’s all. We were just making up for something we didn’t get to do a long time ago. That’s all it was. There won’t be any more.”
He felt as if she had stabbed him.
“You’re right,” he told her, his struggle for words making it come out harsh.
“I know I am,” she said, her fight for control making it come out cold. “We’ll pretend we haven’t even talked to each other, okay?”
“Sure.” He rolled away from her, to start grabbing his clothes. “Fine.”
“Good,” she said, as she stared at his naked back, and fought her tears.
You’re not going to do it to me again, she thought. I won’t let you.
Mitch turned at her bedroom door to look back at her in the bed. He felt as if he’d been struck by lightning, blinded by its light so that everything looked dark now. It reminded him painfully of when he had taken his last look up at her bedroom window on the night everything had changed for them. All the light was going out. For a little while on this one night, the world had lit up again for him, and now it was all going out again. He couldn’t love her without hurting her in terrible ways, and so it was better to try not to love her at all. And, obviously, she didn’t care anything about him after all these years. In allowing him to make love to her-have sex with her-she had only been scratching an itch that had lingered from a long time ago.
He couldn’t figure out a way to say good-bye that didn’t diminish what had just happened between them, any more than it was already demeaned, so he didn’t say anything at all. He just walked out of her bedroom, and then out of her house.
Patrick stood in the shadows of the cottonwood tree outside Abby’s front fence line, and watched a tall man exit from her side door. It was four o’clock in the morning, and the sun wasn’t up yet. Patrick had arrived two hours earlier, had seen the unfamiliar and expensive car parked on her road. He had driven past, turned into the first cutoff, parked his truck out of sight, and walked back to wait and watch. Abby didn’t know anybody with a late-model Saab. Hell, she didn’t know anybody with a Saab. It wasn’t the kind of car that anybody in Small Plains drove, not because they didn’t want to, but because it would have been impossible to get repairs done locally.
The tall man had to get a lot closer before Patrick recognized him.
Mitch Newquist. In a way, Patrick wasn’t even surprised. He had heard that Mitch was back. He wasn’t even surprised that Abby had let him back in, only that it had happened so fast. Mitch couldn’t have been back more than a day or two, and he was already sleeping with her?
Patrick stood by the side of the road, fighting the urge to kill somebody.
He hadn’t felt this kind of cold/hot anger in years, not since his younger brother had told him, with a snide, satisfied, smirking air, that Sarah Francis wanted Mitch Newquist, instead of him. Patrick wasn’t going to let that happen again. There was too much at stake to lose it to a bastard who thought he could just waltz back into town and take over again.
When Abby walked into her kitchen at five A.M., Patrick was already there.
Startled to see him, and way beyond anything called “angry,” she said, in a hostile, shaking voice, “What are you doing here?”
He turned around quickly at the sound of her voice.
“You mad, Abs? You mean, what am I doing here now, instead of last night, when you could have used some help? I’m really sorry I didn’t come over. We had some storm damage on the ranch, and I was stuck taking care of that. I tried calling but our lines were down. I didn’t even know you’d had trouble, or I would have dropped everything and come over.” His face was a mix of expressions-apology, sympathy, surprise at the way she was speaking to him, and also something that looked like frustration. “Listen, I hate to mention something so petty when you’ve got a whole barn down in your backyard, but while we’re standing here-have you seen my sunglasses?”
“What?”
“My shades. Damn things cost fifty bucks. I don’t want to lose them.”