When she paused, he slid off the truck bed as if he had done two straight days of physical training. She half-expected him to belt out an ooh-rah and drop and give her fifty. Through ragged inhales, he said, “No way I’m finishing like that. Too many years finished like that, alone, not to feel every part of you around every inch of me.”
He pulled her into a kiss that soothed and tempted then eased her back on the blankets. Kisses along her arms and neck became a precursor to his dedication to his mission: kneading and sucking and pinching the pebbled nubs of her breasts until she was near-frantic with need. He contrasted his torture with a tender kiss at her navel.
She shivered.
“You will always be the most beautiful sculpture I’ve ever seen. Artist as art.”
His voice was sandpaper; his gaze seared hers.
Livie believed him. She did not question if he saw anyone but her. No family resemblance, no others who had come before, nothing but the moments they alone shared and this one: her fire to hold back future darkness, her infinite now.
He bit open the condom packet and rolled the protection in place. Watching his hand sheathe himself singed the raw nerve endings already begging for his invading presence.
When she looped her legs around his hips, he entered her inside a strong embrace. And when her internal muscles stretched and gripped and clamped him such that every glide presented another test of control, a monumental test she was swiftly failing, he alternated excruciatingly decadent grinding strokes with rapid-fire piston-like thrusts until they transcended together. Bathed in the soft glow that twinkle lights cast over a barrier that was no longer there, her ecstasy chased a notion that the moment might replace her long-ago happiness and ruin her chance at greatness. She pushed the belief aside and allowed herself to climb past mind-bending joy to a place where she would always have his light in darkness.
* * *
For three consecutive days after Christmas, Wes and Olive largely lived in the barn. He woke beside her on the bed of Clem’s truck before sun-up and snuck out to start chores. By mid-morning, he brought Olive coffee and breakfast, and they’d make love and sleep again until afternoon. After that, it was all about her art. She toiled away, without much sound, just the clay and her hands, and he finished the truck’s final installs of reupholstered seats and interior trim. They established an easy rhythm that neither really believed could last, but that didn’t stop them from trying to make the now infinite.
Not once had he awoken with muddy feet, smelling like the land. Peace, he supposed.
The family knew what was happening, even teased Wes about it when Livie wasn’t around. Chase had moved on to Kansas City for another rodeo, and Nat shuffled his chores to accommodate what he called “the gettin’ hour,” which was a helluva lot less embarrassing than Mona’s favorite southernisms of the week: “squattin’ in the cucumber patch” and “prayin’ with the knees up.” They meant well—hell, he had done the same to Nat when January came back—but that didn’t stop the feeling that his family was all up in his grill.
On day four, Wes awoke to a loud clank from Olive’s side of the barn. Clay and Randy had both warned about possums getting into the feed and digging at building corners to find cold-weather shelter. Wes lay in a toasty cocoon beside a naked Olive. The longer he remained, the more he entertained the idea of an animal sneaking in to ruin all of her hard work with a swipe or two of monstrous claws. He slid from her touch, pulled on a pair of loose pants, and snagged his cell phone for just enough light to not wake her.
His feet crunched their way through the dusting of dry hay, around the bales, to her workspace. The giant statue lay under several strategically-draped cloths, untouched from what he could see. After a body-shivering
yawn and a thorough search of the possible entry points for critters, he discovered the source of the noise that had woke him: a metal carving tool that had fallen from the line and struck the edge of her worktable. He set the tool back in place.
The statue mocked him. One colossal temptation.
How would she know?
In the dead of night, ideas took on a life of their own. Wes had found this to be true during his many exploits in town, both as a teenager and an adult. One minute you’re bored, and the next you’re convincing your friend to tip a cow or mount up some married woman who taught you arithmetic in grade school. But this—goddamned but he was proud of her, and he had no idea why. Righteously, he believed first peek should come to those who posed for, and fucked, the artist.
He sneaked over to the tallest part, likely what came from their uniform-as-foreplay encounter, and lifted the drop cloth from the ground up. Cell phone as a flashlight, he angled the blue glow at strategic angles, working his way up the piece.
The boots alone were incredible. Unlaced, as in many of Wes’s battles when a mortar fucked you out of sleep and you had less than two seconds to clear the area before you met your maker. That she knew that subtlety made him wonder if she inferred it or if Daniel had told her.
Daniel.
Wes waited for the familiar, crippling sting to wrap his chest and squeeze the breath from him that his friend could no longer take, but the moment came and went, and Wes found that he could stay in the moment, even smile at the story of Daniel pissing in his own boots during the Crucible, the final test to become a Marine.
Peace, he supposed.
All Olive.
He lifted the cloth higher, past intricate bunches of pant legs, to the hem of the top and beyond. With every inch revealed, it became real, this thing discussed but never seen, up and up and up, until he realized the extent of it—other legs and arms and people, the bigger picture so much more than he imagined but still concealed enough to be lost to him. He swung the light back to the bronze Marine, eye to eye with the name patch.
Meier.
His heart jolted into his throat. He dropped his phone.
12
Wes’s cell phone clattered to the platform, made a noise louder than the one that had woken him. Didn’t fucking matter. The blue glow blinded him. He snatched it back into his hands.
Beyond the partition, she called his name.