Breaking the Bully

Knowing it will be dark soon and I won’t be able to find my way back, I gather my remaining strength and turn for home—

And I run smack into a hard chest.

The scent of leather and citrus fills my nose and I wail brokenly, my heart flying into a gallop, life spreading back through my numb limbs.

Moore.

He’s here?

He’s here.

His beautiful, beloved eyes bore down into mine, trying to read me in that way I remember like yesterday. Desperate to read me. Hesitantly, his hands lift and cup my face, his thumbs brushing away the tears that are dripping from my eyes. “The flare. Was that goodbye, Allie?” His swallow is audible, his gaze nearly deranged with fear, hope, obsession. “Or do you need me?”

“I need you,” I wheeze, launching myself at him. Wrapping my arms around his neck, absorbing the hoarse prayers passing his lips, dizzy with happiness. Dizzy with relief. He’s here. He came back to me. “I love you, Moore. I love you. I don’t want to be without you anymore.”

“You were never without me, Allie,” he growls.

A sob rips free of my throat.

Of course I wasn’t without him. It was silly to think so.

He’s been close this whole time, waiting for a sign. A signal that I’d found my way well enough to know we’re right. We’re inevitable.

“I love you,” I chant, over and over, laying kisses on his face.

“I love you, too. I love you. I love you,” he says, passion vibrating his voice. We sink down to the ground, mouths joining and moaning, reuniting, hearts booming louder than any thunder I’ve ever heard. I wrap my legs around his hips, he lowers his zipper without taking those intense eyes from mine, filling me in one violent drive. And down in the valley, we come back to each other, making promises forever with our bodies and mouths and words, the future writing itself on our hearts.

Epilogue

Moore

Five Years Later

She’s always loved storms.

I’m her wildest one of all.

I’ve been let out from my pen, my love for Allie allowed to run free. It was tempered back in the days we lived in Perryville. Even the weekend we spent in the cabin, I was trying not to overwhelm her with the depth of my attachment. Love. Obsession. But in the last five years, I’ve learned how badly she needs overwhelming.

She needs to be taken outdoors and ridden roughly on her back while the rain fires like liquid bullets from the clouds. She needs to be watched, protected, possessed. Needs to know I’m there, even when she can’t see me.

Yeah, the obsession runs free now. Never to be corralled.

I watch from the shed on the edge of our property as she climbs out of her car, dressed for work in a long, black skirt, a heather gray, tucked-in blouse. High heels. My ring on her finger.

God, I’m so proud of my wife.

My Allie.

She’s working at a small news station now, an apprentice to the local meteorologist. Just like she dreamed, she is making a career out of studying the weather. Its patterns and moods. She comes home exhilarated from the work. Excited. Eager to tell me everything. Now that she’s been away from her father for five years, she’s become more animated, quicker to smile, and it makes my heart go fucking wild every single time.

Five years ago, I moved into the small, detached garage with Allie, the landlord charmed by the pair of lovebirds who couldn’t take their eyes off each other. The older woman believed we were college sweethearts in the first blush of love, when in reality, there was nothing innocent about what we engaged in after I moved in. Allie missed a week of classes because I couldn’t keep my cock out of her. We were even more uninhibited than we were at the cabin, because we’d admitted our love. We’d learned that life was a sham without each other. Nothing to hide anymore. Nowhere to hide—and no desire to try.

And nothing has changed.

If anything, we’re much wilder now.

Constantly gut starved for each other.

We’re saved from being co-dependent by our commitment to being emotionally healthy, as much as we can when we’re nursing a constantly deepening infatuation for one another. Allie goes to work for eight hours a day. So do I. The forced separation was excruciating in the beginning, but we’ve learned that it’s worth the pain once we reach this time of day, when we’re both back home, the night spread out in front of us.

I step out of the shed and she sees me, dropping her purse to run in my direction. My heart is locked in my throat, my fingers balling and flexing with the urgency to touch her. My wife. The other half of my soul.

Every piece of lumber I saw, every nail I pound is for her. The construction company I’ve built from the ground up is so she’ll be proud of me. So she’ll be glad she fired that flare gun in the valley one evening, calling me back to her.