Page 60 of The Spider & the Storm

Maybe, if I'm not careful, I'll get caught with her.

And would that really be so bad?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MASSACHUSETTS, PRESENT DAY

Somewhere in my mid-twenties, I’d met a girl named Morgan.

She’d bumped into me during my shift at the cemetery. I had just finished weeding the area surrounding my parents’ graves when I spotted the pretty young woman, weeping over the grave of her sister’s stillborn son.

“I feel so weird,” she said through her tears, accepting a tissue from the pack I always kept in my pocket for moments like this. “I didn’t even know him. And it’s such bullshit that I never will.”

“We often mourn for two different reasons,” I replied while thinking about her poor sister, unable to comprehend how it must’ve felt to carry a baby for months, only to bury him before getting the chance to hear him cry. “We mourn what once was, and we mourn the possibility of what could’ve been. Sometimes, we only mourn one or the other, and unfortunately, in your case, it’s obviously the latter. And you’re right; it is bullshit.”

I hadn’t intended anything to come from saying what I had. It’d been as much for her as it was for me, shedding a few tears myself for the parents who’d never been allowed to witness me becoming a somewhat-stable man with a college degree, driver’s license, and steady job. But my words touched something inside of her, and she collapsed into my arms, sobbing for her sister’s pain and the nephew she’d never get the chance to hold and know. I wiped her tears, surprised that Ipossessed the power to be so brazen with a stranger, especially an attractive member of the opposite sex.

And then, in a moment that was unexpected and unprovoked, she kissed me.

A full-blown make-out session ensued right there in the middle of the cemetery I worked at, only yards away from where my parents eternally lay. A chaotic frenzy of snaking tongues and tangled limbs, the taste of salt and sorrow mingling between our open mouths. She wove her hands into my hair, pulling tightly, holding on for dear life, almost as though if she let go, she’d be the next one to join those in their infinite slumber. In a breathless moment of sheer desperation, she asked if I had a condom, and of course, I didn’t because why would I? Sex with random women wasn’t something I’d engaged in … well, ever.

“Never mind. That’s okay,” she replied, panting as she quickly undid my belt buckle. “I’m on the pill.”

It’d been the most exciting, most careless, most insane thing I’d ever done in my life at that point, having unprotected sex with a woman I didn’t know in the shadows of the cemetery. But I couldn’t find a damn thing wrong in what we’d done together.

We’d needed a release. We’d needed fun. We’d needed the exhilaration of engaging in the most primal of things, the very lifeblood of what it meant to be a living, breathing human. Even if we’d both known we’d never see each other again—and we hadn’t.

And now, this woman—the one I still had yet to know the name of—reminded me of that moment in my life. Of Morganand that blip of time in which our paths had crossed. Of excitement and scandal and everything good about being alive when there was otherwise nothing good about it at all.

I had felt it the moment her hand grabbed mine and her pointed nail traced the lines embedded into my skin, like her intent was to commit every touch of ink to memory. I hadn’t wanted to feel it—God knew I’d spent long enough resisting this very thing. Connection. Interdependence. Intimacy on any point of the spectrum. But to deny that she’d reignited something that I had long ago left to die would’ve been a waste of time and proverbial breath.

It was there. I didn’t want it to be, but it was.

She sees me.

I had learned early in life that hope was often a foolish thing, meant only for those who hadn’t yet gotten sick of being let down. I knew better, and I couldn’t allow myself to want anything more than this time here, in this yard.

And yet …

It was so nice to sit with her on this bench in Blake’s backyard. To feel her presence, to share the air with someone else. And as the minutes passed, my comfort expanded, and my knees spread further, pressing my thigh deeper against hers almost absentmindedly until the fabric of my jeans was flush with the threads of her dress and the warmth of her body seeped through every fiber to awaken my nerves and heat the life pumping through my guarded heart.

It wasn't good. Iknewit as I barely heard what she'd said, too deafened by the blood whooshing through my ears, and still, I nodded, not wanting her to think I'd been ignoring her.

I shouldn't care.

Oh, but, God, I did.

It was already a beautiful night. The perfect example of autumn in New England. But the cinnamon and incense she'd injected into the air, combined with the smokiness of her voice, cocooned me in a serenity I'd never known before. There was an awareness that, once I emerged from this chrysalis, I'd remember this as the most gorgeous night of my life despite the cluster of guests who had just wandered out into the yard, chattering loudly and barking with abrupt bursts of laughter.

Our party of two on the bench fell as silent as my neighbors, both of our attention turned in the direction of the stragglers. And I found that even our silence was comfortable when it shouldn't have been, too comfortable for two people who didn't yet know each other's name, and the warning sirens in my head were ringing louder than any church bell in the city.

The group seemed to take particular interest in one of the flower beds, nodding with approval for a few moments before turning around and heading back inside without sparing a second to notice our presence.

When they were gone, the woman at my side said, “So, this might surprise you because I'm obviously the definition of everything sunshiny and sweet, but I really don't like parties.”

“Neither do I,” I replied.

“And yet you came anyway.” She laughed with a tiny shred of triumph and the tiniest, almost-undetectable bit of disbelief.

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