Page 68 of The Caretaker
“I haven’t felt like either for a long while,” he admitted.
There were more shots of me, of us. Hugging, kissing, feeding each other, playing in the snow.
The final shot showcased Solace with his head thrown back, eyes closed and mouth open, my hand wrapped around the slender column of his neck. My hand was too large. Too big to have any business being around him like that. He didn’t seem to mind. Didn’t even seem to notice, caught up in rapture as he was.
“That was my third orgasm of the night,” he said, coming up next to me. “It was a long night. I didn’t even know you’d captured it until I printed the photos out.”
“Was this our last night together?” I didn’t know how I knew that, but everything in me screamed that I was right. Maybe it was the way the veins in my forearms bulged, as if I were straining to hold on to him. To not lose him.
“Yes. Do you remember?” His breathing went shallow, as if excited that my answer might be yes, or maybe it was fear he felt. Fear that my answer would be no.
“Not yet,” I said instead of a flat-out no, trying my best not to hurt him.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s alright.”
I moved closer to him, resting my hands along the side of his throat with total awareness of the precious thing I held between them.
“Don’t be careful with me,” he said. “You don’t have to be.”
I loosened a bit of my restraint, feeling the soft flesh compress beneath my palms. Solace tipped his head back, giving me permission to do as I pleased while his own hands reacquainted themselves with my chest.
“Why didn’t you show me all this?” I asked. “The photos could have helped.”
Solace looked at me as if to say they weren’t even helping now. I conceded with a sigh.
“Still, you couldn’t have known that they wouldn’t.” I said it without judgment, without blame. We were past picking apart what had been done wrong, what could have been done differently, but the fighter in me had to say it. I swept my thumb over the pulsing vein at his neck.
“I thought about showing you. That first day you came here, and so many days afterward. I was torn, for all the reasons I’ve already mentioned. I also didn’t want you to feel obligated to fall in love with me simply because these photos proved that you were in love with me before. I wanted you to remember me on your own. And if not, I wanted you to fall in love with me again, without being swayed or pressured to. That’s not what I wanted for you. That’s not what I wanted forus.”
I thought back on all he’d done to help me to remember. The places he’d taken me to that we’d likely visited before. The things he’d said that I now knew were said to me in the past.The photo shoot.
Something else popped into my head, something he’d said to me after my near mental breakdown at his grandfather’s farmhouse.
“I’d like to believe that every time I share something with you, it’s helping, or will help, in some way. That’s my way of fighting in return.”
He’d been fighting for me. For us.
“You called me Care Bear.”
“Yes.” He laughed, the sound a mix of nostalgia, sadness, and hope. “That was my nickname for you, because you care sodamn much.”
“Did I have a nickname for you?”
“More like a term of endearment, but I’m not going to tell you what it is.”
“Why not?”
“You get to come up with something on your own now, because if I tell you, I’ll always wonder if you’re saying it because you think you’re supposed to or if it’s because you mean it. Because you feel it.”
I nodded, taking in his eyes, his hair, his lips…anything I could use to come up with something fitting for him. That could wait until later. We had time. “Am I everything I used to be?” I asked, breath hitching, the backs of my eyes stinging.
“No,” he said, angling his head at me. “You’re so much more.”
“Tell me how you like to be kissed, Solace. How you like to be touched by me.”
“You can kiss and touch me however you want—”
“No,” I said. “That answer doesn’t work for me, and it doesn’t work for you either. Help me remember.Remindme.”
