Page 9 of Born to Run Back
My hand moved almost without conscious thought, sliding beneath the soft cotton of my shirt, fingertips tracing the curve of my collarbone, circling hardened nipples in the dark. I’d never been one for elaborate fantasies. Sex had always been straightforward, practical, a physical need met with efficient partners who knew well enough to leave afterward.
But this was different. This was dangerous.
I closed my eyes and let myself imagine his hands instead of mine. Large hands, calloused from whatever work he did when he wasn’t kneeling in ravines, trying to save dying boys. I’d felt their strength that night, the way he’d held me steady when everything inside me was shredding apart. Now I imagined them moving lower, mapping the contour of loneliness I’d been carrying for so long I’d forgotten what it felt like to be touched with intention.
Wants. Needs.
Aches. Desires.
The fantasy built slowly, deliberately. His voice in my ear, that same low murmur that had anchored me to reality when reality had become unbearable. “I know,” he’d say again, only this time it would mean something different. This time, he’d know the exact color of my need, the precise pressure required to make me forget, temporarily, at least, that I was a woman who lived entirely in her own head.
My fingers found my own slick heat, slipping between sensitive, smooth skin, and my breathing changed, becoming something ragged and desperate. In the darkness behind my closed eyes, he wasn’t a stranger anymore but something more dangerous—a presence that understood the particular brand of emptiness I carried, the way trauma could hollow you out until you were nothing but skin stretched over wanting.
I imagined him above me, those heartbreakingly sad blue eyes focused entirely on my face, reading the map of my violent gratitude. I imagined the weight of him, solid and real in a way that nothing else in my life had been for a long, long time. And I imagined him moving inside me with that same careful attention he’d shown that night, the same steadiness that had kept me from floating away entirely.
Then, before I could stop myself, I imagined what it would feel like if he fucked me. Hard. Fast. Rough. That desperation surfacing from deep inside of us.
The climax, when it came, was both release and devastation. My body ached against my own touch, pleasure cresting through me like a wave, leaving me gasping and empty and somehow more alone than ever before.
And then, because I was apparently determined to torture myself in every possible way, I started to cry.
Not the dramatic sobbing of that night in the ravine, but something quieter, more shameful. The tears of a woman who’d just gotten herself off to the memory of a stranger’s kindness, who’d turned thirty-seven minutes of shared humanity into something perverse and terrible and utterly pathetic.
I pulled my hand away as if I’d been burned, curling into myself under the cold sheets. The satisfaction was already curdling into disgust, the warm afterglow replaced by the familiar chill of self-loathing. This was what I’d become: a woman who manufactured intimacy from trauma, who confused kindness with connection, who touched herself in the dark and pretended a stranger’s arms were still holding her together, keeping her from falling apart.
But God help me, it had felt sofuckinggood. It had felt real in a way nothing else had for longer than I cared to admit. And that realization was perhaps the most horrifying thing of all.
I lay there in the terrible aftermath, watching the red numbers on my clock creep closer to 2:30, knowing I’d still go. Knowing I’d still drive through the empty streets and add my painted rock to the “conversation,” still stand in the place where he’d held me and pretend that stones and flowers could sustain whatever this was between us.
Because the alternative—accepting he was gone, that those thirty-seven minutes were all I’d ever have—was unthinkable.
Even if it was killing me, one sleepless night at a time.
The tears dried eventually, leaving salty tracks on my cheeks and the taste of bitter shame in my mouth. I pulled the sheet up to my chin and tried to convince myself that this was yet another phase, another way of processing grief that would eventually fade into something more manageable.
But I knew better.
I was falling in love with a ghost, and ghosts, by definition, couldn’t love you back.
Theo
Tuesday, 4:30 a.m., mere hours later
The stones sat in the passenger seat, smooth and cold, something that had never known life, laying dead against the leather upholstery. I’d spent the previous afternoon collecting them from the creek behind the school again, each one chosen with the kind of care I usually reserved for lesson planning—in another life, anyway.
Size mattered. Weight mattered. The way they felt in my calloused palm, solid and real and somehow significant in a way I couldn’t articulate even to myself, it all mattered.
Four stones tonight. More than my usual. But I’d been having that dream again, the one where her face dissolved into steam and shadow just as I reached for her, and I woke up with my heart hammering and the taste of rain and vanilla in my mouth. The stones were an offering, a prayer to whatever gods governed chance encounters and impractical, doomed connections.
I parked in the exact spot where her Honda had been that first night, engine ticking in the November darkness, cooling steadily in the crisp desert air. The ritual had its own rhythm now, a liturgy I’d developed without conscious thought.
First, I’d sit in the car for exactly five minutes, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, listening for any sound that might indicate that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t alone.
Then I’d gather the stones and walk to the growing cairn we’d built together, one rock at a time, week after week, laying a foundation for… something, I hoped.
Tonight felt different, though. Charged. Like the air before a thunderstorm during a summer drought, heavy with possibility and the promise of rain.
The flowers were fresh—white roses again, their petals luminous in the dim moonlight. She’d been here recently, maybe earlier tonight. The thought sent electricity jolting through my chest, that familiar and desperate need.
