Page 53 of Salvaged Heart
“Believe me, I could look at you naked all day, but I have plans for us, and most of them require clothes.”
“Funny,” I scoffed. All the plans I have for you require the complete opposite.” I half-lunged for him in the hopes of pulling him back into bed, but he was too far away, and I ended up flopping out onto the floor instead.
“Perfect, you’re up. Get dressed and come downstairs. Don’t take too long." With that, he was out the door. I heard him practically skipping down the stairs.
Reluctantly, I did what he said. We had showered a few hours ago and passed out immediately after, so I just tugged on the clothes he'd thrown my way, brushed my teeth, tried to calm my sex-tousled hair, and followed him downstairs.
Anders was sitting at the kitchen counter, coffee cup in hand, gazing out the window over the kitchen sink at the lake. We had finished the room before Anders’ doctor’s appointment except for hanging a few light fixtures and installing the backsplash, which was lucky as the renovation was now behind schedule, thanks to us spending a long weekend in bed. It was a weekend well spent, in my opinion, learning about each other’s bodies and all the ways we could make the other come apart.
We hadn’t taken that final step together, not yet, but we had done just about everything else two horny, sex-crazed men could do to one another. I had thought Anders’ fingers had played me like an instrument, but it was nothing compared to what he had done to me with his tongue later that night. Of course, I had to have a go myself. A smile turned up the corner of my mouth at the memory of how he’d looked sprawled out on his front, head thrashing as I’d worked my fingers into him, how he’d tasted when I pushed my tongue in alongside.
“What are you thinking about?” His playful voice snapped me back to the present. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.” He passed me my coffee cup, and I inhaled the steam coming off it.
“You planning on telling me about these plans now?”
I crowded him into the counter. I set my cup down at his side, took his from him, and placed it down as well. I took his mouth in mine, reveling in the sigh that left his lips as he kissed me back fervently. I could never get tired of kissing this man, of how his body melted into mine as he deepened it and curled his long fingers into the hair at the base of my neck. It was all-consuming, and my entire being ached with the desperate need to carry him back upstairs and keep him captive in bed for just a little bit longer. The way he rocked into me told me he wasn’t as opposed to that idea as he had been letting on, but I somehow found the willpower to pull away from him. His face grinned back at me with a lust-filled smile.
“Hard to do when you're kissing me like that.” He muttered, swiping the pad of his thumb across his lower lip. All it did was make me want to kiss him again. “I’d like to go to a meeting. I feel good, but routine is important.”
I nodded and nuzzled against his cheek. That was fair. I felt a warmth of pride in my chest that he had been able to recognize it. “And after that?” He bit into his lip, suddenly looking shy. “What is it?”
“I thought maybe… you would let me draw you?”
My heart leaped. I hadn’t seen Anders draw in weeks, not since getting sober anyway. He’d told me that the link between his brain and the end of the pencil seemed to have been severed ever since going through through withdrawal. A fact that I knew both depressed him and caused him immense frustration. I’d watch him sit for hours trying to make the images appear on his page, only to give up and tear the sheet free, balling it up andtossing it into the lake. Eventually, he’d stopped trying, and the book lay face down on his side table for weeks.
“Of course, you never have to ask.”
He beamed back at me.
“You think you have it back?” I hoped with everything I had that that was the case. Anders, with a notepad propped on his knee and a pencil scribbling away over its surface, was an Anders most at peace, and I’d give anything if it meant he could access that part of his soul again.
“Yeah, I think so.” He kissed me again, humming against my lips. “You might be my muse.”
I rolled my hips into him, nipping at his ear before dropping my voice huskily. “You going to paint me like one of your French girls, Anders.”
He just chuckled and batted me away.
Four hours later,I sat down at the lake edge, my back against the tree, looking out over the water as Anders sat a little further up the bank, sketching desperately, like if he paused for even a moment, the inspiration would be lost. His brow was furrowed in concentration, cigarette hanging from his lips as he covered page after page with renderings capturing different details about my position. He looked so content. Occasionally, a smile would kick up the corner of his mouth, and I’d have to fight every urge inside me not to abandon my spot and crawl over to him, sit in his lap, and press him down into the thick green grass that surrounded us. But I didn’t dare move in case I broke the spell that had fallen over him.
Calm and peace and joy were rolling over me. I couldn’t help the smile spreading across my face as I rolled my head sideways to take him in, only to find him already looking back at me.
“Feeling okay?” He asked.
I didn’t have to answer for him to know this was the best I had felt in a long, long time. Anders had said I was healing him, but the truth of it was he had been healing me, too. I felt stronger and more confident, as if my life had a purpose and a direction for the first time in over a year. But above all, I felt so unbelievably content. Sitting in the warmth of the late summer sun, feeling the grass beneath me, listening to the birds chirping up in the trees, and the soft scratching of graphite over paper, I realized that this might have been the happiest I’d ever been.
“Are you happy, baby?” I whispered back.
I loved how his eyes seemed to spark when I called him that. I loved the warm feeling in my chest that grew at the sight of it. And despite it being too soon, the surge of emotion bubbling up inside me as I took in the elegant lines of his face told me that maybe I loved him, too.
“So, so, happy, Beck.”
“Me too. Anders, I…”
My words were cut off by my phone vibrating in the grass. Expecting Laurel or Margery, I ignored it until it rang out, and another soft buzz indicated a voicemail had been left. Neither of the girls would have bothered leaving a message. They would have tried again later, so I scooped the phone out of the grass and raised my hand to block out the sun. My stomach lurched a little at the name on the screen.
“Anything important?” Anders asked. He'd now closed his sketchbook and was carefully placing the pencils he’d had sprawled across the grass inside a small pencil tin.
“It’s Dr. White.” I tilted the screen to show him the transcription of the voicemail, but he didn’t move to come closerand read it. “Your test results came back, and he needs you to come by his office later today to review them with you.”
