Page 25 of Salvaged Heart

25

BECKHAM

“ R ise and shine, sleepy head.”

The chipper voice pulled me from what had been a really good dream. Fortunately, the reality I was waking up to wasn’t too far off. Anders was in the bed with me, like he had been inside my dream, but this Anders was fully clothed and not straddling me. Bummer . He was looking at me like he might kiss me, though, so it wasn’t too bad.

I leaned over to him, stealing the kiss I wanted. He gave it to me, but only momentarily before pulling back.

“Nu-uh, don’t start that. Otherwise, we will spend yet another day in bed.”

“And that would be a bad thing?”

We had barely gotten out of bed in the last four days. We fucked, napped, rinsed and repeated. Occasionally, one of us would sneak downstairs for food or reluctantly leave to use the bathroom. On three, maybe four, occasions, we had gotten up to shower, but at least that we did together, and we’d fucked in there, too. Rutting against one another like we were horny teenagers until we both came undone. I was riding an exhausting and insatiable high, one I was not planning to end anytime soon. But Anders had other ideas. He was already moving from the bed, riffling through drawers and throwing clothes at me.

“What are these for?”

“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 and tossing 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 closer and read it. “Your test results came back, and he needs you to come by his office later today to review them with you.”

Anders breathed in deeply, almost like he was grounding himself. “Well, he did say we would get them back early this week, right? The call was expected.”

We both knew that if the test results had shown nothing unusual, a ‘call me back’ would have sufficed, but neither of us said it.

“What time?”

“Four.”

He nodded and ran his fingers through his hair, pulling it back into the band he had wrapped around his wrist. It had grown so long over the last few months, but not long enough that all the pieces could be contained inside the man bun he was trying to create. Loose bits stuck out the sides at awkward angles. I swear his hair had a mind of its own.

“Whatever the outcome, yeah?” He parroted the words back to me from our last trip to Dr. White’s, his tone confident but his face unsure.

“Absolutely.”

He stood quickly, brushing off some of the grass that stuck to the back of his shorts. “We should get some things around the house done.” Apparently, he didn’t have plans to hang around and speculate on the cryptic message the Doctor had left. “Isn’t Margery coming at the end of this week?”

Ugh, he was right, and I’d almost completely forgotten. Margery had been relatively hands-off throughout the project. I’d only called her a couple times over the past three months for approval on a few items. But we were running out of money and almost over on our original timeline, so she insisted on seeing the work completed before signing another check. I thought she would be happy with the progress. The house looked incredible and shouldn’t take much longer. But the overwhelming part of me that wasn’t ready to see the project end was already cataloging all the suggestions I could make for further upgrades. Reasons Anders and I could stay just a little longer.

I groaned, forcing myself to stand and roll out the dull ache sitting in the same position against a lumpy tree trunk for so long had caused in my shoulder. “When did you become the responsible one?”

“I guess you’re rubbing off on me.”

There was an easy joke to be made there, but Anders had already turned to head back up the hill to the manor. The blissful calm I had been experiencing earlier evaporated with each step he took away from me.