Growing and Kissing (16 page)

Louise

I pressed my back against the door. I had no freaking idea what to think. God, I’d wanted him so bad. I hadn’t let myself admit how much until he nearly kissed me. It had been building for days and I was at least as much to blame for it as him. I’d done the one thing I’d been promising myself I wouldn’t. I’d jeopardized everything. I couldn’t get involved with someone like him. I was just a tourist in his world: six months and I’d be out, back to my normal, safe world with Kayley. I couldn’t bring him into my life...however good it felt. We needed to somehow get back to being just business partners.

Then I looked down and saw the dark mark on my arm where he’d grabbed me. Something about it made the heat swell inside me and then plunge down to my groin. The essence of what he was, brutal and dangerous, was what kept me backing away from him. But it was exactly what drew me in, too. Jesus, what if I
hadn’t
pulled away? Would I have wound up on his lap, feeling the hard press of his cock through his jeans? Would he have tipped me back, my hair hanging down to the floor as he tongued my breasts?

I pressed my ass hard against the door, imagining him kissing me...then his hands cupping my breasts and squeezing, then sliding down my body...one hand going under my jeans and then my panties like
that,
stroking through the hair and the sensitive skin beneath, leaving me gasping. And then further down, his thick wrist stretching out the front of my jeans, those strong fingers hooking underneath, finding me, parting me, like
this—

There was a loud knock at the door. Since I had my whole body grinding up against it like a cat in heat, the vibration went right through me. I jumped away from it, pulling my hand from my jeans and panting in shock. I put my eye to the door viewer and—

Oh Jesus, he’s still there!
He’d been standing there the whole time!

I felt my face heating up. Had he heard? Had I moaned something? Had I been banging my hips against the door?

I slowly opened the door a hand’s width, putting on my best poker face. But as soon as I looked into his eyes, I went weak inside. I thought he was going to push open the door and grab me right there.
God, does he know what I was just doing?

He seemed to wrestle himself under control. When he spoke, his voice was carefully neutral. “What time do you want to start, tomorrow?” he asked. “We’ve got a lot of planting to do.”

I just stared at him.

His eyes said
please.

He’d realized it had been a mistake. And he wanted me to know that he knew. He was trying to tell me that it was all going to be okay, that he would keep his distance.

I nodded slowly. “Okay,” I said. Then, “Two. I’ll meet you there.”

I saw the relief on his face...but I could see the frustration there, too, only just outweighed. “Okay,” he said.

I closed the door. We were back to just business partners, exactly as I’d wanted.

So why did it feel like I was having something ripped away from me?

April

Louise

The days quickly became a routine. I’d visit Kayley at the hospital so I could be with her for her chemo. I sat beside her as the chemicals flowed into her body, trying to distract her with books and videos and chat. I held her hair out of the way and stroked her back while she threw up. I sat there silently raging, wishing I could
do
something, wave a wand, and magically make her better. And when the visit was over, I never wanted to leave. I had to keep telling myself that the most useful thing I could do was grow the crop, make the money, and get her to Switzerland. So I’d drive to work, do my shift, then drive to the grow house.

There, I’d check every plant in turn. The seedlings were growing steadily, soaking up the light from the huge banks of lights and drinking in the filtered water and carefully-measured fertilizer I gave them. Monitoring them and adjusting the mixes took hours but I found I relished the challenge. I even rigged up sensors to send a text message to my phone if the temperature got too high or too low. This was the one thing I could do to really help my sister, the one shot she had. So, goddamn it, I was going to do it right.

Then, about a week into April, the hospital called and told me I needed to get there
now.
I rushed over there, tires squealing, heart in my mouth.

Dr. Huxler stopped me outside Kayley’s room. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think it would start this soon. Normally it takes at least a couple of weeks, but the treatments we’re giving her are so aggressive....”

“What? What’s happened?”

Then we heard a sob from inside Kayley’s room. I pushed past him and opened the door.

Kayley was sitting up in bed, her eyes red and her lip trembling. She must have been crying continuously, all the time the hospital was summoning me and all the time I was racing across the city. I could actually see the wet patch down the front of her nightshirt where the tears had soaked through. And she was surrounded by—

Oh Jesus.

I ran to her and pulled her into my arms. Little locks of blonde hair bounced off the bed and onto the floor.

“I look—” She was too upset to get a sentence out. She had to force the words out between big, gulping sobs. “I look like a
freak!
And—And the rest’s—It’s all going to fall out—”

I shushed her and pulled her even tighter against me. What could I tell her? That it wasn’t so bad? That it was temporary? “We’ll figure something out,” I told her.

“A
wig?
I don’t want a wig!”

I hugged her close. “I know. I know you don’t.” I patted her back. “We’ll get through this. We’ll get you through this and go to Switzerland and everything will be okay.”

But I kept thinking of the plants, still just fragile seedlings. Kayley’s entire future was locked up in those slender stems. One mistake, one disaster: a fire, someone robbing us, the cops—hell, even if I just got the fertilizer a little off. That was all it would take.

I’d do everything I could. I’d spend every waking hour at the grow house.

But that brought a new problem: the more I was at the grow house, the more I was around Sean.

May

Louise

Sean stopped by every few days. Even though it was me looking after the plants, there was always something that needed doing: a leak in the roof or a faulty light, a sack of fertilizer that needed carrying in from the car. He kept to our unspoken agreement: he didn’t try to kiss me again.

But that didn’t stop him looking.

I’d hear the low throb of the Mustang in the street outside and my heart would beat faster. Then the heavy thud of his boots on the sidewalk and the creak of the door. If I was busy checking plants, I wouldn’t even look up at first, but I was aware of every little thing he did. I could feel him staring at the tight denim stretched over my ass if I was bending over. I’d feel his gaze slowly stripping me, layer by layer, melting my clothes away and caressing my body in languorous sweeps. By then, I’d be so hot and jumpy that I
couldn’t
look at him, so I’d keep my eyes on my work, walking around the tables and checking plant after plant as his eyes ate me up.

I knew he was thinking about what he wanted to do to me and I was imagining, too. Whenever I had my back to him, I thought of suddenly feeling his hands on my waist, skimming up the sides of my top, lifting it a little and then darting underneath and squeezing my breasts. He’d pull me back against him and I’d feel the hard outline of his cock between the cheeks of my ass, grinding against me as I writhed in his grip. Then, unable to restrain himself any longer, he’d shove me forward against the table, the wood digging into the front of my hips. A hand would press into the middle of my back, bending me over it, and then he’d yank my jeans down hard, ripping the buttons from their stitching. I’d have just a few seconds to process what was happening as I lay gasping and panting with my cheek pressed to the wood. I’d feel the cool air of the room on the damp folds of my sex and then the hot, weighty pressure of his cock and—

Sometimes I’d whip around to face him, right at that moment in my fantasy. I’d look him in the eye as he penetrated me in my mind and I knew,
knew
he was imagining the same thing. We barely spoke, hours and sometimes whole afternoons passing without a word. But in my head he was growling and panting and finally gasping, my earlobe between his teeth, as he finished inside me.

I thought it would get easier but it got harder instead. Every day he was there turned into a marathon of self control. He was watching me...but I was watching him, too. I’d drink in the hard muscles of his legs and ass whenever
his
back was turned, or peek between the leaves of the plants as I was working and lose myself in the smooth swells of his pecs under his t-shirt, tracing their curves with my eyes the way I wanted to with my fingers. I imagined Sean on top of me, underneath me, behind me, up against the wall. I day-dreamed about his lips on my body so vividly that I swore I could feel them, working their way millimeter by millimeter across my chest, my nipples growing hard under my top as his tongue lathed each one.

I knew things were going in a dangerous direction. After a week, we were like two caged animals. I felt like we needed to be separated for our own safety.

I tried to defuse things by talking to him, but that made things worse.

At first it was innocent enough—the same sort of conversation you’d have with anyone if you spent enough time with them. Movies and food and safe subjects like that. He’d become even gruffer, since we nearly kissed, so it was me doing most of the talking. One day I told him about the candy I used to eat as a kid, stuff like Pixie Sticks. “I love those things,” I told him. We were just chatting. It was fine.

Except, the next morning when I visited Kayley, she was running a fever. She’d picked up an infection, something that would have been no big deal normally, but the medication she was on had left her vulnerable. I stayed with her as much as possible over the next few days, falling asleep by her bedside until the nurses chased me away. I barely ate. Sean told me he could look after the plants, but I stumbled bleary-eyed to the grow house every day anyway, because it was better than sitting worrying in my apartment alone. And just as I was losing it, just as I was at my lowest point, I came in to find a clumsily-wrapped package sitting on one of the tables.

Sean was across the room, messing with the hinges on one of the security doors. He didn’t say anything or even look up as I opened the package. But inside was a whole box of Pixie Sticks. I looked at him, but he kept his eyes on his work.

The next day, Kayley’s fever broke and everything went back to normal. But little things like that kept happening: like I noticed my wreck of a car was running better and realized that, while I’d been looking after the plants in the house, he’d sometimes been out in the garage, swapping out a filter or changing the oil. Or I’d pull a double shift and get to the grow house late, having not eaten, and he’d grunt that there was an extra turkey and cheese sandwich if I wanted it. Or once, when I was so caught up in the plants and the hospital and my job that I barely went home for a week, I suddenly realized I hadn’t watered my plants on the rooftop. I ran up there, expecting to find them all dead...and found someone had done it for me.