Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)(82)
“Speaking of explicit fucking, I should show you my friend TopMeAeneas’s latest magnum opus, “One Top to Rule Them All,” which is sort of a sexy mashup of Gods of the Gates and Lord of the Rings. She took the mount part of Mount Doom very literally.”
The closer they got to Sacramento, the chattier April became.
And yes, she was funny, and yes, he wanted to hear whatever she had to say.
But this wasn’t a happy type of chatty, or even the overly caffeinated cocroffinut type of chatty. Instead, it was the type of chatty where she seemed to want to fill any possible silence, leaving no space for extended thought.
As she talked, she was paying sufficient attention to the highway, but she was also fiddling with the climate settings, the music selection, and the angles of the air vents, restless as she drove in a way Marcus had never witnessed before.
This was anxiety. Plain and simple.
In passing, sometime during their first month together, she’d told him her father was a corporate lawyer, her mother a homemaker. At the time, he should have wondered why she’d failed to add more detail, but he hadn’t. Which was a mark against him, obviously, but also a testament to how deftly April could turn a subject away from anything too uncomfortable. Also an indication that maybe, just maybe, she handled other people’s messy emotions and history better than her own.
Still, if she wanted to chat, he’d chat. If she needed distraction, he’d provide it.
He’d give her anything she wanted or needed, something he’d been trying to prove to her in earnest for the past month, ever since she’d stood naked and shaking in front of him beneath the stark light of her bedroom and asked him to fuck her as a reward. Her reward.
She didn’t understand yet, but she would.
He loved her, loved her, and she was his reward. Touching her was a gift to him.
That night, he’d finally understood just how effectively she’d managed to shield her own vulnerabilities, despite all her seeming openness and the wattage illuminating them both.
The next morning, he’d been determined to learn more. To understand her better.
When he’d woken in darkness, an hour before her alarm was due to sound, she was already awake. At his movement, her head had turned toward him, and her eyes weren’t heavy-lidded with sleep, as they should have been following such a late night.
She was fully alert. Thinking so hard, he was surprised he couldn’t hear the friction.
“Tell me,” he’d said, and gathered her into the crook of his body, an arm under her neck, the other stroking her arm, her hip, her flank as he eased her into the unfamiliar role of little spoon. “Tell me about the call.”
The sheets smelled like them. Like sex and roses, and everything he’d dreamed of.
“My parents . . .” Unexpectedly, she laughed, the sound jarring in the predawn stillness. “The irony, Marcus. The fucking irony.”
“I don’t understand.” He nosed the crown of her head. Pressed a kiss there.
“They’re going to love you. Love you. They’ll approve of you more than they ever approved of me.” She paused. “But not just the real you. The fake you too, the public you. Even if they saw the difference, I don’t think they’d count it as important. Maybe my mom would. Not my dad, though.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to him before, but—“My parents would have killed to have you as their child, instead of me.”
Maybe that should have hurt, but somehow it didn’t. The knife’s edge of his grief had blunted since he’d shared it with April. Since he’d realized he had a choice in how his relationship with his parents would proceed in the future, if it proceeded at all. Since she’d told him he didn’t owe them forgiveness or anything he didn’t want to give.
Besides, how could he begrudge some alternate-universe version of his parents for adoring and admiring April, when he did the same?
“Thus the irony.” She wiggled closer. “All your best qualities, everything that makes you remarkable—that’s not what my father cares about. He’s all about appearances. Surfaces and selling himself to clients. We’re estranged, but my mother is absolutely loyal to him, and she has her own—” As she hesitated, her breathing became a bit ragged. “She has her own concerns. So things can get complicated.”
When she’d fallen silent after her predawn confession, he hadn’t pushed her.
Instead, he’d asked her what she needed from him, and she’d whispered into the darkness.
They’d made love slowly, and not just because she was already tender and slightly sore from their night together. Without urgency, in the dim coolness of her bedroom, in the shared warmth of her bed, he covered her, moved over her, took her beloved face between his hands and made certain—absolutely certain—she saw him seeing her.
Because that was what she’d needed.
Yes, he was beginning to understand her now. It had taken him longer than it should have, but he would make up for lost time today.
She hadn’t asked for his help, because that wasn’t her way. He was helping anyway.
If she needed space from her father, Marcus could give her that space, and she’d already told him how to do it. Her father cared about appearances. That being the case, there was literally no one better suited to occupy his attention and keep him away from April than the Well-Groomed Golden Retriever.