Page 63 of Embers

I’ve made a lot of progress in the past months. I don’t even cry much anymore. I’m able to laugh and talk and work and spend my days without the shadow of Cal darkening them.

But I still don’t want to be with any man but him. I can’t even entertain the possibility.

Maybe that will change eventually. Surely it will.

I just need a little more time.

* * *

Because I need something to do with the rest of the day, I volunteer to take guard duty for the evening hours. By the time I’m done, it’s midnight and I’m tired enough to sleep.

I claim a spot far enough from the fire to not be too crowded since I like to have some space when I sleep, and I get into my sleeping bag. It’s been a really long day. I only had a few hours of sleep last night before we got up to take down the gang. I’ll be able to close my eyes and fade into sleep without any problem tonight.

I try to convince myself. I try to convince my body.

But tonight the thoughts and memories won’t let me go.

I think about Anna, doing whatever she’s doing with Mack. That makes me think about sex. And naturally sex makes me think about Cal.

I don’t let myself do this very often, but tonight I can’t seem to stop myself. I try to imagine what he’s doing right now.

No one has heard from him in all these months. When he left, he obviously made a point to stay off my radar. In his mind, it was probably easier for me. He didn’t want to hang around where I’d have to see him and think about him. But I have no idea where he would have gotten to.

Maybe he’s traveling around, doing jobs as he finds them. Or maybe he found someplace to hole up.

He’ll have to figure out a way to live his life without me, exactly as I’m doing without him.

Maybe he’s found another woman to fuck. Maybe she’s taking care of him now the way I used to.

I know Cal must have gotten around when he was younger. He’s definitely not been a one-woman man. So he could have picked up that lifestyle again.

It hurts me to even think about, but I make myself visualize him. Running into a sexy blonde on the road. Taking a liking to her. Bending her over the edge of a table and fucking her hard from behind.

He used to like to take me that way sometimes. Almost rough but not hard enough to hurt me. He’d talk the whole time. Muttering about how I loved to be fucked that way, how good I was doing, how hard I was going to come. It made me feel so hot, so wild, so free. Sometimes I’d scream myself hoarse because being loud made the whole thing even sexier.

So I picture him with the imaginary blonde. Taking her hard. Making her come over and over again the way he would me. Making her scream out in pleasure.

He could be doing that.

He could be doing it right now.

I hate the fantasy, but I can’t give it up, and eventually I hone down to the picture of his face in my mind. I imagine what he looks like as he fucks this other woman. The pleasure on his face. The dominance. The heat and focus and effort.

The vision turns me on a little—the visual of his expression as he fucks—and it also makes me sick. It’s part of Cal but not all of him. Because he never looked quite like that when he had sex with me. There was always more on his face.

There was tenderness. A soft kind of possessiveness. Something that looked a lot like awe.

There was love on his face as he fucked me. Every time. So my dark fantasy of Cal fucking a stranger changes. Shifts. He’s fucking her now like he loves her. This blond woman I’ve made up in my head.

Because maybe he’s moved on from me. Forgotten what we had. And perhaps now he wants and needs someone else.

I try to make myself see it. I want to make it real, hoping it will break these ties to him I can’t seem to cut. But I can’t do it. I try, but it doesn’t work. Because no matter how hard I try to force the image of a stranger into the position, in my mind the woman he’s fucking, the woman he looks at with that awed tenderness, keeps transforming into me.

It will always, invariably, forever be me.

The truth is I’ve known since the moment I began conjuring up this torturous vision that it isn’t the truth, and it will never be. Cal isn’t going to find another woman. He’s not going to fall in love again and start a new life. Maybe he’ll indulge in a random, casual fuck out of boredom or desperation, but even that I doubt. And he’ll for sure never let someone else take care of him the way I did.

He’s going to live every day of his life alone.

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