Page 85 of Into The Light
She rushes to speak. "The only reason I say that is because I feel sort of…I don’t know. Crazy. About you. I just…I don’t wantto get caught up in the physical and lose sight of our emotional and mental connection. Maybe I’m overthinking it."
I take her hand. "No. Slow is good, Noelle. There's a lot of transitions in my life. Freedom. Work. And now you—us. It's a lot. It's all good—great. But I…" I trail off. "I guess I sorta want to…savor each step with you. Like today. What we did together. I want to savor the memory, the feeling.” I sigh. “I want you. Need you. But I don’t want to rush. And I’m glad we waited. Got to know each other more."
"You understand me," she says, her eyes misting.
"Hey, don't cry," I say. "Can't handle you crying."
She laughs, shaking her head. "Not all tears are bad. I'm just emotional, I guess. But I’m happy. So freaking happy. And that makes me a little weepy, but it's a good thing."
"Oh." I brush at her eyes. "Then, I guess just let it out?"
She sniffles a laugh, nodding. "You make it safe for me to show you my emotions. All of them." She sighs, wincing. "I haven't always felt that way. Or ever, really. I mean, with my friends, yeah. But with…before—with my ex. I've decided not to even think of his name anymore, by the way. I always felt like…like my feelings were too big. Too much. He couldn’t handle everything I was. I wanted sex too much, wanted to know what he was feeling too much, and tried too hard to love him. The harder I tried and the more of myself I gave to him, the more he seemed to just…I dunno. Pull away. I’ve never gotten it. But it hurt. It made me feel—I don’t know. Poopy about myself. Like I’m just too much. Like no one will ever be able to accept me for everything I am. I always have to hold back."
"Maybe it's selfish, but I want all of you," I say. "I guess because I know exactly how you feel. I've always been…a lot. A social worker, when I was ten or eleven, before my last placement, she told me what she knew about my origin."
Noelle sets her plate aside and turns to focus on me. "Will you tell me? Please? I want to know everything about you.”
“Wasn’t much. I guess my parents were very young immigrants from Iceland. Came over when they were nineteen. My mom was already pregnant with me when they got here. Dad had trouble finding work. Had a job lined up, but it fell through, and he didn’t know much English. Things got hard for them. Eventually, he got a job in a factory, but he was killed in an accident about a week before I was born. Apparently, according to the social worker, I was so big at full term that she had to have an emergency C-section. She almost died in the process—some sort of complication, I dunno. She never recovered. Not all the way. Kept getting sick. Couldn’t take care of me. So, she gave me up for adoption when I was only a few months old. Turned me over to the state."
"God, Bear. That's so hard. I’m so sorry."
I shrug. "All I remember from my early childhood is this tiny house with an overgrown backyard. Lotta other kids. And then having to leave. A new family, a new house. Had to carry all my stuff from house to house in this black garbage bag that had my name written on a piece of duct tape. I got made fun of a lot. Being so big, plus my name. I mean, Bear was bad enough, but Bear Olafsson? With red hair?" I shake my head. "Kids were cruel."
Her eyes go misty again, and she snuggles closer to me, trying to get her arm around my chest. Eventually, she gives up and straddles me, naked bottom and sex sliding over me, and she presses herself against me, arms around my middle, cheek on my chest—a full-body hug.
"Keep talking," she says. "Don't mind me."
I set my empty plate aside near hers and scratch her back in lazy circles as I tell her the story I've never fully told anyone.
"Got in a lot of fights in school. I was angry. Alone. Confused. A lotta fosters were abusive." I find the scars on my right shoulder and bicep, little round burn marks in a neat line down my arm. "One foster father did this. Put his cigarettes out on me. If I made a sound, cried out, flinched, anything, he'd kick the shit outta me. So I learned to keep quiet, no matter what." She shudders, sniffling. "I'm okay. I'm okay. It's old."
"Not to me," she whispers.
"That was how it went. My last foster was the worst. The mother tried to…do things to me. I was already pretty big and strong, even at eleven. I fought her off and ran away. Got picked up by some gangbangers. They took me in and took care of me. Had to do some bad shit, but at least I sort of belonged. I just…I never felt like I could be me. In the gang, I had to be…bad. Scary. Hurt people. Not who I am but how I had to be. And then, in prison, it was all different. Same, but different. At first, I thought I had to be the tough guy. But I learned eventually that if I made friends with people and kept to myself and stayed out of trouble, it was better. I didn’t have to be the tough, hard-ass, violent guy."
Noelle sighs. "I'm glad you learned that. I can't picture you being violent."
"Glad you can't. Hope you never see it." I swallow hard. "Only reason I'd ever be that guy again is if I have to protect you. And if I do, I'll stop at nothing to keep you safe."
She nods against my chest. "Good thing my life is safe and boring, then, huh?"
I laugh. "Safe and boring is good." I can't help but cradle her ass in my hands. "Nothing about you is boring, though. Hope you know that."
She sits upright, her breasts swaying behind the shirt, hair loose and wild around her shoulders, a cloud of red like the setting sun. Freckles dot her neck, chest, thighs, and cheeks. Itrace them and connect the dots with my fingertip, wishing her shirt was off so I could connect those dots across the rest of her beautiful body.
"Thank you for sharing that with me,” she murmurs.
“You too. About…him. How you feel." I hold her eyes. "Want you to know that you can…be you. totally. Don't ever hold back. I know you I don’t wanna hear me say this, but I gotta, once more. I don’t always feel like I deserve the woman that you are, but since you seem to have chosen me for reasons I’ll never understand, all I can do is promise you that I can handle everything you are. All your biggest feelings, your fears, your needs. Gimme all you got, Noelle. God made me big, made me strong. Guess if I believe in that God, then I believe he made me this way for a reason. For you."
Misty eyes flicking side to side, searching me, she swallows hard, sniffling. "God, Bear—there you go again, making me cry with how darned sweet you are." She wipes at her face with both hands, shuddering a sigh. "You can't know what it means to hear that and know it's true."
"I can imagine," I say. "Feel the same."
"It is. It is the same." She takes my hands, kisses each of my palms, and then presses them to her face. “I’m not big and strong like you. But I have a lot of love to give. I want all of you, too. All of you. I don’t want you to hold back, either. You’re not too much for me. You’re not too big.” She tangles our fingers together. "You won't break me. You won't hurt me. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Good. Now that that's settled." She rolls to her stomach on the bed and reaches across me, shirt riding up to expose that luscious ass which I can’t help but play with, earning me a little giggle, she opens a drawer in her bedside table and produces an iPad connected to a charger; she unplugs it, opens it, findsa streaming service app, taps it, and hands it to me. "I'm gonna make popcorn. You pick a movie."
