Uncle's Hands

FORGET THIS

“Here, I turned on the hearth, sit beside it, you will be warm in no time.” Hunter tells me as he pried my hands open, putting a cup of warm water in between them, and then draped a towel on my shoulder. I hadn’t realized I was shaking until then.

“Are you going somewhere?” Normally, he would have taken me inside himself.

There was a smudge of charcoal smeared across his cheek, from the hearth, I warmed from his actions. Why didn’t I feel anything for him? Reaching across, I wiped the smudge, and he tenses under my touch, his skin was just warm, nothing more. If I had touched Levi, even a touch as simple as wiping dirt from his skin, I would have felt something, a need, an ache for him.

“There’s dirt here, did you use your face to set it up?” I say quickly as he tried to move away from my touch.

He reddened, but leaned into my touch, quickly, I wiped the last of the dirt away and when I retracted my hand, I could see he was disappointed, and I awkwardly look away.

“There’s nothing but expired canned soup.” He pointedly looks at Jan as he says this, she was in charge of making sure the place was stocked with food, and everybody took turns in paying.

She rolled her eyes now, “I asked to be in charge of something else, like supplying the good stuff, nobody listened.”

He shakes his head, and walks back to where he had parked the truck earlier. I rush inside to the fireplace, and sure enough it was warm. I practically sink into the soft sofa. The inside was decorated by Tamara, she had good taste, that was why she was studying interior decoration at the community college here.

“It finally feels right, now that we’re complete.” Tamara says hugging me.

I hug her right back, wondering how I even left her in the first place. At the time it felt right, now, I wasn’t sure.

“How is the gap year treating you, Jan?” I ask quickly, I didn’t want them to bring up my disappearance, or the days that led to it, or the fact that I ignored every single call, text, even emails from them.

“Super. I stole all of my brother’s customers here.” She grinned.

I tell her I needed a refill, my pendant was empty and my supplier was miles away, she grinned. Tamara shook her head with a smile.

“Cash only.”

Hunter returned with the food, he bought a lot, all of it what I liked. My phone’s ringing distracts me, and one look at the caller ID and I was excusing myself. Both of them knew who was calling, who wouldn’t? I vibrated just anticipating his voice.

“Hey.” I whispered breathlessly as I slip outside.

“Are you okay?”

It too me a while to figure out that he was talking about my father and the spectacle that happened earlier. I almost forgot about it.

“What do you think?”

He stays silent for a while, and then when I think I lost him, he starts to speak,

“With one hand wrapped around your body like that, I would say you are not fine.”

I inhaled sharply. My head swiveling in every direction as I searched for him, he was here, he was watching me. I find his car, it was hidden in the woods, and if you weren’t searching for it, you wouldn’t find it.

“You came.”

“I was worried.”

It was like a dance between us all the time, a dance around a fire, we kept our eyes on each other the time. Both of us waiting for the other to make the first move.

Even from a distance, I felt myself come alive, my breathing shallow, and I was vibrating with a new kind of energy. Our eyes find the other, and I dared not look away. We were waiting again, for the first person to make the first move.

“For your best friend’s daughter or for a woman you want to f**k?”

I hear him take a sharp inhale. I had dared him to face the truth, and now he was not going to walk here, especially with my friends just a few feet away. So I do it, I walk across the beams, the pier, and into the woods. He kept his eyes on me the entire time.

He climbed out of the car and walked towards me, so that we were still tucked into the trees. The call disconnects, and instead we are connected by the string of lust that bound us together, tightened it’s hold, it was taut, short, pulling us tighter together.

His eyes roamed my body, stopping briefly at my chest, my n*****s were poking at the fabric, this time not from the cold, but from the way I felt towards him. I knew I was soaking wet just looking at his face.

“You touched the boy.” he says simply, bringing his eyes to my face.

His voice. The low timbre of it. It vibrates at my very core, expanding and rolling around in my stomach, it explodes at the bottom of my belly.

“You don’t touch your wife.”

He blinks in surprise. But two could play that game. He wanted control, but too coward to ask for it.

“I hear since after the wedding, you’ve not touched dear wife. I mean she is gorgeous and all, why wouldn’t you be touching her? Does that mean you didn’t touch her during the honeymoon as well?” I fake gasp.

He grits his teeth, his eyes remain on me,

“You touched the boy, caressed his face.”

He had been watching us since that time? Did he see me swim out of the water? Did I swim out elegantly or was I sputtering around like a drowning animal?

“I may have also kissed him when we walked inside together.”

His eyes flashed.

“Why? You don’t remember our kiss after all, it means nothing to you, it was an accident, I kissed plenty of boys back in school…”

He snatched my wrist, the one my father didn’t squeeze, and he holds on to me lightly as he pulled me to himself, so that we were a hair's breath apart. My mouth slightly gapes at being so close to him, our bodies separated only by the fabrics of our clothes. He was breathing hard, while I could barely breathe. Always on the opposite sides of the fire.

“You didn’t… you didn’t kiss the boy.” he whispered, so sure of himself, of what he was saying.

“And you don’t remember our kiss. One of us is lying.”

He drops my hand, my heart stammers inside my rib cage, my breath catching inside my throat. He cups my face in his hands, inching his face close to my own, our mouths brush, sending pleasure waves up my spine.

“None of us would forget this.”