She keeps thinking of car rides whenever she starts missing him. No kisses in the rain, no Thai food at one o'clock in the morning, no guy hugs or coffee carts or airports, just a road and a car and the two of them, going somewhere.
Temperance Brennan is a renowned writer, so it's hardly surprising that she has a vivid imagination. It's a good thing, too, because there's nobody else to keep her company during those nights in the Indonesian jungle when she's alone in her tent and it's too hot and humid to sleep. There was a time when she used to do this a lot, just letting her mind wander and allowing it to come up with all kinds of interesting scenarios, before she had to start keeping a closer rein on it to keep it from straying into dangerous territory. That's how Kathy and Andy were born all those years ago, conceived during a night that left the bitter aftertaste of alcohol and regret on her tongue. She let them go where she could not, run wild where she had to tread carefully because there were lines and pitfalls and too much to lose. But now that he's half a world away, she feels the reins slipping from her grasp, and it's no longer Andy Lister she pictures when she presses the heel of her hand between her legs and stops fighting the images she has tucked away safely during the day.
It's always the car, but she doesn't wonder about it because psychology is a soft science and of no use to her. She closes her eyes and pictures the steady hum of the SUV, the smell of his aftershave filling her nostrils and the sound of his voice as he prattles on about something she doesn't understand. She can almost see him shake his head at her when she tells him just that, and for a second the feeling of loss and yearning is so strong that it's like a weight on her chest. In her mind, he's now looking smug as if he knew what he's doing to her, and she takes a deep breath and imagines wiping that smirk off his face by running her hand up his leg and sliding a finger under his belt buckle.
It's been two months since she last saw him when she first dreams of him. He's been on her mind a lot lately, and she tries not to worry too much, tries to believe his emails which tell her that he's okay, but not much else. She knows he's hurting, and that there's nothing she can do about it, but when she sees him in her dream that night he looks like she remembers him from before, a cocky grin on his face and his arms warm and familiar around her. She doesn't recall much of the dream when she wakes up, but her body is tingling with something she can't identify, and she presses her hips into the mattress and imagines straddling him in the driver's seat of the SUV with the steering wheel digging into her back while her mouth is on his, reveling in the taste she hasn't been able to forget. He's bucking against her, hard and wanting, and she grinds herself into him until her body clenches and spasms and he bites down on her lips hard enough to draw blood.
After that, she gives up trying to censor her imagination. There's little time for daydreaming during the long hours of hard, fascinating work, but when she falls into bed at night, sore and tired and aching all over, she doesn't think of Afghanistan and courtrooms and the steps of the Hoover Building; she closes her eyes and goes on another car ride with him. Sometimes they bicker until she reaches over and shuts him up by boldly placing her hand in his lap, sometimes they laugh and joke until he stops at a red light and leans over to kiss her until she's breathless and boneless in his arms.
Three days before Christmas, he sends her an email with a photo of him, his hair much shorter and his skin tone much darker than she remembers, his eyes hooded and unreadable even though he's smiling at the camera. That night, she imagines how his eyes would widen if she asked him to pull over and then got down on her knees. She remembers removing this belt buckle and sliding off his belt just before last Christmas, and she does it again in her mind, only now she doesn't stop there, and he's not reciting saints when she closes her lips around him, it's all moans and harsh breaths and soft curses as she revels in his taste, his smell, the silky feel of him on her tongue and under her fingers while his hands are clenched in her hair.
Then there's that time when he goes on a mission that puts him out of reach for almost a month, and she doesn't allow herself to think of all the things that could happen to him. Instead, she pictures fighting with him over some religious topic while they're on some bumpy dirt road somewhere in the countryside, and he has to keep his eyes on the road even though he really wants to glare at her for pointing out the irrationality of his beliefs. She imagines how his jaw clenches and his knuckles on the steering wheel turn white when she cups him through his pants and squeezes until she feels him hardening under her palm while she keeps lecturing him. It's enough for a while, but then she hears of an attack against a US Army base near Kabul, and when she's still tossing and turning at three in the morning the following night she lets the scene go further and imagines how he suddenly hits the brakes with a growl deep in his throat, drags her out of the car and bends her over the hood before she even knows what's happening. He thrusts into her until she's whimpering beneath him, her face pressed against smooth, warm metal and his body hard and hot behind her, over her, and she lets him and pushes back against him and tries not to think of anything but the feeling of him inside her.
When she finally gets another email from him, a brief message that only says, I'm fine. Miss you, B., she bursts into tears right there in their makeshift computer lab at the dig and spends the rest of the day scolding herself for overreacting so stupidly. That night, she's under him in the backseat of the SUV, his pulse drumming a rapid beat against her chest and the naked skin of his back slick with sweat under her hands. She digs her nails into his shoulders and holds on with all her might, his arms so tightly around her that she can hardly breathe and her legs clenching around his hips while he pushes into her in a frenzied rhythm that rocks the whole car. This isn't the lovemaking he once talked about, this is two people trying to crawl into each other's skin until there's no space left between them, no room for heartbreak or doubt or fear or danger or thoughts of the past, or the future.
This is the moment when she understands that she's lost; that she might just as well go back to him right now because no matter how far she runs, how much distance she puts between them, he'll still be with her, filling every corner of her mind, and there's nothing she can do about it. She knows that she should not accept it, that the fact she's allowed herself to become so attached to another person should alarm her, but she feels more at home in her own skin than she has in a long while, and for the first time since she saw him last at the airport she allows herself to count the days until he'll be waiting for her at the Reflecting Pool.
She knows that she still can't promise him his thirty, forty, fifty years, because there's just no way to tell where the road will take them, but sometimes she thinks that maybe she'd like to hang on for the ride.