Gila Revisited

They lay cuddled together naked, tangled in their bed in a post-coital embrace. "I've been thinking about Gila," Sara murmured quietly.

Michael kicked the edge of the sheet away with his foot and groaned.

"I've never told you why I walked out on you."

"You don't have to explain it to me, Sara. I get it."

"It was more complicated than you think."

Michael only sighed and clenched his teeth. To Sara, his silence seemed like permission to continue.

"So… I was a mess." Sara gave a short, bitter laugh. "I had found my dad, murdered. I had just gotten out of the hospital, I'd jumped bail…"

Michael exhaled audibly. Sara was well aware of his guilty feelings, but she wasn't about to delve into her own remembered emotions to lay blame on him. Quite the opposite. "The point is," she brushed her hair behind an ear and went on, "that I was so fragile. I had to restart my recovery from the ground up after my overdose. That's the way it works, for an addict."

"Sara…" Michael's voice was choked with regret. "I never meant to hurt you."

"I know that."

"Then why do we have to talk about this? I can't change the past. I can never make it up to you."

She looked into his eyes and laid her hand on his cheek, feeling the tension in his face. "Yes, you can."

He waited reluctantly for her to continue. "You can make it up to me, Michael, by just hearing me," she told him gently. "I wanted to say this to you… before." 'Before' meant the brief time they'd had together, before he had supposedly died and was gone from her life for seven bleak, agonizing years. "I don't want to miss my chance again."

"Okay…" he answered, resigned to listen to what was coming.

She took a deep breath and launched in. "Back then, I was frightened, confused about my own feelings…afraid of losing control." She paused to let that sink in. "You had this... effect on me that scared the shit out of me." She pressed her lips to his collarbone. "No one had ever had that kind of pull over my emotions." She smiled against his skin as she continued, "I thought, maybe this could be the real thing, you and me? But I wasn't sure if it was right, to go through with it."

"To go through with what, exactly?" he asked.

She raised her eyebrows in disbelief. "Come on, Michael. We had bought toothbrushes. We were at a pay-by-the-hour motel. When the desk clerk handed you the key to a room with a king-size bed, you smirked!" She shook her head a little. "You knew as well as I did that the writing was on the wall."

"The writing? Wait, if you thought I was…" He bent his head to look at her. "Okay, your discomfort was amusing. I mean, it was an awkward situation… you were as nervous as a cat. But I wouldn't have tried to talk you into anything," he proclaimed defensively.

"You wouldn't have had to, Michael." Sara's memories of that day remained crystal-clear: the electric shock that jolted through her when he stepped out of his car on Butterfield Road, tanned and lean, long legs and broad shoulders. How handsome he was in his sunglasses, white shirt and tie. How her knees went wobbly at the thrill of seeing him again, finally. She'd had to fight herself to keep from throwing her arms around him. She shook her head. "Oh, I wanted to be with you! I had driven all the way to Arizona to meet you," she laughed, confessing, "...with several condoms in my purse."

Michael drew in an astonished breath.

Sara continued, "We had ended up in a motel room together. There is a script for that, isn't there: man, woman, no-tell motel?" She stroked his shoulder and laughed softly. "I couldn't help thinking 'alone at last!'" Sara's touch, her gentle voice and the warmth of her naked body were having a noticeable effect on Michael. Lying close to him, she felt his growing arousal. "You sat on the bed… it was such a huge bed," she grinned, remembering how the bed had filled the room, and her head. "I was holding your arm, cleaning your wound. You touched my hand, locked eyes with me… I wanted to push you backward, onto that bed..." She looked at him, wondering if he remembered. "Then you went to take a shower, and I…" Her voice trailed off. "I imagined you behind that door without your clothes, what it would be like to see all of you, to lie naked next to you. I wanted to know how it would feel… to have you inside me. I wanted to get high on you," she concluded wistfully, "and forget everything else."

"Oh, Sara..." Michael started to say more but stopped himself. He rolled toward her and pulled her closer. Sara could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

She continued. "I was powerless...weaker at that moment than I'd ever felt in my life. I didn't have the strength to resist you. I knew what was going to happen when you came out of the shower. If I had stayed, and we had…done what I wanted to do…frankly, Michael, I would have been using you." She sighed. "So I ran."

"Wow…" he breathed. "I had no idea. You didn't come across 'weak'. Not at all! And you certainly weren't giving me the impression that you were willing to sleep with me." He thought back to that day. "You seemed pissed off at me, as I recall. Especially after I admitted I wasn't diabetic. I was getting more of a 'touch me and I'll kill you' vibe from you. Actually, I was planning to spend the night on the floor," Michael chuckled.

"Really!" she scoffed. "You hadn't figured out why I had come all the way to Arizona to meet you? You knew I was... attracted to you." He'd used his allure to manipulate her- deliberately and to full advantage- hadn't he? Made her a pawn in his game? That, finally, was what had made her walk out on him in Gila. She needed to know if he was a man she could trust, the kind of man who could become more to her than a one-time fling. She realized in that motel room that what she really wanted from him was much more than the euphoric sex they could have had. "You're a man. You were locked up in prison for months. Don't insult my intelligence by pretending you wouldn't have slept with me that night."

He told her in a voice that made her pulse race, "Well, I wanted to. Of course!" He stroked her hair and went on gently, "There was no reason to rush into it, though. I didn't want anything from you that you weren't ready to give me. You meant more to me than that." He looked into her eyes. "Didn't you know that?" He kissed her forehead, so tenderly she barely felt it. "No one was ever special to me, before you." His leg brushed against hers. "In Fox River, I could never have enough time alone with you. The best part of the day was the little bit of it I got to spend with you. That time I kissed you, in the infirmary...it, well, you know what it did to me! You ran out of the room." He laughed. "So yes, when you came to Gila I wanted to kiss you again. God, how I wanted to! But I was pretty sure you didn't trust me... and you had good reasons not to. What I needed to do was talk to you. I was afraid if I tried to kiss you, I might scare you away for good." He pulled her even closer to him and laid his hand on her inner thigh, gently stroking upward with his thumb. He kissed her insistently. "Now I don't have to try to control myself…"

Sara stopped his hand with hers. "Wait, I'm not finished."

Michael groaned in frustration. "Sara, do you really not see the irony here? You're confessing that you'd wanted to make love with me, while we're lying here like this? Are you trying to torture me?"

Sara laughed. "Can you be patient just a moment longer, Michael? As you probably know, in AA they tell you to avoid intimate relationships at the beginning of your recovery. Sex can become another addiction. If you saw how needy I was, you might end up hating me. It was your respect I wanted. And ultimately, your love. So I went out to the car and sat there, pondering my options. I realized I needed answers." She paused. "I decided to go back into that motel room, to be with you."

They both knew what had happened next, what had stopped her from going back, all those years ago. She left that part unspoken.

"I have always wanted you to know this: I was coming back to you, in Gila." Her lips brushed across his neck. "I will always come back to you, Michael. It turns out, I am addicted to you. You are my drug of choice."

Michael had reached his limit. He couldn't hold back any longer. "Sara," he moaned her name as he rolled on top of her. He smiled into her eyes and gave her a kiss that left her breathless. Nibbling her earlobe and pressing his erection into her hip, he made his intentions clear. "Do you think you could handle another dose of me now?" His voice was like honey in her ear.

Sara sighed and closed her eyes, delighting in the feel of his weight on her body. "I've built up some tolerance. I'm ready to give it a try," she whispered back with a smile.