A/N Thank you soooo much for the amazing reviews! I honestly can't express how much they mean to me.
Chapter Fifty-five
Erin opens her eyes to a chill in the air, cooling the beams of sunlight that had chased the moon into hiding. Her lids flutter a time or two until she makes the decision to keep them closed, shutting out the morning for just a little bit longer. She inhales a deep breath with a sleepy yawn and reaches over to the pillow beside her, pulling it under her cheek to breathe the scent of the man that still lingers in its fibers.
Nearing mid-September, the days are still warm but the mornings are cool and the choking humidity of southern August has lessened to a much more bearable state of muggy. The summer flew in the blink of an eye and she can hardly believe that winter will soon be blowing its icy breath down their necks. She is not looking forward to it herself, but the way Rick's hair has grown he won't feel a thing. She thinks of the way he had looked when she'd watched him dress this morning, with his long thick waves brushed back from his face and curling freely behind his ears and over the collar of his blue work shirt. The sexy cleft in his chin will be protected by the full beard that stretches neatly across his jaws, threaded lightly with wisps of gray highlighting his sideburns and dimpled chin. She loves to tease him about his newly acquired old man status, frequently calling him by the name of Hershel. He pays her back by threatening to shave it all off, to which she quickly relents. She loves his rugged mountain man look and thoroughly enjoys the feel of the thick whiskers against her soft skin, especially that of her inner thighs.
Along with the beard, he has grown more muscular with the physical labor of fortifying the farm and the farming itself. Eating regular meals on a daily basis for three months has also filled him out, giving him back all the weight he had lost during his coma and the first few weeks on the road. She, on the other hand, has probably lost weight the last couple of weeks, feeling too queasy to eat after a day of gardening in the hot sun. Even after a mandatory day off yesterday, ordered by a concerned animal doctor, she still feels a bit queasy this morning. Though it doesn't usually make her nauseous, she is sure to be getting her period any day now, especially after how sensitive her breasts had felt in her husband's hands last night.
He had woken her in the heart of the night, when the whole world seemed to be sleeping except for the scores of male crickets calling for a mate in the darkness outside their bedroom window, vigorously rubbing their wings together to create an alluring song.
Rick didn't have to work as hard, calling her with no more than a gentle caress on her hip and serenading her with his touch. Pressed against her back, he had massaged her chest until she had come fully awake with a moan. Teasing her nipple, she had nearly flinched at the extreme sensitivity, and turned a painful groan into a lusty whimper as he'd nibbled at the back of her neck. When he possessed her body, it was quick and consuming, quiet and carnal, slipping inside her as they lay spooning in the silent hours of the night.
Afterward, with his heart beating wildly against her spine and her body singing with endorphins as he slowly softened within her, she had become so overwhelmed with emotion that she had to swallow the immense wedge of affection that had swelled in her throat. "Do you think we'll ever get tired of each other?" she had asked.
"Not in my lifetime, no."
"How is it that it always feels so new, so unique from the last time, which sometimes is only a few hours before?"
"Because every time is special with you," he'd murmured gently against her hair. "Every breath is precious, and every touch means something." He caressed the outside of her thigh, illustrating his point.
"It really does, doesn't it?" Reaching back she held her hand over his as it rode over the curve of her hip.
"Yes," he whispered with a tender squeeze.
"I love you, honey," she'd said softly, taking his hand and tucking it under her chin as she closed her eyes against the moisture building behind them.
"I love you back, Red. Always."
Breathing into his pillow now, with her eyes closed to hold the memories of last night and so many others before, she can still feel the warm sentiment of his touch upon her, the comforting weight of his body against her, and the wonderful thickness of his desire inside her. Tucked blissfully snug in his bed, she ignores the prickly thorn of guilt she feels for drifting back to sleep while he is outside working hard to keep her safe; reinforcing the new spiked fence line and digging the deep trench that will circle the house and barn.
Nearly two hours later a knock on the bedroom door pulls her up from her slumber and she is instantly alert, her body instinctively telling her that she should have been up long ago.
"Erin?" Carol's voice calls through the door. The knob rustles softly before it opens an inch or two. "Are you alright?" she asks through the narrow crack.
"Yeah, come on in," Erin tells her as she glances at the old fashioned mantle clock sitting on her dresser. "Jeez, why'd you let me sleep so late? I was going to help you with the math lessons this morning."
"Don't worry," Carol says, opening the door enough to get her head and shoulders through. "We waited for you. Carl insisted."
"Oh please," she responds dryly. "He was just stalling for as long as he could."
"That too. He got lucky, because apparently you needed your sleep."
Erin rubs the heels of her hands against her eyes to clear the lingering remnants of sleep. "God, I haven't slept this late since the day after my last final at Emory."
"You feeling okay?" Carol asks, her voice rich with motherly interest. "Maybe you're coming down with something."
"No, I feel fine, just lazy. Blame Rick's libido," she says, rolling her eyes with a smirk as she leans up onto her elbows. "Let me get dressed and I'll be right down."
"Okay. I'll go round up the kids. Wish me luck finding Carl. I swear," Carol murmurs as she backs out of the doorway. "If that boy worked half as hard at his math problems as he does at disappearing, he'd be the next Albert Einstein."
Twenty minutes later, Erin is sitting at the dining room table across from her friend. Sophia is at the head of the table with the boys filling the seats on either side, sandwiched between the young girl and the two women. Amy passes through on her way to the kitchen as Carol points to a parallelogram in one of the eighth grade workbooks.
Last month, much to Carl's chagrin, Glenn had found a series of workbooks for seventh through tenth graders, covering the basics of math, science, English and history. Concentrating mostly on math and science – the kids favorite when Eugene gets involved, and a light focus on English – striving to keep the children somewhat civilized in what has become a barbaric world, they open the history books only on rare occasions, feeling that history now only matters in terms of Before or After the Turn. Being a scholar on all things relevant to the American Revolution or World War II will not help you to better your chance of survival or improve your quality of life in the world that exists today. In this world, physical education has taken a whole new meaning and they've recently added a gym class to their program, now that Carl's wrist and Duane's leg are completely healed. Gearing toward the physical demands of the current world, they give them what may be the most important lesson of all – how to run. Five days a week they suffer through a cycle of pushups, jumping jacks and a hundred yard dash sprints, which most of the house gets involved in. Three of those days, after the last winded sprint to the fence and back, they also spend some time on basic survival skills, including first aid and self defense, in which the entire house participates. For they all know there is but one equation that matters the most; the sum of the strength in your numbers times the remainder of your wits plus a fraction of honor equals a future worth living. And these kids are that future. If they can just make it through algebra and geometry.
"This is dumb. Why do we need to learn this stuff anyway?" Carl complains after Sophia gives the answer to the fourth question on the page.
Erin knows that her thirteen year old stepson is very bright, but highly competitive, putting a chip on his shoulder when one of his friends beats him to an answer, especially, it seems lately, when it is Sophia. Having been a hormonal teenager herself once, and feeling those hormones surge even more out of whack over the past few days, she believes that Carl is acting out of some strange feelings that the young girl is stirring within him. The poor kid is undoubtedly oblivious to the fact that he has fallen victim to his first crush. Still in the stage of pigtail pulling, he has been snapping at Sophia more and more and Erin makes a mental note to have Rick talk to the boy later.
Now, trying to rein him in so they can carry on with the lessons, she calmly replies to his question. "Because it's going to be up to you guys to rebuild the world. You'll need to know how to measure things from the ground up." Erin imagines an older Carl, in his late twenties, designing a new-age power plant after a cure is found and civilization can be restored. She feels tears of pride burn the backs of her eyes and she swallows hard, turning off the emotional spigot that seems to turn on at the drop of a hat lately.
She moves onto the next question and the lessons continue through the morning, keeping to their schedule of three hour sessions for four days a week. Listening to Duane's voice reading from chapter twelve of S.E Hinton's coming-of-age classic 'The Outsiders', Erin fights to keep her eyes open during an argument between Ponyboy and his brother Darry. One of her all-time favorite books, she always looks forward to this part of the session, but she is finding it very difficult to get absorbed into the fabric of the story today.
When Rick follows Hershel and Eugene and Kelly into the front door, she meets his eyes with a smile, followed by a yawn and another smile, and then tries listening to the conversation they are having in the next room; something about adding another windmill by the lookout tower on the western fence. Her hazy brain only picks up bits and pieces of their quiet discussion before her focus is called to the kitchen where Maggie and Glenn had just entered through the side door, arms full of vegetables. She returns to Ponyboy's story but when the aroma of chopped onions and bell peppers drifts into the dining room, her stomach does a wicked flip and bile begins to rise in the back of her throat.
She closes her eyes against a ripple of nausea and opens them again to see Rick watching her, an expression of concern etched on his face as he runs a hand through his hair, taming a long wavy strand that had fallen loosely over his forehead. She gives him a reassuring smile and turns to her colleague sitting across the table. "Carol, would you mind finishing without me?"
"Of course. Go lay down, sweetie. You don't look so good."
Pushing her chair back with a clatter on the hardwood floor, Erin rises from the table only to have her knees buckle, tilting the room at an odd angle when a wave of vertigo knocks her off balance. From what seems to be a faraway distance through the ringing in her ears, she hears Rick's voice yelling as she falls into his arms a moment before everything fades to black.