A/N: More warm and fuzzy. And also a little spicy. My last chapter is due to post on Thursday. Thanks for your support!
The sound of Chuck's phone buzzing on my nightstand woke me. I was in my room, in my apartment…in Chuck's arms.
Oh, thank God that wasn't just a dream, I thought to myself, unable to resist the urge to kiss his cheek, just to prove to myself he was real, that all of yesterday had really happened and wasn't part of some fever dream.
My kiss woke him up. His sleepy eyes were beautiful–forest green striped with amber and sprinkled with flecks of gold. "Morning, beautiful," he said, his voice still gruff from sleep.
That would never get old, I thought with a smile.
"The phone," I whispered, pointing to the nightstand. Couldn't he hear it buzzing?
He reached behind him, fumbling, never releasing his grip on me. He clicked it on and put it to his ear, and without looking at who was calling, he said, "Good morning, Ellie."
I could hear the sound of her voice, even though the phone was against his ear, if not the exact words she was saying to him.
"I know. I'm sorry, I lost track of time," he explained apologetically.
How long had it been since he'd spoken to her? Today was Friday, which meant he had found me on the floor in my bathroom on Thursday during the day at some point. I had told Ellie I was sick on Wednesday afternoon.
"Hold on…hold on," he said rapidly. He pulled the phone away from his ear and clicked it on the speaker. "She's right here," Chuck added, smiling a devilish grin as he said it.
I could almost hear Ellie blush over the phone. She was still groaning in quiet discomfort when I spoke over her. "Good morning, Ellie."
"Oh my God, this is so embarrassing. I'm so sorry. I was just worried…and Chuck said you were so sick and then…"
"Ellie, you just woke us up is all. Believe me, if it was anything else, I wouldn't have answered the phone," Chuck teased her. Ellie groaned again, but he laughed, and I couldn't help but giggle.
Ellie's voice was different, tighter, when she spoke again, like she was struggling to contain herself. "It's been…a while…since I heard that. I was worried I wasn't ever going to hear it again."
His laughter, I thought as I felt my eyes sting.
He smiled, tenderness for his sister on his face. "Well, Ellie, she's fine. And so am I."
I could hear Ellie's smile in her voice when she continued. "Thank God." After a pause she added, "Oh, and, Sarah…let me guess. Did you have the chicken at the party on Saturday night?"
"I actually did."
Ellie huffed, like she had just solved a puzzle. "Not everyone who had the chicken got sick, but everyone who got sick had the chicken. I think you were a victim of food poisoning, Sarah."
"Well, at least it's not contagious," I said.
"I had the fish, so…yeah, we're good."
"Well, I'll let you go. You're both coming on Sunday, right?" she finished.
"Yes," we answered in unison. Chuck clicked the phone off. Then he sat up in bed.
"So, here's the plan. You can tell me if you agree or not," he started, his voice quite perky for just having woken up. "I am going to go back to my apartment and get ready. As much as I loved smelling like you all night, I don't think I can pull off wildflower scent all day long as well. I will shower, get dressed, and come back here with breakfast. I am not going to work today. Instead, I thought we could go to the park. Take a walk, just relax. Have lunch. That leaves you enough time to perform tonight."
The thought of spending the day with him made me giddy.
"That all sounds…amazing," I sighed. "Except for the performing part. I'm calling the conductor and telling him I need today to get my strength back. I can perform tomorrow. I have…a different kind of performance in mind for tonight," I added, biting my lip. "If that's ok with you," I added seductively.
"Hi-yo," he breathed. I giggled hysterically. He was so easy to flummox…and it was so adorable I could hardly stand it. "More than ok. Much, much more," he said softly, right before he leaned forward to gently kiss my lips.
I missed him the second he left.
~O~
He brought back two coffees and two chocolate croissants. We sat at the bar in my kitchen and ate side by side.
I had only seen him in a suit up until this morning, but when he returned, he was wearing just a snugly fitting navy long sleeved t-shirt and a pair of jeans over a pair of Converse sneakers. He dressed like a regular guy, which was refreshing, but somehow, I just sort of knew that. He still looked so good I found it hard to keep my eyes off him. He wasn't the least bit pretentious. As Ellie had said, what you saw was what you got.
My light blue blouse and a pair of jeans got an appreciative hum from him when he saw me.
My apartment complex was near the park, so we walked, hand in hand. I hadn't held hands with anyone since I was in high school, but it felt right, natural. He held my hand tightly, threading his fingers through mine, securing the grip. It was possessive, but I loved it.
We talked for hours, strolling along the pathways next to the water. He bought us hot dogs from the vender cart and we sat on a bench near the water to eat.
"Is it weird being back in California for Christmas?" I asked. "New York always seemed so…Christmas-y to me. The ice skating, the huge tree all lit up, Jack Frost nipping at your nose…"
He laughed. "That charm lasted about a month and then I was done with winter. That constant, biting wind, fifty feet of snow and nowhere to put it…to the point where you would see huge dump trucks full of snow…lugging snow. Nowhere to park, ice all over the sidewalk." He shivered, like just the memory was making him cold. "I don't miss anything about New York. California is my home."
His arm was on the top of the bench, stretched behind me. He reached up and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear as it danced in the breeze.
I had never been partial to California; it was just where my father and I happened to be when we were finally caught. For some strange reason, I thought originally my father had kidnapped me from California, but for all the detective work I had tried to do on my own, I could never be sure.
"Oh, look!" I said, pointing to the water. Two tundra swans were lazily floating side by side. They were beautifully white with dark black bills.
"See, they don't like the cold either. When winter hits in the arctic, they migrate to California. The place to be," Chuck replied. I lifted an eyebrow. He smirked, but replied, "I…have almost unlimited nerdy knowledge to pull from when I'm rambling. Just so you know."
"Swans mate for life," I said softly. "Sometimes when a mate dies, they never find another," I added wistfully. "I know they're just birds, you know, instinct and all…but it's…still so…poignant. Almost sweet."
"Like Mary and George?" he asked, smiling at me and taking my hand.
I had only known him a week…and we already had our inside jokes, our private little conversation that no one but us would understand. I felt so close to him, all my fear completely dissolved.
"Swans can have…so many babies. They all line up, so cute, all fuzzy and clumsy," I said. I looked at him. "How does the mother know what to do with all those babies?"
His eyes softened. He seemed to understand all of what I meant. "She's not alone, not like…lions or elephants or whatever. The male helps her build the nest, and he's always by her side, even with all those little hatchlings."
He knew exactly the right thing to say. For all his nervous ramblings, he certainly had a way with words.
It was midafternoon before we started to walk back to my apartment. While I was opening my door with the key, I asked, "You're coming inside, right?"
He grabbed me around the waist from behind, pulling me back against his chest, and whispering in my ear, "Yes. But how many times…and where…is up to you."
I felt the heat rush through me like wildfire, weak in the knees as I leaned my weight against him.
He was so…complicated, complex, despite his relative simplicity. How could he be so easily flustered, nervous and quirky at times…and then so confident, so sexy, the next?
Whatever magical combination he seemed to have, he had me. He drove me wild…and the look in his eyes when we stepped inside said everything else.
I couldn't keep my hands off of him…or my mouth from devouring his.
We tripped over each other, bumping into things as we shed our clothing on the way to my bedroom. We were both naked at the threshold and we tumbled onto my bed.
The first night we were together, we were intense, feeling our way, sure of our physical attraction but dithering in uncertainty when it came to how we felt. Last night I was sick, and he was so gentle he'd made me cry.
This time, my bed was a conflagration of shared emotions and mutual attraction. There was nothing but joy in my heart, and I made sure he knew it, could see it.
We laughed, giggled, and enjoyed each other. The passion burning inside me was fueled by my feelings. I loved him…and I wanted him to know it, to feel it.
I kissed every inch of his body, finishing by taking him in my mouth. The noises he made let me know how much he liked it, and I took his technique to heart, listening and feeling to what he wanted more of, what he liked. He was hesitant, afraid he would gag me if he moved, but I braced myself and moved my head forward until I could feel him hitting the back of my throat. He touched my cheek and whispered, his breath heaving, "Sarah, I'm close."
I hummed my acknowledgement, even as I increased my pace. He groaned deeply with pleasure, once he realized my intention. I felt all of him clench, rock hard. He came down my throat and I swallowed.
He immediately reciprocated, lying on his back and holding my hips as I straddled his face. I was just as vigorous, grinding against his mouth as wave after wave of pleasure seized me until I was screaming his name.
In the midst of all this, I think I finally understood how he could be the way he was. This, us, making love the way we did…was pure heart. He navigated the world with his heart, and his mind followed. In situations where he needed to forget his heart, he was uncertain.
He loved confidently, fearlessly, despite all of the pain I knew he had endured. It seemed that at times, his heart and his mind were in conflict. He was so intelligent, perhaps his mind and his heart were constantly in a battle for dominance.
His heart had won this time, defeating my fear in the process.
We rolled back and forth on my bed, hungry for kisses, hungry for each other's touch.
His weight pressed on me, his erection hard and hot against the most sensitive part of me. I pulled my mouth from his, breathless, to tell him, "I need to feel you inside me."
He watched my face, his eyes locked with mine, while he slid inside me in one slick, fluid motion. HIs eyes burned with desire, need. As he buried himself even deeper, he whispered, "You feel…so good."
He started moving, long strokes where he pulled himself almost all the way out of me and then thrusting back inside. His hands were everywhere on my skin, and then his mouth. I moaned in time to his thrusting, arching up against him as I came, so hard it surprised him, as I could tell by his shocked gasp.
The words were on the tip of my tongue. I love you. I love you. I repeated the words inside my head, almost willing him to hear my thoughts. I had never uttered those words out loud in my life, which I know was part of my hesitation. That, and somehow screaming it out for the first time in the middle of sex seemed somehow ingenuine, even cliché. Yelling those words mid-orgasm was probably easier, but not better. He deserved to hear me say it quietly, sincerely.
So I held him in my arms, pressing myself as closely to him as I could, full of joy as I felt him shudder and shake as he found his release.
All in all, we were in bed for almost three hours. We made love twice after the mutual oral session. For me, the pleasure was like waves in the ocean, crashing on the shore. Constant waves of pleasure, by his fingers, his mouth, or his manhood.
We slept and then he ordered dinner for us.
I couldn't remember ever feeling the way I did, sitting beside him, eating my salad, after the glorious day we had spent together. What had he said in that letter? That he wanted the chance to show me he could make me happy. Well, he certainly had. And I told him so.
He kissed my nose, then got up and washed all my dishes for me.
He was drying his hands on my dishtowel when he walked closer to me.
"I have a little errand I need to run tonight…so I need to go, for now. But I will be at your concert at noon. And Ellie's in-laws aren't leaving until early Christmas morning, so my Christmas Eve is yours, if you're interested. I thought maybe we could order Chinese food together and watch It's a Wonderful Life."
"That sounds…perfect," I said, smiling widely, even as I felt a pang of disappointment that he was leaving. That was just my newly infatuated state, I told myself. We weren't attached at the hip. I just needed to find the right balance. I went from being completely alone to completely with him. I was still adjusting.
"I hope you like Sizzling Shrimp," he said, kissing my cheek.
Once I was alone, I practiced my violin, since I hadn't played in three days and going that long without playing at all before a performance was difficult. I slept with my head on the pillow Chuck had slept on the night before, the scent of him comforting me.
He came to my performance and watched from backstage. When the concert was over, and we were all milling around backstage, Chuck grabbed me and kissed me, lifting me off my feet.
"Who is this, Sarah?" Alex quizzed with a twisted grin on her face.
"Alex, this is my boyfriend, Chuck," I told her. She huffed loudly and bumped my shoulder.
"Hi, Alex," Chuck said brightly, reaching for her hand and shaking it cordially. "Yes, I'm Chuck, the boyfriend. Nice to meet you."
She very obviously eyed him up and down, while we were both watching. He got adorably red, but I just ignored it and her, not the least bit bothered. It seemed nothing that used to irritate me was even a thought any longer. I was like a different person, the person I had always wished I could be, the one I had been afraid to be. Until Chuck.
We made love again once we got back to my apartment. Chuck ordered the Chinese food and had it delivered. We ate it in bed while we watched It's a Wonderful Life.
I was in his arms, resting against his chest as we both sat up with pillows behind us. He never talked over the dialogue, but he knew where to interject his commentary, where to ask me questions about what I thought. I had loved this movie since I was small, but I'd never had anyone to talk about it with. He knew it just as well as I did, it seemed.
I finally cried at the right place. At the end, once friends came to help, angels had wings, and love came to the rescue.
While the last scene played, and everyone was singing Auld Lang Synge, I spoke. "George and Mary had four children. Do you want to have kids?"
"Yes," he answered right away, enthusiastically. He was quiet for a long time after that outburst. "That…uh…was where all my…marital problems started, I think. Because I did…and she…didn't. She told me she did, of course, but we were young. She wanted them in theory, but…not as much as she wanted…everything else. I just put my blinders on and…pretended everything was fine. I put all that energy into building my business. I never set out to be as successful as I am. I think success is a relative term. I would have been happy working eight hour days and having a family to come home to. It didn't work out that way, and we should have talked about it more than we did. But it created resentment I think, disappointments…that just festered."
The words flowed from him, so much more easily than when he had told me about his past after the party. It made me feel so much better that he felt comfortable enough with me, without feeling awkward.
"What about you, Sarah?" he asked me.
"I won't lie, even now, the thought scares me. Terrifies me. But not because I don't. Because I…don't know what kind of mother I would be. Almost everything we learn we learn from others. I had no childhood, no memories of anything like that."
He was quiet for a few beats. "If you answer with your heart, and not your fear, what happens then?"
I felt those words, like a confirmation of the things I'd begun to understand about him from before. I was the exact opposite of him when it came to things like that, but he gave me the courage to try.
"Then…yes. I do. Little boys and little girls with your eyes and your smile," I said, turning over my shoulder to look at him.
His eyes were soft and misty, so full of love I melted. "Remember the swans?" he asked softly. "By your side, always." I felt him kiss the top of my head.
"I love you, Chuck."
Eight days. I'd known him for eight days. But I did love him. And he deserved to know.
"I love you, too," he whispered in my ear. "I was afraid I was going to scare you if I said it. It was so fast. But like I said, I couldn't fight it. It was way too strong."
I nuzzled against his chest, feeling his arms around me, feeling so loved, so safe.
"So, I have a surprise for you. One of the things I got you for Christmas," he said as he shifted to climb out of bed.
"Was that your…errand from last night?"
"May…be," he laughed. He walked into my kitchen and returned with a manila file folder. He handed it to me and then sat back down beside me.
"What's this?" I asked as I opened it. It was full of documents, official looking documents. Some of them had FBI letterhead. They were all photocopies and there were large blocks blacked out, redacted, as it said.
He narrowed his eyes as he wore a crooked grin. "You do…know what my company does, right?"
"Cyber security," I replied.
"Right. But what that means, really, is that I employ mostly computer hackers. What we in the business call whitehat hackers. Google, Facebook, Amazon…all those huge companies do the same. They hire hackers to test the security of their systems, you know, looking for loopholes, back doors, penetrable firewalls, stuff like that that means nothing to you…" He laughed, as his voice trailed off.
"We find vulnerabilities before the blackhat hackers can exploit them."
"Ok…so what is this then?" I asked, not sure what I was looking at as I flipped through the pages.
"I…sort of…hacked…the FBI," he admitted hesitantly, wincing as the words came out.
"You did what? Chuck, are you crazy? Why would you do that?" I asked, my voice shrilly.
"Don't worry, please, Sarah. No one will know that I did. I promise. I just…wanted to…find something for you."
I was still in shock, reeling from his admission. "Chuck…"
He sighed, then started talking so quickly all his words ran together. "Sarah, I've known how to hack since I was 15. It sort of…kept my mind occupied while my life was falling apart, when my father left. I never hurt anyone, never stole a penny from anyone. I did it just to see that I could do it. I even hacked into the DNI and the DoD…when I was a teenager. Now, the DNI and the DoD pay me to make sure no one like me ever does what I did again."
I was still flabbergasted. But it was about to get more intense.
"Sarah, that is the transcript of the conversation the FBI had with your father after you two were arrested in San Diego in 2006," Chuck said.
My mouth hung open, no sound emitting forth. I could hardly breathe.
"He…asked them to give you the plea deal you got. He wanted you to do what you did, to tell them everything. He wanted you to have your life back. You are holding onto so much…guilt for that. Your father never wanted you to feel like that, Sarah. He was trying to make it right."
My tears splashed from my chin onto the papers in my lap. "Chuck," I whispered hoarsely, unable to say anything else.
"You said you haven't seen him since you were 17. But he's in California, Sarah. At River Hill Penitentiary. You can visit him, you know, try and reestablish a connection with him. It's not too late."
I rubbed my hand over my face, drying the tears on my cheeks. "Maybe he knows where my mother is, you know, if she's even still alive."
His eyes were pink, red-rimmed. "Look at the last page in there," he said softly.
I flipped as he instructed. A single post-it note affixed to the back of the folder. A name and an address. Emma Burton. She lived about an hour away in San Bernardino.
"It took some time, but I traced it back through your parent's marriage license. Your father told the FBI his real name, which was actually the name he was using when you two were arrested. That's your mother, Sarah," he said, his voice catching, as he absorbed the meaning, the effect he knew it would have on me.
I gasped, almost shrieking, covering my mouth.
His voice shook when he said more. "She spent…almost every penny she ever earned looking for you. Private investigators in multiple states. Still. She never stopped looking for you."
I couldn't say anything else. I jumped to my feet and launched myself at him, grabbing him around his neck and squeezing. I just cried while he held me, stroking the back of my head.
When I could finally speak, I gushed, "Thank you, Chuck. I don't…I don't…know what to say. I can't believe you did all of this for me."
"I wanted to give you something…meaningful. Important."
I touched his face, my heart overflowing. "You are the greatest gift I could ever have hoped for."
"Merry Christmas, Sarah," he whispered, right before he kissed my cheek.
My mind was reeling, thinking about all of the things I would need to do to reconnect with both my father and my mother. It was late on Christmas Eve, and tomorrow was Christmas.
"I'm off all next week, Sarah. Anything you need me to do, I'm here. Whenever you're ready."
I kissed him goodnight, nestling in his arms, imagining I could hear a bell ringing somewhere in the distance. It was that perfect, my happy ending.
I was asleep in his arms, my head resting on his chest, when Christmas arrived–the first time in my life that I could remember greeting the day without tears in my eyes or emptiness in my heart.
