The cabin door was unlocked, but there was nobody around. She decided to step in and called out for Tommy. She heard the shower was on, she closed the front door and walked towards the bathroom door. "Tommy?" she called out, the shower was turned off. The door opened from the inside, and those blue eyes greeted her. She bolted into the door and jumped on him, he was wet with only a towel wrapped around his waist.
She wrapped her arms and legs around him, and kissed him. He was the most beautiful sight that she'd been yearning to see for the past two weeks. "I missed you too, Charlie," he told her under his breath. She took her clothes off, he carried her up the stairs to the bed under the ceiling. No other words were exchanged, their lips locked in a long passionate kiss. They made love to each other like the world was going to end if they don't. She was back to the reality that she had chosen for herself, back to Tommy, to whom her heart would always come home to.
They lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, still catching their breaths. She drifted away, thinking about what she had gone through in Gastonburry, she wondered when would be the right time to tell Tommy about it. Tommy rolled over to her, put his leg across hers, making a circle motion with his finger around her breast and kissing her shoulder.
"You're so beautiful, I'm so glad you're here," he told her. He kissed her neck and made her laugh, how she missed his tiny kisses that tickled her senses.
"I miss you so much," she kissed his mouth, nibbled on his lip, and licked his nose.
"How was your trip?" he asked her.
"How was yours?" she asked him back with a playful tone.
"It was interesting ... I got a job," he told her about his job and that he was going back there after summer was over.
He sounded hopeful, she loved it when he shared his stories about Goldstone. The glitz and glamour of the neon city - as they call it - where the movies are, the movie stars, the nights that never ends. Goldstone sounds like a place where life is always happening, where dreams come true.
"What about you? How did your trip go?" it was finally her turn to tell her story.
Her demeanor changed, "It was alright, I guess," she didn't even made an effort to smile.
Tommy touched her chin, "What's the matter? Was it that bad?"
She told him about her dad's affair with the Dean, "Landon said not to tell anyone, he said it would jeopardize my dad's election, and our family ... which I think he's right," she said.
Tommy took a moment to process all the information, "I'm sorry to hear that, ... it's true though, he can lose everything," he took Charlene's hand and kissed it. "Who's Landon?" he asked.
"He's my dad's business partner's son," she tip toed around it to see how Tommy would react.
"So ... you stayed at his house for two weeks?" Her heart was racing, she wondered if it was going to get better or worse the more she tells him about Landon. She nodded. "Is there a reason why you never mentioned this before?"
His tone of voice made her nervous, she knew she made a mistake by not telling him about Landon from the beginning, "Maybe I should've mentioned it, but I didn't think it was important, he's just my dad's partner's son," she tried to made it sound frivolous.
"Does he go to UOG?" Tommy asked, still holding her hand and played with her fingers.
She nodded again.
"So technically ... you'll be living with him when you go to school there? The same school he goes to?"
Charlene paused for a second, realizing how that sound and the fact that she never mentioned any of it before to Tommy, "Yeah." Tommy sat up on the bed, she sat up beside him and said, "He knows about you."
He raised his eyebrows and turned to look at her, "Is there any particular reason why you told him about me?" It's as if she couldn't say anything right, it was obvious he was irritated by the subject, and now she was afraid to tell him how Landon had came on to her.
"It just came up in our conversations." He can only imagined what the conversation was about that made her say that she has a boyfriend, which her own parents didn't know about.
"Is there something between the two of you that I need to know about?" he wanted to make sure.
She took a long breath, "Not really ... we're just friends, ... but I think he kinda likes me," she couldn't really say there was absolutely nothing between them.
Tommy rubbed his face with his hands, he took Charlene's hand and kissed it, he nodded acknowledging this new revelation that was really stirring him up inside.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Landon before, are you mad at me?" she ran her fingers through his hair.
He shook his head, it wasn't convincing, "I wish you'd told me about him before ... it would've made me feel like this means something to you," he said clutching her hand.
"It does ... it means everything to me, ... he doesn't mean anything to me, that's why I didn't tell you about him ... I love you, Tommy," she was as surprised as he was after she said it.
His heart had dropped to his stomach, "Don't say things you don't mean ... 'cause I'd believe you, Charlie, ... Landon sounds like a guy that's right for you ... but I'm too in love with you to let him win you over," there was a hint of sadness in his eyes.
She cupped his face with her hands, "You've won me over, Tommy, ... ten times over ... I meant what I said, I love you, because nobody has ever made me feel the way I feel for you," she kissed him gently, his heart was melting when he heard her say those words to him.
He felt a surge of passion inside him, he was overwhelmed, nobody had ever loved him before, "God ... I love you, Charlie ... you have no idea ..." he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her tight against him, he gave her a deep and powerful kiss that was devouring her.
He was afraid of his own feelings for her. He was opening himself up for a certain kind of heartache, he never done it with anyone else. When her mother left him with an 'I love you' note, he fell into a dark hole of petty love because it was the only kind of love he thought he deserved. He had scars to prove it. The fights he'd been in and his father's brutal ways may have injured him and left marks all over his body, but some of his deepest wounds were self inflicted. Something he had kept to himself, the only person who knew about it was already gone and left him his cabin. Old man Bob was the one who stopped him from his habit of self harm, and he tried really hard to never go back to that dark hole when Bob died.
"Tommy ..." she interrupted his thoughts. "Is there another girl in your life that I should know about?" she asked. They were still lying in bed, tangled in sheets and with each other, her head was on his chest, her fingers ran through the scars on the side of his abs, the ones he said was from a fight at a bar in Goldstone.
"No," he answered swiftly.
"But ... what about all those girls you've been with? Why did you say you've never had a girlfriend before?" she was asking innocently.
"They were not my girlfriend ... we just ..." he cleared his throat.
"When was the first time you had sex? Do you remember who you did it with?" she didn't let him finish his sentence.
He started telling her about Deeta Lee Rose, who she was and how she managed to lured him when he was 15 years old, she was 10 years his senior. Although, it wasn't as shady as it sound, he wasn't like an average 15 year old boy, he knew what he was getting into and the sex was consensual. "I've never met anyone who said 'no' to Deeta ... but I did, I said 'no' to her last week," he told her with a sense of pride on his face.
She lifted her head to look at him, "She sound like a real character," she smiled at the thought.
"She is, ... are you jealous?' he wanted her to be jealous.
She made a circling motion on his chest with her fingertip, kissed his nipple, "Should I be?" she asked. The feel of her lips and fingertips on his skin was teasing his senses.
"No ... I don't want anybody else but you," he said.
She rolled over on top of him, she sat up, both hands pressing on his chest. Her hair fell on one side off her shoulder, he gasped at how incredibly beautiful she looked, without any make up, bear breasts, biting her bottom lip with a dirty expression on her face.
"Show me," she said. "Show me that you don't want anyone else but me ... show me what you learned from Deeta ... show me everything, Tommy," she was half begging him.
Just hearing her say that instantly woke him up. The look in her eyes was daring him, waking up the beast inside him that was hungry for her all the time. He was wrapped around her little finger, the way she pulled him close with her gentleness of love making and then strap him up with dirty raw sex that she seduced out of him. She loved it, when he was caressing her gently, she loved it, when he was rough and greedy, she wanted it all.