His lips descend upon her bare neck. Her scent intoxicates him. Sand sticks to his wet hands as he digs his fingers into the earth. Her legs rise and wrap around his body. His thrusts are desperate. His passion escalating. Her naked body writhing beneath his, bringing him closer to the exquisite release he's spent minutes building toward. Just a few more seconds and the ecstasy he is only able to achieve with her will be his again.
A loud boom of thunder startles Todd Manning. As another loud explosion of noise erupts outside, he sits up in bed. He rubs his hands across his face. Another dream of her. Another dream interrupted.
It's been almost an entire year since Todd Manning was stranded on a deserted island with his ex-wife, Tea Delgado, along with another man he prefers to forget the existence of. It's been nearly as long since he left her stranded there as he returned to a life he knew would never again include her. He knew she would be rescued. He knew she would survive and flourish in her life without him. He hadn't counted on one memory haunting him for so long.
In the past, when they had parted, his thoughts would often return to her. This is different. This one memory has invaded his thoughts, and his dreams, so often, he's come to question which parts are real and which he has added during the eleven months and twenty days he's had to obsess over it.
He certainly has other memories of her, some that make him hate himself and some that make him wish things could be different, that their lives didn't need to be lived apart.
This one memory, though, of making love to her on the beach of that deserted island, is the one that returns to him more than any other. Even his dreams favor this memory over all others.
Her eyes, her lips, her skin, her hair, her voice...
Todd removes himself from his bed. He knows that thoughts of her will prevent him from sleeping anymore on this night. She has a way of invading his brain and refusing to leave. Sometimes he likes that about her. Other times he hates it. Tonight, as he sits in a chair next to the window and watches the rain fall as he listens to the occasional claps of thunder, he likes it. Tonight she's with him.
Every night she's with him in his memories, and in his dreams, but tonight he feels her with him in a stronger sense than he has in several months. Maybe it's knowing that the anniversary of their physical reunion on that island will be upon them soon. He knows Tea. He knows she remembers the anniversary of everything important they've ever experienced together. He knows that she'll think of him on this anniversary, as she does on all their other anniversaries. Knowing that she'll be thinking about him as he thinks about her makes him feel closer to her, more connected. Right now, his life is so disconnected from everyone he's ever cared about, he needs this connection. He needs a connection to his past, to a time when love was available, when happiness was more than a distant, unattainable concept. He needs to feel connected again. He needs to feel connected to his Delgado.
Todd removes himself from the comfortable chair and stalks across the most recent of many hotel rooms he's occupied in recent months. After escaping from Llanview, his adopted hometown, just barely with his life, he immediately began a journey of numerous cities, in numerous states, along with several countries, trying to escape the person he had become and the danger he was certain he now posed to his children. They may never know why he disappeared so suddenly from their lives, but their safety will never again be placed in question as a means to blackmail him. His heart aches knowing that he has abandoned them despite his determination long ago that he would never allow his children to feel the pain of abandonment. He's felt that pain every day of his life since he first faced that pain himself as a child when his mother saved herself by leaving him behind as she raced from his abusive father. He has always understood her need to save herself from the horrors she faced with his father, but he has also always struggled with wondering why she didn't feel that he was worth saving, too.
Todd flings open the small refrigerator supplied by the hotel and removes one of the bottles of beer he earlier had stocked it with. Nights like this always go down easier when there is beer going down his throat, preferably at a rapid rate.
Todd returns to the chair by the window and to his thoughts of Tea Delgado. Thoughts of her have always made the nights pass more easily, too.
He watches the storm outside the window as he smiles at the memories of the storm that is Tea Delgado. She was a tornado that entered his life years ago and turned everything upside down, leaving him feeling like nothing remained the same in her wake. She had a way of destroying the walls he had built around himself with as much ease as a tornado leveling the walls of a seemingly sturdy building. Yes, Tea Delgado is definitely a tornado, one he wishes he could experience again even though he never knows for certain if he'll survive her presence, but always enjoys the exhilarating challenge of trying.
Todd leans back in the chair and places his feet on the windowsill as he contemplates once again becoming a storm chaser, chasing that storm known as Tea Delgado.