She doesn’t move. Doesn’t react. The words are not a relief. They hurt, tearing free from my throat like broken glass.
“When you were afraid…” I can't breathe. The world is closing in, pushing me back into the darkness and the dead space where I've been living. This is worse. So much worse than the helplessness I've felt before. “I got off on your fear, Abby.”
I can feel the shadow of the war. I can feel the relentless pleasure at the violence, the joy that we were still alive. I cannot move, cannot fill my lungs.
The war finally broke me.
And turned me into a monster.
Abby
I've seen this before. The fear, the tension. He is gone away, some place I cannot follow.
I cannot leave him alone.
Everything falls into place now. Everything makes sense. His revulsion. His reluctance.
His flight after I screwed everything up by thinking there was some magical cure.
I hear the words, let them sink in and wrap around me. I can't explain it. But the pain on his face, the shame carved into the lines around his mouth. “This is not who you are,” I whisper.
“It’s defined everything I’ve done since I got home.” Words laced with pain. He does not want to take pleasure in pain.
“It doesn’t have to.”
And for that, I love him a little more.
But that does not mean I am safe.
I want to put my arms around him. Hold him close while the nightmares come.
But I can't.
I have seen this nightmare before.
I have lived it.
But I am no longer eleven years old.
I will do better.
"Josh."
I don't touch him. I can't reach him right now.
And I have no way of knowing if he would feel my hands on him or if he would think they belonged to his nightmares.
"Josh." I breathe out quietly. "Look at me." A whisper. A prayer. An urgent hope that he can hear me.
That he will open his eyes and see me.
It is forever and a moment more before he opens his eyes. They are dark, darker than the shadows that are normally hiding there. His mouth is pressed into a flat line.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm so f*ck
ing sorry."
I step to him then. The man beneath my hands is as hard as forged steel. Slowly, I slide my fingers over his cheeks until they slip around his neck. His hair is softer than any man's should be.
He does not resist as I draw him closer, down until there is no space between us. No air, no light. No room even for the regrets that mark us both.
It is a long moment before his arms slide around my waist. His fingers press into the small of my back and for a moment I feel utterly safe and protected.
It is forever before either of us moves. If we live to be one hundred, I won't know. But there is a moment when everything shifts. When my arms around him cease being about comfort and morph into something more. Something dark and alive and pulsing with life.
Heat floods me. I nuzzle the soft skin at the edge of his ear. His arms tighten around me and one of his hands drifts lower to squeeze my ass. I am aching and raw. This. This is need. This is want.
He inhales sharply, then releases a quiet huff of breath on my neck a moment before his teeth scrape across the sensitive skin of my throat. I make a sound. It might be pleasure. It might be pain or a little bit of both. I arch against him–my hips to his, my neck exposed for his taking.
I don't care that we are in public. I don't care that his hands are kneading and tight on my ass.
All I care about is the tension in this man. The arousal pulsing through his body and into mine.
"I want you naked," I whisper. Because I cannot be passive. Not even now.
Whatever it takes.
“You pick now to talk dirty to me?”
I laugh and then I can no longer think. His body rocks slowly against mine. He cups my cheek and kisses me hard then, his tongue sliding against mine in a dark, sensuous caress. Telling me more in that moment than any words could ever hope to convey.
I am lost in him. The fierceness of his kiss. The ragged need in every scrape of his teeth and stroke of his tongue.
It is Josh who steps back. Who creates distance between us, a silence filled with rough breathing and the violent pounding of my heart.
"We'll get arrested," he whispers against my mouth.
"I can think of no one I'd rather have prison sex with."
A laugh tears out of him. "We have got to work on your dirty talk."
I cup his face and pull him close.
Because after everything, I can't believe we are still standing.
Chapter 26
Josh
Eli asks me to sit with Caleb for a while. For once, I am okay with it. I can't explain it. The dead space inside me feels a little less empty.
The shame…the shame is not gone. I don't think it ever will go away completely.
But there is something else crowding it out. Something pushing it away from the center of the space it occupies.
Forgiveness. Tonight, in Abby's arms, I found a moment's peace.
It won't last. It never does. Healing what ails me will take a lot more than getting hot and bothered in public.