I shift, inching a breath closer to his heat, his shoulder, the line of his jaw in profile.
I could leave. I could go back down the hall and lie in an unfamiliar bed.
I don’t.
He doesn’t reach for me. He doesn’t speak. He breathes out slowly. Almost unnaturally slowly, as if he’s trying to calm himself.
I don’t leave the room.
And I don’t fall asleep.
Twenty
Henry
The fire snaps and spits, and the rain pelts the roof, but neither is as loud as my pulse in my ears.
I fix my stare on the flames because if I look at Tabitha, really look, I’ll roll over onto her and take what we both want.
The wood crackles, and all I can think about is how I want her that fiercely, like fire running through my veins.
Honesty.
Is she asleep yet?
Maybe if I say something…
If she doesn’t answer, I’ll know.
I breathe in. Exhale. “Sometimes it gets…loud in here. In my head. The noise. Flashbacks. Gun. Blood. The sound of Ralph’s body hitting the floor. Then the accident—the beam crashing, Zach whining, the white lights, the staples in my skull. Sometimes I can’t tell if it’s the past or the present. It all just…collides.”
Saying it feels like I’m baring myself, and I don’t even know if she can hear me.
But she does. She hugs her knees to her chest.
“I get that,” she says softly. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to go through something like that, but I get that your head gets loud. That you want to stop thinking about something so much that it literally hurts.”
Her words rip through me. My mind conjures the image of some derelict stopping her, putting his hands on her, trying to drag her away.
“I fought, but he was stronger,” she says, as if reading my mind.
I should have been there.
I would have been there, if not for that fucking beam.
“Thank God for Lance,” she continues. “He’s nice. Normal. But I can’t…” She turns toward me. “I don’t want him.”
Something in my chest cracks. Normal? Is she saying I’m not normal?
She wouldn’t be wrong.
“So I cope,” she goes on. “I tie knots. Memorize instruments. Make lists. Keep moving. Because if I don’t—if I stop—I’ll break.”
Every muscle in me strains against itself. My hands close into fists, my body screams to cross the distance and pull her against me, to swear I’ll never let anyone touch her like that again.
But I force myself still.
“If I’d been there?—”
