Page 365 of Coal Hearts

“Henri...” Her fragile fingers landed on my shower-wet chest. “Y-You’re hurting me.”

“Merde.” Ripping my hands off her, I backed up.

She’d said the same thing when I’d grabbed her after I’d fought those bastards.

Such a condemning sentence delivered by the softest whisper.

“I didn’t mean to...I—” I sighed heavily. “I’m sorry.”

She hates me.

Her haunted eyes locked on mine as I stood ramrod straight.

I tripped into her stare, counting the swirling shadows and sorrow that hadn’t been there before.

My stomach knotted.

I swayed back another step.

Instinct blared that the emotion currently welling in my every vein—the emotion coated in sickness—wasn’t just possession but...

Fear.

It’s fear.

...you’re motherfucking terrified that you’ve lost her.

My hand lashed out.

I grabbed her chin and stepped forward.

She gasped as I crowded her.

Her fingers locked around my wrist, hot water sending curls of steam around her head as if she wore a halo. Her shoulders tried to brace, but they rolled instead, attempting to cocoon herself in protection. “Henri...stop it.”

My arms longed to wrap her in a hug, but a lifetime with no intimacy meant I was an uneducated beast. A childhood of no embraces equalled an adulthood of lonely pain.

I didn’t have the first fucking clue how to touch this girl.

I wanted her to see me as someone different.

I needed her to feel my regret instead of my darkness.

We stood there awkwardly, the shower pummelling us in scalding heat.

When I didn’t speak, her tension dribbled down the drain, and she sighed. “Look...it’s over, okay? I’m fine, thanks to you. He didn’t hurt me...thanks to you. I’m grateful, Henri. Extremely grateful, but...you can’t get angry with me for pointing out the truth.”

“The truth?” I spoke around sharp gravel. “The truth that I’m no better than they are?” A red, horrible haze dripped over my eyes. “The truth that each time you sleep with me, it’s because you don’t have a choice? That you don’t...enjoy it?”

Her lip curled as if to throw filth in my face. To deny her wetness or her orgasms.

I braced for it.

But then she slouched and said quietly, “I do enjoy it. Despite how I feel about you, our bodies are, unfortunately, perfect together.”

A tragic laugh fell from my lips. “So our sex is perfect, but the rest—the stuff that knots souls together—is shit?”

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I backed up.