Page 98 of No Greater Oblivion

“Hm.” I nod in response. “Well, I’m going to change for dinner. Lettie and I are going to a flamenco show later.”

He side steps me on the way to the bathroom. “Dahlia⁠—”

He places his hands on my arms and I flinch but not because he touched me. I’m still a little dizzy from too much afternoon drinking and I almost lose my balance. My hand shoots out and I grab the edge of the dresser to keep myself steady but he doesn’t notice. He pulls back so quickly it’s like watching a child recoil from the heat of a flame.

“I…” He looks down at his palms. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll put the gloves back on.”

“What?”

“I hadn’t realized⁠—”

Only then do I notice his hair is wet and his shirt isn’t fully buttoned. His hands are bare and he isn’t wearing any shoes. He must’ve just gotten out of the shower. Before he can move away, I grab his wrist and spin him back around.

Almost two months have passed since the fire but so much has happened since then, especially since getting my boot taken off. Which is why it’s so easy for me to forget I wasn’t the only one injured.

I try turning his palms over but he clenches them into fists.

“Please. Don’t.”

“You think I don’t want to be touched by you? Are you crazy?”

A muscle in his jaw moves. “I hadn’t…I never look. But today I did. They’re awful.”

“They aren’t. I lost my balance because I’m a little tipsy that’s all.”

“Hanging out with your friend again? I’m beginning to think they’re a bad influence.”

“Don’t change the subject. Let me see.”

After a bit of coaxing, he slowly unfurls his fingers to reveal the sensitive skin of his palms. Most of the surrounding skin is in the final stages of healing while the center is a lighter shade of red in some areas and pink in others. For the most part, he’s past needing to keep them wrapped all the time but I noticed he still wears his gloves, albeit the much more comfortable, fingerless ones. There wasn’t any permanent muscle or nerve damage so he retained full mobility at the cost of a few scars which is so much more than I hoped for. Due to his own maltreatment, I feared the worst.

“They’re healing very well.”

“They’re horrific.”

“So what? God already made you too pretty. Having nice hands would’ve gone straight to your head.”

Surprised laughter leaves his lips and he moves as if to touch me but hesitates so I lift his open palms to my cheeks.

“Dahlia—”

“These are the most precious hands to have ever touched me. I’ll never be touched by any others again.”

The tender sweep of his thumbs across the apples of my cheeks send a rush of warmth through me. “I’d have dug you out from under the rubble of a hundred fires.”

“I know.”

“It was more than worth it.”

I lift to the tips of my toes to kiss him but what was meant to be a chaste gesture almost immediately descends into the heat of passion. He has his arms around me as he carries me back to bed and I remove his shirt but the sound of his phone makes my body seize.

I hold my breath and wait for the moment he pulls away and the inevitable rejection makes my stomach sink. But he continues to kiss down my throat and across my collarbone. Finds the zipper at the back of my dress and pushes it down my figure with haste. When his phone rings a second time, he barely glances at the screen. He hits the off button on the side, tosses it into the bottom drawer of my nightstand, and kicks it closed.

There’s a moment of disbelief, where I can’t comprehend what I’ve just witnessed, but the shock fades as quickly as it came. He has his hands on my bare skin and his lips on mine and it’s the closeness I’ve been begging for ever since I first felt him drifting away from me. Maybe I should’ve stopped us. Maybe I should’ve forced us to have a conversation before I lost my nerve and found my way to the root of the problem.

Is it wrong that I don’t?

I let him make love to me and can’t help but wonder if there’s a way I can save us after all.