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Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nala
Jordan and I go for a paddle after we finish class.
She’s quiet, giving me my space because Jordan understands a person’s need to lose themselves for a bit while they figure out a problem. She goes home when we’re done, and I head to the Y to teach a few private swimming lessons. While I work, I think of Malcolm, and everything he’s said, everything he’s done, in the past few years.
When Ashton died, he stopped running away and started coming home more—and he always came to see me, even when I rejected him. He put gas in my Jeep, called me to make sure I was okay, to make sure I had eaten dinner, to make sure who knows what, just tomake sure. Looking back, I can see what I didn’t before, or maybe what I wouldn’t let myself: Mal has been trying to show me he loved me for a while now, and I’ve done nothing but turn him away, and then after we finally get together, I tell him we can’t go back, when it’s so obvious he needs to.
How to give this to him without giving him everything from our time apart is what plagues me through my lessons and all the way home. I shower quickly, and it’s there that inspiration strikes. Walking into the kitchen in Mal’s T-shirt again, my hair left down to curl damply in any direction it chooses, I search until I find a mostly full bottle of vodka. Good enough.
Grabbing my oversized canvas bag, I lean down and smack a kiss on Jordan’s cheek, making her look up from her computer. “See you tomorrow.”
She raises a brow when she sees my outfit, but she doesn’t say anything. “Okay. Be safe.”
“Will do, Mom.”
She shrugs, a bit sheepish, and I laugh, closing the door on my way out. I manage to get to my Jeep without encountering anyone else, and I make it to Mal’s just before sundown. Grabbing my tote, and the vodka, I hop out, walking to the door with purpose. If nerves jump in my stomach, I ignore them and knock on the door.
He answers, black hair thick and heavy, flipped every which way around his face—chest and arms distractingly bare. A different pair of shorts from this morning ride low on his hips.
“Looks like we’re both going casual,” I say, and his eyes trail down the length of me, clad only in his shirt and toenail polish. When they travel their way back up, they are positively molten.
“Tell me you didn’t go anywhere else like that.” My smile just a little coy, matching my shrug. My non-answer is another challenge, one we both know he can meet with his own now that we’re alone. “Jesus, you’re trying to kill me.” Reaching out, he grabs the vodka and sets it on the floor next to the door, before grabbing me with one hand, and slipping my bag off my shoulder with the other.
Tossing it in the corner, he shoves the door shut and presses me against his, hands diving under the hem of the shirt and finding me through the delicate material of my panties.
“Fuck, Nala.” His breath hisses out and he devours my mouth, using teeth and tongue the way I’ve come to understand he does when he’s really turned on, when he’s on the verge of shattering. I give it back to him for just one minute, because I’m at the same place, the one where I only want to feel him.
“I’m sorry,” he says after a second, lips still pressing against mine. “For this morning…at lunch when I said that.” He closes his eyes, and lays his forehead against mine. “I just…I can’t stand knowing there were all these years where I wasn’t a part of your life, where someone else got to see you like this, and I couldn’t even get you to be in the same room with me.”
“But that’s what you wanted.” I hate those words, and their truth, almost as much as I hate what comes next. “And maybe…that’s the way it needed to be. It could have happened differently,” I explain when he opens his eyes. “But we were both young, and even though I wanted you, even though it killed me and made me hate you when you walked away from me that night, and took that girl with you, maybe you knew what I didn’t.”
His voice is hoarse. “How to epically fuck up the most important relationship in my life?”
“Besides that,” I say, and he lets out a soft laugh. “Maybe you knew we wouldn’t have been able to be here, like this, because I was fifteen and not even halfway through high school, and you were a man with a full-time career that took you all over the world.”
Mal opens his eyes, and I hate that his vulnerability is back “How do we get past it, Nala? Because you say you can’t talk about it—that you won’t—but that time…it keeps stepping between us. I won’t lose this,” he says, and fierce Malcolm is back. “I can’t lose this. Being with you is all I’ve ever wanted, and I won’t fucking let secrets keep us apart.”
I nod, heart thumping because I know he’s right, but I also know I’m not ready. Maybe he deserves to know what really happened when he left, who I became—through my own choices and through the choices of others, but I’m not ready yet. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years of group, both as a leader and a participant, it’s that the victim has to be ready or the truth doesn’t free them, it swallows them.
Pushing away from the door, I force Mal to release me. “I wasn’t lying when I said I can’t go back. Who I was when you left…” I shake my head. “I’m not ready for you to know her.” He starts to speak, but I put my fingers over his lips. “But, I get why you want to talk about that time, so I have a plan.”
“Getting drunk?” he asks when I reach down and pick up the bottle of vodka.
“No, we’re going to play questions. I can’t answer everything,” I tell him. “So if you ask me something, I either answer or take a shot. You can do the same when I ask you questions.”
“Nala, we don’t have to do this.”
I nod my head, walking in to his kitchen and opening cupboards until I find his glasses. Snagging two shot glasses with different club names on them, I set them on the counter and hop up, pouring a half a shot into each.
“Yeah, we do. And doing it this way makes me feel in control, especially since I have class tomorrow, so I can only go until I’m tipsy.”
He still looks skeptical, but he walks into the kitchen to stand next to the counter where I’m seated. I hand him a glass. “You go first.” When he just stares at me, I shrug. “Fine, I’ll go first. Did you have sex with that girl the night you walked out on me?”
Mal’s eyes light fire, and he slams back his shot. I fill it back up without making a comment. “Who was your first?”
My hand jerks enough that a small amount of liquid sloshes over the rim of my glass and splashes onto my hand. I don’t look up to meet his eyes. Instead, I take my time licking the alcohol off and settling myself.
