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“Hiding. Behind a computer.”
“No. Not hiding. Sacrificing. You’re not a coward. I know that you know you’re facing this head-on. You don’t want justice for them; you want it for all the victims in the world and the many people out there who have been wronged and forced into a life they didn’t choose. You’re not just doing it for Scarlet or yourself. You’re doing it for them. For the people that you don’t even know. That’s heroic. I think the brain, they say, is most impressionable before age twenty-two, so if you were going to go bad, then you’d have gone bad already. You chose the other path. It’s a harder path. The hardest. To be kind and good.”
“You don’t think I’m kind and good. I kidnapped you.”
Her eyes soften, and her plush lips part. Her tongue sweeps along her lower lip as she sighs. “You did. But I’ve forgiven you for that. It was a moment of insanity. I think we all have those. It might have been a bad decision, but it’s worked out now.”
“Because of Granny. And my brothers.”
“Also, because of you.”
I look down at my hands. “I feel like if I touch you, I could…I could wreck you. Mar your goodness.”
It takes a second for that to register, but then she laughs. Not a roaring laugh in the face of my deeply seated wounds, but a soft, healing laugh that falls around me like rain, washing away the soot I feel like I’ve been covered in for the better part of my life.
“Mar? No. If anything, you’d be like…like water to a wilted flower.” She studies me. “Do I have to say more intensely personal, kind of funny, kind of embarrassing, unfiltered things to make you more comfortable with this, or do you want to stop here? Because I’m good with that. If you…if you want to not do this, I’m okay with that too. But if you do, then I’m even more okay with that. Like, way more okay. Because it means that I won’t have to spend another restless, aching night tossing and turning in this bed and thinking about you every minute of it.”
I groan. “You haven’t really done that, have you?”
“I have.”
“Even after the chest incident?”
“Especially because of the chest incident.” Her eyes automatically go to my chest. “Look at that sexy manly chest. I don’t know what it looked like before, but it looks pretty effing stellar now.” She licks her lips as her eyes stray lower, past my abs, and even lower still. “I like that V you have there. It’s very manly too. And the abs. Very chiseled. I more than appreciate all of it, and if the razor burn has worn off, I’d really like to show my appreciation with things like taste and touch.”
My cock kicks in my pants, and I know I’ve lost the battle, but it doesn’t feel like a loss, and what I was battling was a battle with myself. I didn’t lose that. It was quite the opposite. Azalea battled it and won. She doesn’t see me the way I’ve seen myself for a long time now, and while she’s practically a stranger, she doesn’t feel that way. She’s also—not technically but seriously and legally—my wife. My. Wife. If she, a good, compassionate, lovely person whose aura I’m sure draws people to her left and right all the time, can look at me and find something good and decent, maybe I need to rethink the things that have been ingrained in my head for a good long time.
Things put there by the devil himself, enforced by the devil himself. My father. Why did I ever believe him? I knew it was wrong. I despised him. I hated everything he stood for. So why did I let his judgment and his sinuous, twisted, evil words sink into my mind?
Anyway, that’s enough of the heavy stuff. I know it’s not that simple. I have a shit ton of stuff I need to work out. Still. With myself. But Azalea’s words permeate past the layers, sinking down deep into my very core. They warm me, spreading like a glow, like the whole light of goodness thing.
“Touch me,” she commands. “Put your hand on me.” She takes my right hand gently by the wrist, rubbing her thumb there in small, wonderful circles that radiate and pulse their way up my arm. She guides my fingertips to the sensitive skin of her inner arm and rests my fingertips there. “See. No weird marks. I still feel just as good inside, if you want to put it that way. No strange stuff. Nothing at all. All that dirty stuff is nonsense. Total. Nonsense. Do you believe that?”
“Yes.” That’s probably the most honest word I’ve spoken in a very long time, and I’m a pretty inherently honest person, which got me into a lot of trouble in my earlier life.
