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The best answer was a promise to keep his secret safe. She gave Jamie a hug, as welcoming as the one he’d given her, before she trudged up the beach to Damon.
He’d have heard her coming, but he didn’t speak. She knelt at his side. “I’m scared.”
He turned his face to her. “I’m listening.”
She took a breath. She liked that he hadn’t tried to jump in and explain Taylor away as nothing. “I haven’t flown tandem for a long time. I haven’t even wanted to.” She watched his face to see if he understood she wasn’t talking about parasailing.
He tipped his head to the side, considering. He got it. “But now you do.”
“Now I do and it freaks me out.”
He smiled, full dimple. “That’s allowed.”
“I’m feeling all these things for you I don’t know how to manage.”
He sat up, held his hand out and she put hers in it. “That’s allowed too. What made you come back? Did Taylor give you a serve?”
“Jamie.”
“Jesus, he must like you. He wants another hug, he has to come through me.”
She squeezed his hand. “They really are your family.”
“Yeah. They can’t help themselves. It can get mighty irritating.”
Damon got to his knees and she moved forward, pushed his cap off his head and snaked her hand through his sweaty hair.
“You’re also allowed to get angry with me and walk away.” He shrugged. “Just try not to leave me in the middle of a freeway or the edge of a precipice, but other than that, no matter what Jamie said, no matter how Taylor looks at you, there are no rules for being with me that are any different from being with anyone else.”
How could that be true? There’d been all kinds of rules for having a relationship with Hamish, all kinds of procedures, habits and sensibilities that made it less a relationship and more a transaction. Damon could blast past his blindness and make you believe he could see as much as he wanted, but the truth was different.
He pushed to his feet. “You don’t trust that.” She stood with him. He opened his arms and she stepped into them, into the crisp heat of his sunbaked skin. It made her shiver. He sighed. He took her hat off, put his hand to her plait and tugged left and right, piloting her head to give him the answer she didn’t. “I guess that’s fair, especially because I left a rule out.”
“Argh.” She made a sound of annoyance and he laughed.
He dropped his hand to her back and held her. “There is only one rule I need. You have to let me hear you.” He took her sunglasses off, tossed them with his on a towel. “Whisper, yell, mumble, throw things, stomp around,” he lowered his voice, “sing. It doesn’t matter what you do, but I need to hear your emotion. I can handle being left on a precipice without falling. Abandon me on a highway or a back road and I’ll make it out okay, but if you stop making sounds I can hear, I’m truly in the dark.”
That was fair and so little to ask of her. As much a basic courtesy as a rule. “I can do that.”
He gave her a flash of dimple, a dose of wobbly knee and a kiss to seal the promise, which he followed with a none too gen
tle swat to her backside.
“Now take me tandem parasailing and let me hear you scream.”
19: Nothing
Damon woke coughing and the pain rolled in, a swarm of sensation, the worst of it throbbing behind his eyes. He lurched upright, something cold against his arm, metal. He pushed against it and dry retched over the side of the bed. Not his bed. And God, not Georgia’s. Where the fuck was he and why was he dying?
He slumped back on the pillow, very starchy sheets, and this bed was a narrow single. Humming noises and squeaky shoes, but not close.
He didn’t know if he was alone and the urge to vomit had a good grip on him.
He’d taken Georgia for lunch, walked her back to Avocado. She’d hailed him a taxi, and then something tried to take the top of his head off. He hadn’t gotten here by carrier pigeon. What day was it? How long had he been out?
The question-forming part of his brain was obviously functioning. The answer giving part must’ve been sheared off by the impact. He put his hand to his head, not exactly to check if it was all there, but still gratified to feel hair and intact scalp. He also felt a bandage, a sticking one. Gingerly poking the spot made him grunt. His neck hurt, his stomach churned, his back was stiff and his knee felt bruised and swollen. It was hard to care about answers, about anything, when he felt so terrible.
Then a hand to his forehead and he winced.
