Being at his house made me wonder why I didn’t just go back in the first place—until I remembered exactly why. Brooks took my coat to hang in the hall closet and I pulled the sleeves of my black sweater down until they covered my palms. I held them in place with my fingertips.
“Still cold?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m fine.”
First, I sat on the leather chair, but that quickly became too uncomfortable. Then I moved to the couch, all while Brooks was in the other room. The sound of him shuffling things around in the kitchen let me know I had a few minutes to myself. I took my shoes off and compulsively checked my cut, thinking it’d somehow disappear. But when it didn’t, I grew so disgusted with myself I could’ve just ran away.
I absentmindedly patted Boden until he got fed up with my neurotic tendencies and moved on to the other room.
Brooks eventually came back into the living room with two gargantuan mugs. He must’ve gone from the hospital to the flower shop before surprising me in the parking lot. He still had on his Dockers and a dress shirt, and when he handed me the mug of chicken noodle soup the shirt tugged at him in all the right places.
He put his mug down on the coffee table before he draped the thick hunter green blanket from the ottoman over my legs. Once I was all wrapped up, he sat beside me.
We both took a few silent sips of the hot soup.
“I don’t want to make you talk if you don’t want to”—he brought back his eggshell voice—“but what happened, Ollie?”
“I don’t know.” I took another sip.
“Did I do something wrong?”
I laughed without a single hint of humor. “No.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
The vision of me reflected in his eyes was a scared doe. It was hard to tell if he was holding a rifle, though.
He took the mug from my hands and I suddenly felt naked. “Ollie.” He cupped my face, gently, so gently. “Do you want to be here with me now?” I nodded but couldn’t manage to look him in the eye despite our closeness. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I curled into his body, just completely fell into him, and he held me tightly in response. It wasn’t lost on me that I fit there completely and totally.
In that moment I tried so hard to be normal—happy. The girl with the amazing boyfriend and confidence to spare, the girl who had a great best friend and loved deep conversations with her mother, at least the girl with no scars—but I just couldn’t.
No matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t that girl and I never would be. The only thought I could concentrate on for more than a passing second was how much I loved being with him and that was an unacceptable thing to feel. I could never keep him and his absence would be something I would never survive.
“It’s okay.” He kissed my hair and clasped my hand. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.” He was so naïve he actually believed what he was saying.
I shook my head into his chest. “Probably not.” He had no idea.
“You’re back here, aren’t you? That’s already a big step to things being okay…better than okay. Do you have any idea how much I was looking forward to coming home to you? Do you have any idea how much it hurt for you to not be here?”
“Do you have any idea how much I wanted to be here?”
“No. Tell me. Show me.”
I wasn’t expecting him to say that. I wasn’t expecting him to push me back onto the couch. I wasn’t expecting him to pull the blanket off me in a flash, and I really wasn’t expecting him to get on top of me. The second I was under him I knew I wanted him, I always knew I wanted him.
My hands, my greedy hands, couldn’t wait to feel his skin. I pulled his shirt off, ripping buttons as I did, without thinking of the chain reaction I would be starting. With his hands on me, teasing me, tugging on the hem of my sweater, it was impossible to think of anything else but being with him. All my numbingly awful loneliness was about to disappear in a way only Brooks could make it.
But then I remembered I’m not the kind of girl who can be easily loved.
“Don’t,” I told him as he pried my sweater out from under my fingers.
“Hmm?” he murmured as he continued to touch me all over.
“Stop it.” I shoved at his solid frame and he stopped touching me, but he didn’t get off of me.
“What’s wrong?” He was sort of smiling but I could tell he didn’t mean it.
“Let me go.”
I was toying with him, wasn’t I? Why did I even agree to come home with him?
He leaned back but still wasn’t completely off me. “Okay. Was I hurting you?”
Brooks was trying so hard to downplay the situation. I could see it all over his face, because it was the same expression I always had when I was with Sadie and she was weirdly upset over something stupid like the store not having her size and about to cause a scene.
“No. I just don’t want you to touch me.” Just like that, I saw his heart break.
Brooks’s reaction was so strong it physically hurt me. He gasped in a small way, like he heard what I was saying but couldn’t believe it, and his brow furrowed. He took his hands, his perfect long-fingered hands, and pulled them away from me and to his sides while his eyes glistened.
All I wanted to do was hold him and tell him I loved him, but as soon as I thought the words I knew I had to be even crueler to him. He deserved the best this life had to offer and I was a far cry from the best of anything. It had to stop before he did something crazy like develop an attachment to me.
“Take me back to my car.” I spoke as coldly as I could, which was pretty frigid.
“No.”
“No?”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I want.”
“I’m not buying it.”
“Fine.” I shrugged. “I’ll just go across the street.” I kicked at him as I got up, but I didn’t think it fazed him. He just sat there watching me, calling my bluff. I could tell he didn’t believe I’d go to Aaron or Sadie. It was the last place I wanted to be, and I was already in the only place I wanted to be, but I’d show him.
I shoved my feet into my boots, barely, and stomped out the front door. And I really mean stomped. By the time I made it to the second stupid step, my tears tried to escape through my lashes.
I was so impulsive, so damn impulsive. What the hell was wrong with me? I loved him so I was running away from him. Being around Aaron and Sadie made me miserable, so I was running to them.
“Ollie,” he called calmly from his front door. My heart sped up to hear my name flutter from his mouth. He said it like he knew I loved him. He said it like he knew I’d stop if he asked me to. He said it like maybe he loved me too.
That was the moment my almost-on shoe didn’t quite make it off the bottom step. I tried to catch myself, but the patch of ice my other foot hit did not help. I fell hard to the pavement.
Dramatics I loved, but ice I did not.
My hands mostly caught me, which saved my head, but my palms stung like hell. I sat on my knees, in the dark, in the front yard, and wished the ground would swallow me whole. Would that be too much to ask for? Sink holes are real and terrifying, and all I needed was an Ollie-sized one.
It didn’t hurt—well, not that badly—but I felt like shit.
It took a minute, but Brooks eventually picked me up. It was like it was nothing to him, even though I wasn’t the thinnest girl around. He carried me up the steps, into the house, and sat me on the kitchen counter, all the while being so careful with me.
Neither of us said a word, and I hoped it’d stay that way. I couldn’t look at him and I didn’t know how he had the stomach to look at me. Maybe he didn’t know what I did, but I had already showed him I was insane.
“Let me see,” he prodded as he tried to pry my clasped hands apart.
I shook my head and pulled my sleeves down further, stretching them out beyond repair as well as staining them with my blood.
“Ollie, I’m a doctor.”
“Not yet, and I’m not an animal,” I said, meeting his eyes. It was a mistake.
“Aren’t you, though?” He smiled a real smile and it was beautiful, probably the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I frowned more deeply. “Roll up your sleeves.”
And that would be when I found my way out.
Maybe I wasn’t strong enough to end things, but I knew I could make him want to end them. I always had a knack for making a bad situation worse, but this time my talent would be useful. My past would never leave me; the mistake I made when I was younger and foolish and full of emotions I didn’t know what to do with would always be with me. And not only that, I’d just done it again because I was still full of emotions I didn’t know what to do with.
Slowly I pushed my sleeve up. I was surprised by how much blood there was on my palms, but it didn’t bother the doctor. Even though the lighting in his kitchen was soft and subtle, my cut buzzed neon.
The old one was mostly a dull line, barely visible and just a hair lower than the new. So invisible I thought that he wouldn’t have noticed it before when we were having sex. But the newest one was so obviously what it was. Anyone, everyone, even without previous knowledge, would know what I’d done.
He pulled me off the counter, and for the briefest second I thought my plan worked and he was going to escort me out. I tried to imagine leaving his house knowing I’d never return. The idea was so painful it was like I was being gutted.
But instead of that nightmare becoming a reality, Brooks wrapped his hands around my waist and turned me around, guiding my hips to the sink. He stood behind me and pressed himself into my backside as he adjusted the water temperature to a warm trickle.
I was trapped between him and the granite counter, not sure which was harder, but I knew I didn’t want to escape. He thoroughly washed my palms, using only his hands as a cloth, and I didn’t know what to make of his actions.
When he was satisfied with his work, he turned me around, lifted me back up on the counter, and then left the room. If I was smart I would’ve taken the chance to run, but I didn’t. He came back pretty quickly with a box of bandages, nudged my legs apart with his, and stood in between them as he gingerly and expertly covered up all the scrapes.
Brooks could’ve been a people doctor. The way he worked was so hypnotic and methodical. I knew they were just everyday scrapes, but his surgeon hands were so nimble and wise.
Looking down at my battered palms made me realize I should be careful with my instruments. My hands should be treated with the same regard as my pencil or my machine at the shop, but instead I beat them up.
After he was finished, he took both my bandage-covered palms in his. Because I didn’t want to meet his gaze, I kept my focus on our hands. His, all long-fingered, unscathed, and immaculate even though he’d been working on me. Mine, stubby, with chipping nail polish, and now scratched to hell. I didn’t need the metaphor to beat me over the head.
Out of nowhere he brought my hands to his lips and kissed them. My heart raced right out of my chest, down the block, and into the night. What I wanted and what was going to happen couldn’t possibly be the same thing.
He very slowly and very deliberately traced my fresh cut with his thumb before he bent down to kiss the length of my arm. Brooks eventually made his way to my mouth.
“No more.”
I shook my head. “No. No more.”
“Okay?” he asked between kisses.
“Yes.” I still couldn’t kiss him back. “But it’s not exactly what you think.”
“Do you need to talk to someone—a doctor—about this? I know a great one.”
He just kept on kissing me.
“I have one,” I told him, and it was the truth.
“And you’ll go?”
I nodded.
“I’ll go with you.”
My arms snaked around his neck in way I knew they were meant to. When I finally kissed him back, I kissed him with everything I had. Our bodies fell seamlessly into rhythm and it was like no time had passed since we were last together—like maybe I wasn’t so damaged after all.