CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gavin
I was impatient.
If what I wanted was right in front of me, I wanted it now, not later. Waiting for her to look at me like she’d once had, like I hung her entire universe, instead of leery and unsure, would be torture. But what choice did I have? She’d built walls around her, and I’d lost all of mine.
She peeked at me as we finished lunch, and barely looked at me as she helped me back into bed. Once alone, I took a few more pills and risked sleeping.
When I woke, it was late into the night. She lay on her side beside me, the covers pulled up tight around her neck. I was freezing, but didn’t dare risk moving. Pain radiated through me like a livewire. The after-effects of my nightmare burned in my blood.
I tried to relax my body, but that didn’t work when every single part of me was tensed. My eyes landed on Jas’s face, and stayed there. I traced her features like she’d dissipate. Her delicate features were so familiar. It wasn’t unlike me to spend hours staring at her. Maybe all those years ago, I knew I’d lose her. Knew that wanting anything more than Jasmeen was a huge mistake. She was all I needed.
My wheelchair was pushed beside my bed where she’d left it. I sat up as carefully as I could, biting the inside of my cheek, and using what little strength I had to get my body into the seat. Pain sweat dripped down my body and face in sheets. I kicked off with my good leg, and used the walls to pull myself along the rest of the way. The moment I was in a room all by myself, I screamed.
I screamed until my throat hurt as much as my body did.
I felt like I was still falling from the sky, and nothing I did would prevent the impact. The idea that I still had a way to fall made me sick. I puked over the side of my chair, and then I lay there for an indiscernible amount of time trying to breathe through the panic of my impending downfall.
“Gavin?”
Her soft voice tore me from my miserable mind. I blinked, finding that I was in the indoor track. The fresh maroon-colored turf of the indoor track taunted me.
“What are you doing here?” She grabbed my hand and moved around, stepping barefoot right into my puke. She blanched, holding her foot up and staring down at me like I was as much of a mess as I figured I was.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered numbly.
Her face broke. “It’s okay, Gav. Hang tight for a sec?”
I nodded, studying the track with need after she left. She returned a few minutes later, her foot clean, with a damp towel in her hand. She got on her hands and knees and began scrubbing, cleaning up my puke after I’d already thrown up on us.
“Makes me think of that time we had a marshmallow eating contest,” she said, peering up at me with a delicate smile. “You remember?”
“Jas,” I replied, “I remember everything we ever did together.”
She looked down, but not before I saw the blush on her face. “You lost,” she tacked on.
I found myself snorting. “Only because you cheated. You swatted me on my stomach after I’d eaten an entire bag of marshmallows.”
She shrugged. “A win’s a win. Let’s go get you cleaned up.”
“No,” I denied her, my tone firm. “I don’t want to shower.”
I didn’t want any more pain.
She must’ve sensed I wasn’t going to be swayed this morning. “Okay,” she placated, but she gazed down at me pleadingly. That was her personality. To want me, but to give me my space. For once, I just wanted her to stop doing the right thing. Crush the space and do what she wanted. What I wanted her to do.
“What do you want to do then?” She touched my shoulder, trailing her fingers over a line of muscle.
I felt her touch all the way in my cock. “You,” I answered honestly, letting her see every filthy desire I had in me. Desire was better than pain.
Her breathing deepened, and her eyes stayed stuck on mine. “We’re starting over,” she reminded me. “Friends don’t have sex.”
That made me chuckle. “I’m not, and have never been, in the friend zone with you. I’m on the sidelines now, but I’m not in the friend zone.”
“Come on, cocky cocky.” She wheeled me out of the room and back into the bedroom and helped me back into bed. “Don’t get up by yourself again.” She grabbed the remote and turned on the TV, quick to change the input so it didn’t show live television. I didn’t want to risk seeing anything about the crash.
I started to melt into the bed. Every day was the same as the last. I woke up from a nightmare, I managed to get myself into the indoor track, and I screamed until I was numb. Jas brought me back into the bedroom every time she found me there, forcing food into my mouth, soap onto my skin, and avoiding conversation, and doing her best to keep us in the friend zone.
I thought she knew the only thing saving her were my broken bones. If I weren’t so hurt, she’d be under me digging her nails into my back. The idea of sex with her started to become an obsession. I thought back to the times we’d made love in the past. The deep, the sweet, and the rough. Sometimes when I got my hands on her body I was hungry, other times I was reverent. It depended on the emotions she spun in me.
Showers were my favorite and worse part of my day. She had no choice but to shower with me. To wash me, she had to get wet too. It made sense to do both at the same time. My eyes soaked her up and my thick, hard cock ached to bury itself inside of her.
The snow got thicker, the nights darker, and we remained at the start. I wanted a hammer to smash her walls.
No matter what I did, the whop, whop of the propellers taunted me.
“What are you working on?” I asked one morning, watching her tapping away at her laptop.
“Loan applicants. My boss doesn’t appreciate my inopportune vacation. He threatened to fire me.” She bit her lip and stared intently at the screen, the amount of numbers on the spreadsheet making me dizzy.
“You don’t sound upset.”
“I guess I’m not. It’s not exactly my dream job.”
“What would be?” I asked, reaching over absentmindedly to stroke her elbow.
“I don’t know. I never figured it out.” And then she said, “I think my dream was always to be with you. I never thought past you to figure anything else out.”
It was like she punched me in my ribs. I lay there, starving for breath. It had been an excruciatingly long time without her openness. I jumped on it before she could close up. “How does that make you feel now?”
“Regretful,” she exhaled, eyes never leaving the screen.
I took the hit. I deserved the hit. I hated the hit. “You regret me?”
“No, no. I could never regret you, Gavin. I regret loving you so much. I regret losing myself to you at such a young age. I never got to know myself because all I wanted to know was you. When we divorced, I was lost on my own.”
My chest tightened. But she continued before I could.
“I hated myself as much as I hated you. You flew away and left me there, and I never tried to fly on my own.”
I realized suddenly what a jackass I was. I wanted Jasmeen to be with me. Jasmeen wanted to be with herself. I wanted her. She wanted her too. But deep down inside I was a selfish bastard. I ached for her to want me that much. Without that ache there were too many empty holes.
“Flying’s not all that great,” I managed to get out. “Trust me. It’s lonely and it hurts like hell to fall. Plus, if you fly now, you’ll just fly away from me. I don’t want that. Maybe we both need to figure out who we are on our own before we start over?” I hated myself the moment it was out, but it was true. She was hurting, and I was hurting, and there was no room for growth in that. “Maybe we both need to find the strength to fly again. Hopefully we end up flying back to each other.”
“What if we don’t fly back to each other?”
“We will,” I promised. “Ten, eighteen, twenty-six, forty, eighty, a hundred—no matter the age, no matter the length of time apart, we’re meant to be, baby. Ten-year-old hearts are never wrong.”
“That sounds like you’re saying goodbye again.” She looked down at me with red, swollen eyes.
“No.” I refused to do that ever again. “How about we work together? I’ll need someone I trust to manage my career before I can admit defeat, or even think about what I want to do next. We move into my penthouse in Manhattan. Different rooms. You have your life, I have mine. No dating other people, no talking to other people, we focus on ourselves for once.”
She touched her chest and closed her eyes, speaking with them closed. “You’re good.” Her eyes opened, and they were both impressed and leery. “How long have you been plotting that?”
I widened my eyes innocently. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
She laughed breathlessly and shook her head. “Whatever, Gav. You didn’t become a star being stupid.”
“So is that a yes?”
She took a deep breath and then she gave me a stiff nod. “That’s a yes.”
I grinned.
Poor thing played right into my hand. Maybe it’s a dick move to give her the option to fly on her own, knowing damn well the only place she belongs is grounded, beside me.
In our wreckage.
Love was desperate.
But not as desperate as me.