Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DREW
“I’m not a virgin or anything,” she starts, shaking her head.
“But I might as well be,” she mumbles. I wait and watch, fascinated, as she shakes her ponytail back and squares her shoulders, the embarrassment disappearing from her face.
“I didn’t tell you all the details, but you probably guessed what happened the day you found me in the hospital bathroom wasn’t a one-time thing.
I’ve had problem periods for years. They’re painful and unpredictable enough that it took me until my senior year of college to finally convince myself I could have sex with someone and not bleed all over him or whatever. ”
“Is there a name for what you have?” I ask. “A diagnosis? Something you can do to figure it out?” I wince at how na?ve and stupid I sound. “Sorry, I don’t mean to imply you haven’t done literally everything you can to figure it out. I just hate knowing you’re in pain.”
A flash of something flits through her eyes, but it’s gone as quickly as it comes, replaced by something like fury.
“It’s not easy to get a diagnosis. There is astonishingly little research into women’s health in this country.
Like, pretty much no one studies female bodies, which makes diagnostics for things that only affect people with a uterus fraught and complicated.
There’s a thing I’m…” She cuts herself off before she can finish whatever she was about to say and lifts her hands in an I don’t know gesture before dropping them back to my chest. “Anyway, it’s just harder than you would think. ”
“That’s total bullshit,” I say before I can stop myself, feeling a surge of anger on her behalf and behalf of every woman receiving inferior healthcare. Caitlin nods approvingly.
“It is, in fact, bullshit that no doctor I’ve ever seen—including the female ones—can tell me why I have a tendency to practically bleed out a couple times a month and end up in pain so debilitating it makes me pass out on bathroom floors.
Or be mildly terrified to have sex because of what might happen.
” She looks away from me then mutters, “I have no idea why I’m telling you this. ”
With a hand on her cheek, I bring her eyes back to mine.
“Because I want to know. Because you matter to me. Because maybe you even feel a little safe with me. I know what a big deal that is for you, and I don’t take it lightly.
Because I look at you and for the first time in my life, I feel like I want to try letting someone in too when the idea of that has always terrified me before.
And you look at me like maybe I’m not such a shitty bet after all. ”
“I’m probably a shitty bet too,” Caitlin says with a wry smile.
“I have weird hangups about sex, and I’ve spent so many years helping everyone else and solving their problems that I forgot how to let other people help me.
Or maybe I never knew in the first place.
” She shrugs. “I’ve never been quite sure.
I live my entire life trying to keep the people around me comfortable, even though most of the time I’m not, and I manage their emotions even though I’ve never had a handle on mine.
The thought of needing someone else makes me uneasy, and my instinct is always to keep secrets rather than share. ”
A shadow crosses her face then, a line appearing between her brows. Reaching up, I smooth it with my thumb and then glide my fingers down her jaw before laying my hand on her cheek. “So maybe we can both practice letting each other in. Maybe together, it won’t seem so scary.”
Caitlin’s lips tip up in a small smile, and when she turns her head and presses a kiss to my palm, that sweet gesture, so surprising from her, has my entire body exploding in warmth, my hand tightening on her hip in an unconscious gesture that says more than I’m able to say with words.
Stay with me.
Please.
Please, please stay.
Somehow, she seems to understand the direction of my chaotic thoughts because she takes my hand from her face, lacing our fingers together and squeezing before she continues talking.
“He was nice. The guy, I mean. I scheduled our night together like an army general preparing for battle because I’m not always a once-a-month period kind of girl.
Sometimes they’re every two weeks or sometimes they last for three weeks.
Sometimes I’m in excruciating pain and sometimes there’s no pain at all, and there’s no predictability to any of it.
But somehow, the stars aligned when I needed them to.
You can probably guess what happened next.
The sex obviously sucked because it was my first time and I was nervous for a million reasons.
I didn’t tell the guy I was a virgin because I didn’t want it to be this whole big deal. ”
She shakes her head, and I hear what she doesn’t say.
She didn’t tell him because saying the words would have been akin to saying Take care of me.
Be gentle with me. This is what I need. It doesn’t escape me that by her telling me this story, she’s saying those exact words to me.
I make a silent vow that I will care for her in the best way I know how and hope I don’t fall short.
Caitlin blows out a breath. “It was crap sex from the beginning and then it got worse because he moved in a way that kind of hurt me. It wasn’t intentional or anything.
I think I’m just…weird in there. I don’t know.
The next thing I knew, he was jumping out of bed because there was blood everywhere and he was freaking out because he thought I was dying or something, and thank god we were in my apartment because I got to kick him out and drown my humiliation in ice cream and The Hunt for Red October and a neon-yellow pedicure.
That was more than five years ago, and the embarrassment was enough to put me off orgasms with another human.
I can take care of myself just fine, and I’ve never met anyone who made me feel like it was worth the trouble to try again. ”
Just like before, I hear what she doesn’t say.
Until now.
“And now?” I ask, sliding the hand on her hip around to her back, smoothing it up her spine and wrapping it around the back of her neck in a possessive hold. Watching as she tries, and fails, to suppress a shiver.
Caitlin exhales an unsteady breath. “Now, for reasons I don’t completely understand, I think you might be the only person on earth who is worth the trouble. You make me feel…” She breaks off, shaking her head and closing her eyes.
“Tell me,” I say quietly, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to the spot below her ear. “Tell me how I make you feel, Catie. Please,” I practically beg, needing her to say the words, whatever they are.
She drops her forehead to my shoulder briefly and then sits back up, her gray-eyed gaze steady.
Serious. “You make me feel like maybe I could give you my broken body with all its weirdness and pain and unpredictability. Like it would be safe with you. Like I…” She trails off, swallowing hard. “Like I would be safe with you.”
Emotion gusts through me at her words and I put gentle pressure on her neck, guiding her forward until our foreheads are pressed together, my other arm wrapping around her waist to slide her body closer to mine until all the distance between us is erased.
“You are safe with me, Catie. I swear you are. Your beautiful, brilliant brain and your gorgeous body and every single thing about you. I want all of you. I’ll keep all of you safe. ”
When Caitlin smiles, laying her hands on my cheeks and whispering “You’re safe with me, too, Drew.
I’ll keep all of you safe too,” I’m gone.
The heart I’ve kept locked up tight for thirty-five years breaks its shackles, and I understand in a deep and primal part of me exactly what that means.
Battered, bruised, and broken, it belongs to her now.
The enormity of the moment washes over me, and I am without words. I think Caitlin understands because before I can try to form any, she leans back slightly and smirks at me. “So, what are you waiting for, Pretty Boy? Don’t you want to kiss me?”
I don’t know how she knew exactly what to say but it’s the most perfect thing. Everything inside me lifts and I grin, yanking her tighter against me, watching as lust swims in those storm cloud eyes. “More than I want to take my next breath.”
And then, finally, I crash my mouth to hers.
Just like the last time we kissed in her office, heat explodes between us the second our lips touch, Caitlin’s sexy little gasp filling the room.
My head. My fucking soul. Taking me completely over until every thought in my head is her.
The feel of her mouth on mine has lust swimming in my brain, my semi-hard cock turning into a full erection so fast it makes my head spin.
Or maybe that’s the taste of the sweetness on Caitlin’s tongue as I tease her mouth open, sucking on her bottom lip and tugging it with my teeth, running my tongue over the spot to soothe the sting.
When she moans and rocks against me, opening wider, I slide my tongue into her mouth, tasting every inch of her, warm and sweet, as our bodies strain to get closer.
Caitlin twists her hands into the front of my shirt, and I slide the hand on her neck up into her hair, tugging the band out of her ponytail and letting those golden-brown waves tumble free.
Tangling my hands into her strands, I tug her head back to push the kiss deeper, growling into her mouth as she melts further into me.
This kiss isn’t tentative or gentle. There are no questions here. This is ferocity and desperation. Teeth and tongues and possession and all the answers I didn’t know I needed to questions I didn’t even know I had.