25. The Honest Confession #2
“Kate,” he said, his voice raspy from alcohol. “It’s late. I need to rest.”
Kate’s shoulders straightened at his words. She drew in a shaky breath and slowly turned to face him.
“Why did you do this?” She took a step toward him. “Why did you accept that duel?”
Jason turned away, moving deeper into the chamber, unable to hold her gaze. “I told you. My reputation—our reputation—”
Kate took another step closer to him.
“Stop hiding behind that word!” She almost yelled at him out of frustration. She followed him, closing the distance. “Stop talking about reputation and society and all of these—these abstractions! I want the truth! Why did you do this?”
Jason stood with his back to her, silent.
Nothing happened for several seconds, just the two of them there, suspended between truths and lies, between appearances and realities.
Then his hands moved to his throat, with movements so slow they might as well have been fighting against gravity.
He loosened the cravat first, unwinding the starched linen and letting it fall to the floor. His hands went to the pins in his hair next, pulling them free one by one. Golden strands tumbled down past his shoulders, no longer constrained in their masculine style.
Kate made no attempt to stop him, nor did she say anything else; she simply stood there—watching, patient, paralyzed—unable to tear her eyes away from what was unfolding before her.
Jason’s fingers found the small prosthetic at his throat, the false Adam’s apple that gave his voice its masculine resonance, and removed it carefully, setting it on the nearby table.
He then began to unbutton his waistcoat and shirt. With trembling fingers, he stripped off the garments, revealing the bandage he wore underneath, always underneath.
And there he stood, barely naked, his back to his wife, with the bandage as the sole garment covering his woman’s breasts.
Kate’s breath caught as she realized what he was doing, what Gina was doing.
And even when she couldn’t see “Jason” anymore at any given moment, this transformation before her eyes could not help but fill her with wonder.
Because she looked at the person before her now, even with her back to her, with her golden loosen hair in rebel waves, and all she could think of was how beautiful Gina really was.
The woman beneath the masquerade. The woman she’d fallen in love with without knowing.
The woman she still wanted despite everything.
Finally, Gina removed her fake beard and, very slowly, turned to face Kate head-on.
Kate gasped at the true sight of her, standing right there before her, without her male disguise, and the image completely astonished her.
She felt the beating of her own heart with such intensity that it seemed on the verge of bursting at any moment, as if it were her own chest, rather than Gina’s, that lay constricted beneath the bandages: a captive heart struggling to break free.
And in that instant, she devoted herself to truly observing her wife; her gaze traced every one of Gina’s features with the firm intention of committing to memory the delicate lines of her true, feminine face.
She took in the softness of Gina’s skin without masculine shadows; the fine line of her collarbone, inviting her to breathe her in along her long neck; the way the candlelight made her beautiful golden hair gleam, as if beckoning for a caress.
Her vibrant eyes, her long lashes, her delicate nose, her scattered freckles, her full lips…
Kate’s own lips parted involuntarily.
And Gina’s voice filled in the silence between them, her real feminine and sweet voice.
“Because this,” she started to say, “…what you see right now in front of you—this is nothing but an abomination.”
The word “abomination” tasted like poison on Kate’s tongue, forcing her to swallow with difficulty and plunging her into a profound silence. For the knot that had formed in her throat was too thick to allow any words to pass through.
So, Gina continued:
“Everyone who looks at me sees something wrong. Something unnatural. A woman pretending to be a man. A creature that doesn’t fit anywhere, that shouldn’t exist.” She touched her chest over the binding.
“This is who I really am. A woman. And not even this can hide that fact accurately. Ramsay must suspect it already. Maybe others too. But none of that matters anymore.” Her voice broke for an instant, and she had to take a breath to continue.
“What matters is you. And you can’t even look at me without flinching.
Without running away. Without making it clear that what I am disgusts you. ”
Kate brought both hands to her mouth to stifle a choked sob as she instinctively took a step back. Tears slid down her cheeks with such vehemence that she didn’t even bother to hold them back.
Through her blurry vision, she could see that Gina, too, was weeping silently; she could see how her chest strained against the binding with every ragged breath—the upper curve of her breasts peeking out above the fabric, unmistakably a woman’s breasts—revealing to her the sacrifice that Gina endured day after day, year after year.
“That’s not…” Kate choked, unable to force the words out. “You are not… that’s not true—”
“It is!” Gina stepped forward, raw and shaking. “I saw your face, Kate. Today, in the drawing room. I watched you try to be in the same room with me and fail. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To know that the person you—”
She snapped her mouth shut, horrified by what she’d nearly confessed.
“The person you what? Finish it!” demanded Kate.
Gina sighed deeply. And her words spilled out with the vulnerability of something being torn away by force. “Do you have any idea how much it hurts to see the person you love more than anything in this world—even more than your own life—feel repulsion at the mere sight of you?”
More tears rolled down Kate’s cheeks.
“Is that what you think? That I’m repulsed by you?”
“What else am I supposed to think, Kate?” Gina’s self-control was disintegrating bit by bit.
“You learned the truth about what I am and you haven’t been able to be near me since.
You can’t look at me. You can’t touch me.
You flee every time we’re in the same room.
What conclusion should I draw from that?
That you’re delighted by the discovery that your husband is actually a woman? ”
The words gushed forth like an unstoppable torrent.
“That every time I touched you—held you—made you feel something— it was a lie. A violation. Something disgusting you can’t forgive and shouldn’t have to, as a matter of fact.”
Kate’s face contorted, “You think I find you disgusting?”
“STOP ASKING ME WHAT I THINK!”
The shout startled them both.
For a moment, they said nothing more, breathing heavily as their eyes anxiously sought the other’s face.
Then Gina spoke again.
“I don’t have to think anything!” she said. “I can see it, Kate! I saw it in your eyes today, the way you bolted from that room, twice in less than an hour, and the way you’ve been avoiding me the entire time since I arrived from—”
“BECAUSE I COULDN’T brEATHE!” Kate yelled at her then.
And the scream left them both motionless for a second time.
Kate shook her head slightly, while a grimace of pain formed on her face.
“Can’t you see it?” she began to say, closing the distance between them now.
“That I can’t look at you and breathe properly at the same time?
” she took another step toward Gina. “Because being near you… makes me feel things I don’t know how to control,” she confessed.
“Things I’m terrified to feel because they’re too powerful, too intense.
Because every time I look at you now all I see is… is—”
She stopped, eyes darting over Gina’s face.
“You see what?” Gina whispered back. “Say it, Kate. What do you see when you look at me?”
Gina’s tears began to slide freely down her cheeks again.
Kate leaned in so close that their foreheads almost touched.
“I see you . I see Gina,” Kate said, cupping her face in her hands.
“I see the woman who touched me. The woman who held me and kissed me and made me feel things I had never felt before.” She took a shaky breath before continuing.
“And I see that those feelings haven’t changed.
That knowing the truth hasn’t made me stop wanting you.
That knowing you are a woman makes me want you even more.
” Her eyelids fluttered shut as she rested her forehead against Gina’s.
“I cannot forget that night you touched me. And that completely terrifies me. Because I desire you, and desiring you means accepting something about myself that I don’t know how to accept.
It means admitting that I… that I, too…”
Gina also closed her eyes as her arms instinctively wrapped around Kate’s waist, pulling her close.
“That you desire another woman,” she finished for her, her voice hollow against Kate’s cheek.
Kate let out a soft, helpless sound. “And that desire could destroy us both.” She pulled back just enough to look Gina in the eye.
“Don’t you see? Every time I’m near you…
every time I look at you… I fear that someone else will see it in my face.
That they’ll know what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling. That they’ll realize that—”
“That you’re ashamed of what you want.” Gina completed her thought again, her chest feeling like it was caving in. “That even though you still want me, you wish you didn’t. That the wanting itself feels like a sickness you can’t cure.”
“No! That’s not—Gina, you don’t understand—”
“Then explain it to me!” Gina gasped. “Explain to me how I’m supposed to interpret you running from rooms, refusing to look at me, treating me like I’m contaminated! Explain how that’s anything other than revulsion and shame, Kate! Because I can’t—I can’t keep—”
Kate didn’t let her finish. She covered her mouth with her own in a kiss that was neither soft, nor tender, nor cautious—but rather a collision, a raw, frenetic, and hungry possession of two mouths crashing together, as Kate grasped the back of her neck and pressed her tight against herself.
She bit her lower lip before kissing her more intensely, panting against her mouth, seeking more, pleading, explaining with her lips instead of with words.
Gina held her tightly against herself, as if she could absorb her into her own body and prevent her from ever running away again.
The kiss paused briefly—barely long enough to share a trembling breath, barely long enough to meet each other’s eyes and realize that nothing but desire filled their gazes—before they began to devour one another once more.
Without hesitation or doubt this time, leaving behind only the desperate, irresistible truth of two people who had been drowning in silence and who, at last, found air in the other’s mouth.
A surrender—pure and simple—definitive and irreversible.