Clay #3
His brow rose. “Really? How many times have we been alone? How many times has it just been you and me, and you’ve never tried anything? You’ve even stopped those terrible jokes…for the most part, so much so that they’ve finally started becoming funny. Easy isn’t the word I’d use to describe you.”
“What word would you use?”
“Am I kept to only one?”
“Can you stick to just one?”
“Lost.”
I backed up slightly, surprised. “Oh.”
“Like me,” he said, and I could see the same flicker in his eyes that I’d glimpsed when Ian had made his idiotic comments.
It was probably the same look he’d held back every time I’d used sexual jokes and propositions as humor.
Anything that reminded him he was once just a toy, an object for other people, a doll that they could dress the way they wanted, to play out their fantasies, and then get rid of as soon as play time was over.
God, I was kind of an asshole, wasn’t I?
“But lost doesn’t have to last forever, does it?” he asked lightly. “I don’t always have to strive to find out who I am under the layers of deceit I’ve used to protect myself. And you don’t always have to fight to be someone you’re not just so you don’t have to deal with your guilt.”
“Who said anything about guilt?”
“I heard you in that session, Clay. Those were the words of a guilty man. Though what you’re guilty of? I don’t know. And I’m not going to ask. If you tell me, then you’ll tell me when you want to. That’s something you can only give someone, not offer.”
“Kind of like you and sex?”
“Exactly.”
“And, uh, have you been tempted to give it?”
He smirked gently, leaning in closer, and my breath caught as I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead, I felt his breath against my cheek. “More than once, and more with every passing day.”
“Are you...close?” I asked, because my brain would not cooperate and give me something to say that didn’t sound horny as hell. “I mean. Fuck, could you stop? I’m trying to be a decent person here, and you’re making my dick do all the thinking.”
“I don’t mind that your dick does the thinking on occasion,” he said with a chuckle, but to my feelings of disappointment and relief, he drew back to take a seat. “It’s when that’s the only thing on you doing the thinking that I have a problem.”
“Noted,” I said, taking a deep breath. “You have to warn a guy before you do that!”
“Why?” he asked seriously. “Is it a problem?”
I glared at him. “You enjoy that too much.”
“Too much?” he asked with a laugh. “You want the serious answer? Or do you need a moment to let the blood flow upward again?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m making coffee, and you’re an asshole. Just know that while you give me that serious answer.”
“I do enjoy it. I don’t know about ‘too much,’ but I enjoy it a great deal.
Partly because you’re always so confident and self-assured, especially when it comes to sex.
Yet the minute I start turning on my version of charm, you turn into a fumbling idiot who can’t decide if he wants to drop his pants or run for the hills. ”
“What an amazingly encouraging response,” I muttered as the coffee machine began to chug out a cup.
“It’s cute,” he said, and I could tell from his tone that he wasn’t trying to appease me. “It’s more you than those bad jokes and attempts to hit on people. And in the interest of being honest, I haven’t tried to do that to someone before. Not off the clock.”
I turned to slide a cup to him with a frown. “What? Seduce them?”
“Basically,” he said with a one-shouldered shrug.
“It felt...wrong, to do it to someone who was just a normal person and not a client. Yet I did it to you that first time. It happened without me thinking about it, and it was...fun. I was able to take something else from that version of my life and put it into this new chapter, and it was enjoyable. I’d done it with other things, like knowing how to talk to people, how to figure things out about them, but it was the first time I’d dragged something from the sexual aspect of my life as an escort and made it a part of what is supposed to be my real self. ”
“The whole escort thing really fucked with you, didn’t it?
” I asked, a little amazed. I didn’t realize how much he was constantly going back and forth in his head, measuring his feelings and choices against who he had been before and who he was trying to be.
All while trying to figure out what he wanted to be in the first place, how much was left over from who he used to be before he became an escort, and how much he had to forge all over again. “Fuck.”
I wasn’t surprised to see him laugh. “You and Cade are so funny. Everything you think passes right over your faces. Did you just try to put yourself in my shoes?”
“I don’t know about that,” I snorted. “Your shoes are probably too expensive for me.”
“My work shoes, maybe, but my regular shoes? I love a good pair of solid work boots, a good pair of tennis shoes, and some quality flip flops,” he said with a smile. “The boots are admittedly the most expensive thing, but you get what you pay for.”
“Boots was not what I was expecting you to say,” I admitted as I took a sip of coffee.
“You seem to have a hard time figuring out what I’m going to do or say next, I’ve noticed,” he said lightly. “It’s fun, watching you try to guess and still be taken off guard.”
I sighed. “The first time I can think of you describing something as easy, and it’s you talking about how easy it is to mess with me.”
He blinked, then snorted harshly. “Wow, my own words come back and bite me on the ass in record time, how about that?”
“Yeah, how about that?” I shot back with a smirk.
“I’m glad you went to the session today,” he said, and the good mood I was building began to disappear, trickling away from the leaks that were left behind.
“Yeah, well, I’m glad one of us is,” I muttered, heading for the bed to sit down. “I thought therapy was supposed to help. That felt—”
The black wave swirled around me, dragging me down and threatening, like it always did, to hold me for good this time.
“I think,” he began slowly, setting his cup aside and getting up from his chair, “it’s not supposed to be good at first.”
“Right, and what’s the point?”
“It doesn’t have to stay bad.”
“Hurry up and wait?”
“More like,” he said, sitting down on the bed beside me and looking at me with a smile.
“Trust the process. I had a friend who went to therapy and talked to me about it. She’d been going for a while, and said it was getting worse.
..harder. Sometimes she left feeling worse than she did going into a session.
Another friend asked her if the therapist was provoking her, taking advantage, or being an asshole. ”
“Was he...or she?”
“No, from what she described, he wasn’t letting her avoid things.
They were digging into things she’d never touched before.
Our mutual friend said the best thing she could do was stick with it, that she had reached a rough patch that most people who go into therapy experience.
And so long as the therapist wasn’t taking advantage, then she needed to trust the process.
An infected wound might need to be drained before it can begin to heal, and it hurts like hell, but we need to let it happen, so why would it be any different for emotionally infected wounds? ”
“Is that what I’ve got? Not mental problems, but an infected hang nail in my brain?” I asked with a snort.
He stared and surprised me by stroking my head gently.
In someone else’s hands, or hand in this case, it would have come off as a clumsy attempt at seduction, or a condescending touch.
From him, though, it was gentle and soothing, not the least bit sexual, even though I felt my body perk up at the first touch of another human being in almost two weeks.
Two weeks. Huh, it had been two weeks, hadn’t it?
That was a record for me because there was no dry spell.
I hadn’t felt like hunting people down. And even when Logan tried to hit me up for a little private time, I’d turned him down.
I’d done it with far less thought than when I’d turned Isaac down, and Logan hadn’t lingered in my mind like he had.
So, other than the hugs Cade loved giving, this was the first time in a while someone had touched me, and I leaned into it like a stray dog begging for scraps.
“I saw what happened to you,” he said, his voice soft as he let his fingers drift through my hair. “It was like watching someone get possessed, not that I know what that looks like, but it’s what it made me think of.”
“I don’t think there’s a demon inside me,” I said with a laugh.
“I think that’s where all demons and ghosts come from,” he said in a sad voice.
“We’re all haunted houses of our pasts. Some of us can do them up and make them look pretty, but we’re all haunted, and we can never move out.
But maybe there’s a chance to make that house our own.
Maybe there’s a way to teach the ghosts songs that brighten the hallways, and make peace with the demons so we can exist side by side. But—”
“What?” I asked softly because it wasn’t like him to hesitate. He’d only done that the first time he had spoken the direct truth to me, so I wondered if that’s what was happening now.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “But it was like I was watching your heart shatter into a million pieces in front of me before you thought to hide your face from everyone.”
“Is it possible for something that’s already shattered to dust to be broken again?”
“Oh, Clay. Yes. The human capacity for suffering is like our capacity for love, hate, compassion, violence, and cruelty...infinite.”
“You should write a self-help book. You’re very encouraging, I can practically feel the sadness lifting right out of me.”
He didn’t take the bait. “What I saw earlier wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t depression. It was a sorrow and grief that I’ve never been forced to feel. I don’t know who or what you’re mourning, Clay, but I can see you are. And I’m so sorry it happened to you.”
I clenched my eyes shut. “Don’t be. It’s my own fault.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t argue, but know this. I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“Well, you should,” I said dully. “They’re dead because of me. I’m responsible. No one else. Me.”
His fingers spread, nails pushing my scalp but not digging in.
I would have welcomed that, the feel of his nails scraping and scratching my skin, drawing blood with a burning line of pain that would have felt right.
Instead, he drew his hands back and forth, leaning his head against my shoulder and pulling me closer.
I closed my eyes as our heads met, my cheek against the top of his head while he gently rubbed with his fingertips.
I waited and waited, feeling the pain flow through me in an endless whipping storm, waiting for him to ask what I meant, who I meant, and to explain my guilt.
Yet as the minutes ticked by, he said nothing, and I realized all I could hear was our breathing, his light and smooth, mine harsh and shaky.
His other hand was resting over mine on my knee, his fingers gently twined, and I found myself turning my hand to hold his, which he accepted immediately.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly, knowing I was helpless to what was happening. I was falling apart at the seams, and it was taking all my energy to keep it together, let alone explain myself.
“I’m not,” he said softly. I realized I was being pulled back onto the bed, and I was too weak, too distracted, to do anything but go with him, feeling the warmth of his body pushing against my back as he squeezed up against me.
His hands never left me, holding me in the gentlest way that made my eyes sting with tears that threatened to spill, strangling the cry inside my chest even as I wanted to pull away, wanted to be free of the comfort he was offering.
“Don’t listen to the voice that says you don’t deserve this, Clay, that you don’t need it.
It’s okay...well, it’s not okay. You’re not okay, but it’s okay for you not to be okay.
Not when it’s you and me here right now, okay? ”
“That’s a lot of okay,” I said in a thick voice. “But I guess that’s okay.”
“Okay,” he said, and we both laughed a little, but he never let me go.
Whether I wanted him to let me go or hold on tighter, I didn’t know, but I did know he wasn’t going to be letting go anytime soon.