Chapter 17 #3
The heating pad warms. The worst of the pain grips low and deep, but the edge begins to dull.
I breathe.
In.
Out.
Warren sits with me.
I open the gummy worms with one shaking hand and eat the first red and green one.
He watches.
“What?” I ask.
“You have an order.”
“I do not.”
“Red and green, blue and green, orange and yellow, and yellow and green.”
“That’s not an order. That’s candy ethics.”
“Explain.”
“Red and green are the best. Blue and green are a close second. Orange and yellow are weird but acceptable. And yellow and green are a palate cleanser for regret.”
He considers this.
“That’s an order.”
“It’s a philosophy.”
He smiles.
The room settles around us. My body still hurts, but the fear is easing. The humiliation, too.
That’s the part that no one talks about. Other than, well, all of it. Pain is one thing. But pain during sex is another. It comes with so many stupid emotional hooks. Embarrassment, frustration. The worry that your body is too complicated. Too much work. Not easy enough to want.
I never thought Grant was cruel about it. I thought he was normal.
On his best days, he would get careful in that disappointed way.
Gentle like I had interrupted him. Patient like I had become a task.
He would say, “It’s okay,” but his face said something else.
Afterward, I would apologize, and the room would feel colder.
He’d leave me to go play video games or chat with his friends.
That was when he was in the best mood. There were a lot of times when I felt deeply guilty.
Warren doesn’t make me feel any of that.
My eyes are heavy as I look at him. At the tattoos down his arms and across his chest. At the raven and the flowers and the map. At the snake.
“You didn’t put your shirt back on,” I say.
His gaze drops to himself as if this is news.
“No.”
“Good.”
He looks at me. “Good?”
“Yeah.” I curl slightly around the heating pad. “I like seeing you.”
He stays quiet until finally he says, “I usually cover them.”
“The tattoos?”
He nods.
“At work?”
“Most places.”
“Because of Germany?”
His fingers rest loosely over one bent knee. They flex once. “Yes.”
I eat a yellow and green gummy worm and try not to look as angry as I feel.
I fail.
“I’m still mad about that.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“So?”
“It’s over.”
“That’s an extremely Warren thing to say.”
“It’s factual.”
“It’s stupid.”
He looks at me, and I look back.
“I’m mad,” I say. “And I’m allowed to be mad.”
“It didn’t happen to you.”
“No, it happened to someone I…” I stop.
The sentence catches in my throat.
Someone I love.
No.
I clear my throat. “Someone I care about,” I say instead.
His eyes stay on mine.
He heard the almost.
We’re both getting worse at hiding it.
“Okay,” he says quietly.
Just that. Okay.
I look back at his tattoos. “What does the script say?”
His gaze drops to the line across his side. “Measure twice. Leave once.”
I blink. Then stare at him.
“Warren.”
“Yes?”
“That is the most devastatingly repressed tattoo I have ever heard of.”
He smiles. “It was a joke!”
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s a cry for help in Carpenter font.”
“It’s not carpenter font.”
“Oh my God, is that the part you’re defending?”
He laughs. “No, Halston.”
I laugh softly as he watches my face carefully. “Better?”
“Some.”
“Scale?”
“Six.”
“From?”
“Eight.”
He nods.
“Don’t look relieved. It’ll make me cry.”
His gaze lowers, but I see the relief in his eyes. The kind that feels like he’s letting out a breath.
This man. This impossible, careful man.
I want to crawl onto his lap again. Not for sex this time, but to put my face against his neck and stay there until the world stops requiring me to be impressive.
Instead, I eat a green and red gummy worm.
“How many tattoos do you have?”
“I haven’t counted recently.”
“That’s a really sexy answer.”
His cheeks warm. “It’s an accurate answer.”
“Those overlap sometimes, you know.”
His gaze flicks to mine, and warmth flows through me, followed by pain. I ignore the warmth and respect the warning.
“Do you regret any of them?”
“Nope.”
“Even after Germany?”
“Especially after Germany.”
He looks at the wall across from us, his voice low. “They were the first things I chose because I wanted them. Not because Marley needed something or because rent was due. They were mine, even after they cost me.”
I breathe carefully. “I hate that you feel the need to hide them.”
His lips thin.
I put down my gummy worms. “No, I mean it.” My voice gets rougher. “I hate that people made you cover them.”
I push myself up a little too fast and wince. Warren moves, then stops himself.
“I’m okay,” I assure him.
He settles back, but barely.
I reach one hand out. He looks at it, then moves closer.
Not onto the mattress, but just close enough.
I touch the compass again. “I like them,” I say.
His eyes drop to my fingers. “I know.”
“No, I don’t mean they’re only attractive. They are, and it’s deeply inconvenient for everyone who has to be normal around you.”
His lips curve.
“I mean what they really mean.”
“What do they really mean?” His eyes search mine.
“That you wanted things. That you had a body that belonged to you even if your life didn’t feel like it did. And anyone who looked at all of this and saw something less than your work,” I say, “was an idiot.”
His eyes are locked on mine, and the room stills around us.
I realize, suddenly, that he’s not used to being defended.
Not truly. Not like this.
Warren defends. Warren manages. Warren fixes things. He is used to being useful.
He’s not used to someone caring enough to defend him.
He’s not used to someone knowing enough to defend him. Because I guarantee if Marley knew, she would.
And I want to do the impossible. I want to go back in time and stand between this man and everyone who ever made him feel like leaving was safer than wanting.
“I would have hired you,” I whisper.
His face twists. “That’s not the same.”
“No,” I say. “I would have hired you and then made an entire menu around your tattoos out of spite.”
He grins. A real, genuine, wide smile.
Devastating.
“Bad business decision,” he says.
“Excellent branding opportunity.”
“Snake bread?”
“Raven Rolls.”
“No.”
“Broken compass croissants.”
His smile fades into something softer.
He looks at me, and for a moment, everything inside me goes quiet.
“You’re too much,” he says.
And while those words from anyone else would break me, he says them with such affection that they don’t.
Not when his eyes are looking at me like that.
I swallow. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
His hand lifts slowly.
I nod, and he brushes one piece of hair away from my cheek before running his thumb across it.
“What do you need?”
I close my eyes. “Can you stay with me?” I whisper.
His answer is immediate. “Yes.”
“I mean… not on the bed. Not yet. Just there.”
“I know.”
“And maybe keep your shirt off.”
He lets out a laugh.
I open one eye. “For medical reasons.”
“Yes,” he says. “It’s very important for treatment.”
“Exactly.”
He adjusts the heating pad cord so it doesn’t pull and hands me a green and red gummy worm. “You should rest, beautiful.”
“You always ruin romance with logic.”
He stays exactly where I ask him to. Beside the mattress, close enough that I can hold his hand, far enough away that my body doesn’t feel crowded. Every twenty minutes, he asks what my pain scale is. Not too often, but often enough to remind me that I’m not managing it alone.
Later, he brings another blanket from the foot of the mattress and settles it over my legs.
An hour later, he asks me if I want toast. When I say yes, he goes downstairs and comes back with plain toast, a banana, and a mug of warm water with honey because he says tea may be too much and I’m too tired to tell him anything different.
He sits with me while I eat two bites of toast and half the banana. He holds the plate when my hands get tired. He doesn’t comment when I cry once more for no reason except that being cared for this thoroughly makes some old, defeated part of me suspicious and grateful at the same time.
When the pain dulls enough for me to breathe without having to think about it, he finally lets his shoulder rest against the mattress.
I slide my hand down until my fingers find his.
He looks at them, and then at me. I nod, and his hand closes around mine carefully.
I fall asleep before I mean to. Just enough to drift against the pillow. Warren stays sitting on the floor beside me, his hand in mine, his thumb moving once in a while like he’s reminding himself that I’m still here.
When I wake later, the apartment is darker, the heating pad is still warm, the gummy worms are clipped shut, and a bottle of water is within reach.
Warren’s notebook is still on the floor, but the laptop has been pushed further away.
Warren is still here. Shirtless and awake, his back against the wall.
His gaze is fixed on the window like he’s been watching the city keep moving. His hand is still in mine.
“You stayed,” I whisper.
His gaze snaps to mine. “Of course.”
“You didn’t have to sit on the floor all night.”
“You asked me to stay here.”
My throat tightens. “You could have moved after I fell asleep.”
He shrugs.
“Why?”
“Because you asked,” he says. Then, after a second, “And because I wanted to.”
I tug lightly on his hand. “Come here.”
His eyes search mine. “Pain?”
“Lower. Better. I just…” My voice goes small. “I want you closer.”
The softness that moves through his expression almost ruins me.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He moves slowly, giving me time to change my mind even though I don’t. He stretches out on the mattress beside me, on top of the blanket at first, careful not to jostle me.
“Where can I touch you?”
My eyes begin to burn again.
“Here,” I say, guiding his hand to my upper back. “Just not my stomach yet.”
“Okay.”
His palm settles between my shoulder blades.
We lie there in the dim apartment, his tattoos on full display in the moonlight, my difficult body taking up space. We don’t say the falling part. Not yet.
But I feel the drop all the same.