Chapter Twenty-eight
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Nothing like a little math to really spice up the romance.
Azalea
“Plus six,” Malcolm says, kissing my chin.
Tense, I say, “Twelve.”
“Is it really, now?” His eyes meet mine.
I fight for a labored breath. “Yes.” I think it’s the anticipation that’s killing me the most. Malcolm is so…calculated. Slow. Precise. He’s touching me with such careful intent, and he leaves an age between every last motion, so I can stop him if I need to.
I haven’t yet.
Mentally, I’m struggling, in multiple ways. There’s a part of me that wants this. Desperately. And then there’s a part of me that’s terrified.
What if I like it, but something terrible happens because I’m not allowed to like things?
What if I don’t like it?
What if he’s disappointed that I can’t return the same affection?
What if I don’t get better fast enough?
What if I never get better?
What if—
“Minus fifty-six.”
“What?” I breathe.
“Negative numbers. Go.”
My mind wrestles with the problem as Malcolm lifts my hand and tugs on the glove I’m wearing, because I’m still not comfortable enough to leave my apartment without gloves, even if I’m only going to his. And that’s stupid. And I’m stupid. And—
“Too hard?” Malcolm interrupts my thoughts while he takes his sweet time pulling on the fingers of my glove.
“N-no.” I refocus, on the equation at hand. It’s not difficult math, to be sure, but heading into the negative tweaks my brain in an uncomfortable way, and…
I stare at Malcolm.
Something fills his eyes as centimeter after centimeter of my glove slips off at his beckoning. The way he melts captivates me, then his mouth settles on the bare skin of my knuckles, and my body squeezes.
“Forty-four,” I whisper.
“Wrong.” He holds my palm to his cheek, against his stubble, and his living room falls away around us.
There’s something so adoring in the action it’s practically as though he thinks himself blessed.
And I know, with acute awareness, that if this were it—if I could never go farther—he would love me still. He would treasure just this.
And just this would be enough for him.
Absently, I say, “Fifty-six minus twelve is forty-four. I’m certain of it.”
“Yes, well. That is something to be certain of. I asked for twelve minus fifty-six, though.”
“Oh.” I forgot about the negative numbers. “Negative forty-four.”
“Correct.” He kisses my palm. “Now add a hundred fifty to it”
“One-O-six.”
He pauses. “That hardly took you a breath.”
“It was too easy.”
“Divide by four, then.”
My lashes flutter as I blink. “Is that even a round number?”
“You tell me.” He nibbles at my wrist, and my heart patters.
Setting up for long division in my brain, I watch him trail tiny, rough kisses up my arm.
How many times does four go into ten… Twice. Two left over. Twenty-six is next, then.
His nose runs across my inner elbow, and the sensitive skin protests against his stubble, sending a shiver through me.
Six times. Four goes into twenty-six six times.
So I have two six, and another two leftover, and now I’m in decimals and bringing down a zero, but that’s just a twenty, and that’s easy. “Twenty-six point five.”
Malcolm smiles, tangles our fingers, and pushes me down into his couch. “Need something harder, dove?”
“I’m glad your couch isn’t leather.”
“Disgusting material. All these covers come off, and I have them put through the wash regularly.”
I can tell. There’s a fresh scent wafting off them that mixes and melds with the bright, masculine pine surrounding Malcolm. I’m pillowed in clean. Even though I’m not pillowed in white. Even though humans aren’t really ever truly clean.
My stomach knots.
“Multiply by eleven.”
My brain stalls out on that. Setting the decimal aside, I manage the calculation in parts. Twenty. Then six. Then the point five. “Two ninety-one point five.”
Malcolm’s lips torment my throat, the rough sensation of his facial air sending jolts of unfamiliar things through me.
I’m surviving, and everything’s fine. I’m surviving, and everything’s fine.
He licks.
I gasp, crushing his hands in my grasp.
“Too far?” he whispers.
I can’t vocalize no, so whatever comes out instead is pitiful, a whimper, a shivering breath, a whine.
“Are you done for today?” he asks.
Eyes squeezed shut, I shake my head.
A low, curious murmur leaves him. “No, huh? You want more?”
My heart runs rampant.
Lifting his face, he looms over me, evil. “You want me?”
I want…to be normal. I want to want him without fear or my brain self-destructing. I want to fall into the moments when he catches me off guard and all I can think about is how nice it is to be touched so gently and with such intention.
The frantic desperation Malcolm’s been so good at showing me has no place here. Here, he’s calm, careful, in control.
It drives home this truth that the thing he’s desperate for is me, not my body. He wants me. He doesn’t care about possessing someone who’s never been soiled before. He’s not after the high of staining me like that.
He just wants to be with me.
All he wants is to be with me, yet I need distractions just to tolerate what regular people enjoy and desire.
Malcolm touches his forehead to mine, and I ease.
Even though his face is so close to mine, and his breath is against my lips, and— “Precious dove,” he whispers.
“You need to tell me what you want.” His fingers release one of my hands and travel down my arm and side to plant against my waist. “You need to teach me what you like.”
What I like? I’ve never really let myself have that before. In case it might be taken away from me. In case I’m not allowed to.
But, slowly, I’m coming to believe that there’s one thing in this world too stubborn and monstrous to ever be taken from me against its will.
There’s one thing I’m allowed to have. There’s one thing that’s as much a mix of punishment as it is a mix of delight.
This universe, that’s always seemed out to get me, doesn’t know what to do with him.
“I like you,” I say.
He chuckles. “And if that’s not proof that you’re capable of growth and progress, I don’t know what is.”
I shrink, cruelly reminded that I’m supposed to be growing and making progress. “It’s almost June. And then it’ll be almost Flag Day. And then…”
“And then we’ll either kiss, or we won’t.”
My heart stops. “What? But—”
“But nothing, Azalea. There’s nothing saying we can’t kiss afterward if it doesn’t happen that night.”
Nothing except the fear in my skull that says if I don’t push myself toward this like a goal, it’ll never happen, and I’ll never be able to try again, and who knows if breaking this plan will send me into a relapse?
It’s been weeks of building up to even just what we’re doing right now.
It’s been weeks of slight touches that end with me losing my mind and getting stuck in my head, thinking about all sorts of irrational horrors.
It shouldn’t be this hard.
I shouldn’t be this scared.
I don’t want to feel like I’m losing an opportunity, because I already know I’ll treat that loss like finality.
The past few days, I’ve started showering only once before getting in bed with Malcolm.
I’m almost at the point where I can just watch Malcolm cook breakfast and not feel compelled to tell him to wash his hands after touching anything.
I can almost believe the world won’t end despite all the rules I’m breaking.
But, still, it’s all hard.
It’s all a battle.
It’s all conscious effort.
The only time my head’s never-ending negativity shuts down is when I’m curled up in Malcolm’s arms and I convince myself death would be fine. Which is terrible. And shouldn’t be the extreme I go to. But…it is.
“I wish I weren’t like this,” I whisper. “I wish my brain were different.”
“If it were, you wouldn’t be you.”
“You think I care about that? Being me is the problem.”
“You,” he says, “are the person I love. So that you’re you is of some importance to me.”
“I am not made up of these broken pieces.”
He kisses my nose. “Maybe not, but you wouldn’t be the same without them. We wouldn’t have these moments without them.”
Scowling, I mutter, “I could be a proper wife without them.”
His face tints, going vibrantly dark as his eyes widen, glisten, and spark. “Is being a proper wife important to you?”
I mutter, “Who knows?”
Sinking, Malcolm wraps me up in his arms, tugging me on top of him when he flops onto his side.
Stretching out on the couch, he slips his fingers through my hair and sighs.
“All things considered, I don’t know what you mean when you say proper wife.
I’m very content with my choice in a partner.
You’re incredibly proper as a wife if you ask me. ”
“It’s hard to imagine how.”
“Is it really?” His tone darkens as his hold solidifies.
“You think I don’t like this? Watching you struggle for my sake, fighting your demons to reach your favorite monster among them…
Surely it’s not hard to imagine how happy I am with you.
As if there’s any better drug than knowing a woman who once would have stabbed me in the back is now letting me push her down and kiss her while she shudders, desperate for her mind to be quiet long enough for her to enjoy it.
” Breath leaves him, and wistful airs grip his voice.
“I am living, Azalea. The only hard thing is holding myself back.”
“Really?” I swallow, and my heart droops. “You don’t act like it.”
“I’m glad you can’t tell. I’m trying not to be mean to you while you’re working so hard, but I really dearly want to rub it in.”
Oh. That’s what he meant by holding himself back.
My eyes roll. “Rub what in?”
“You want me.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Have you abandoned all your resentment? Doesn’t it mess you up inside in far sweeter ways to think of how badly you want me after how much you’ve hated me?”
I snuggle closer, rubbing in how wrong he is. “I’m pretty all or nothing, actually. I’m not delusional enough to think you’re suddenly a good person, but I have come to favor you, and I’m not ashamed or upset by that, so I’m afraid there’s just not very much to rub in.”
“I’m certain I could find something.”
“Probably.”
“But why would I risk it? I’m growing rather attached to the idea of kissing you. Maybe once I’ve experienced that delight, I’ll return to my menacing nature…find a little salt…find a little wound…see if you’ll cry for me.”
“To be honest, you don’t really act like you’re attached to the idea of kissing me.”
“Don’t I?”
“Not even a little bit.” Lifting myself, I look down at him, trace the shape of his jaw with my eyes, bring shaking fingers to the trim hair shaping it. “Why?”
Dazed, he disintegrates for me, adoration violent in his mesmerized eyes. “Why what?”
“Why don’t you seem to care at all whether or not we kiss?”
“Oh.” He lifts a hand to my face, paints his thumb through the blush coating my cheeks.
“It’s not that I don’t want to, but doesn’t this mean so much more?
I like taking care of you. I like seeing you desperately fighting your instincts because you want to be closer to me.
I like knowing you want me enough to do things that are painful and hard.
I guess I get a little lost in all that and forget to care overmuch about the end goal.
” Boyish and innocent, Malcolm laughs, eye sparkling.
“I just love you. And I really like loving you. And what the—” He swears. “—does kissing have to do with it?”
He really likes loving me even though I’m…
No.
Heat rises, consuming me, and I crumple against him, desperate to fill my arms and lungs with as much of him as I can take.
He loves me for all that I am, not in spite of it. And no matter how twisted his reasoning for enjoying the cracks and fractures, I find that I don’t care. I don’t care because he sees beauty in my broken, potential in my problems, and worth in my worries.
He tips the scales on my damage and gives weight to who I am, with every struggle intact.
He’s monstrous. A huge red flag. But who cares?
He kneels for me. He runs for me. He waits for me. And he loves me.
Enough to listen. Enough to press. Enough.
“Two weeks,” I say.
“Two weeks until the most romantic holiday of the year,” he adds.
I sigh. “Why does Iverson keep saying that?”
Malcolm laughs. “Honestly, who knows? We support, and we don’t judge.”
We support, and we don’t judge, huh?
Sinking, I murmur, “What a thing to say.”
And what a way to live.