Chapter 13 #2
The words “take your shirt off” coming out of Ella’s mouth in that no-nonsense tone impact my nervous system in a way that has nothing to do with therapeutic massage.
I pull the shirt over my head because the alternative is arguing, and arguing with Ella when she’s decided something is like negotiating with gravity.
Then her hands are on me.
Her thumbs find the knot between my shoulder blades with the accuracy of someone who knows exactly what a seized muscle feels like.
She digs in, firm and sure, and the pressure is so precisely targeted that a groan escapes me before I can stop it.
Her palms spread warm across my bare skin.
Her fingers work up toward my neck, finding a second knot I didn’t know I had, and the pain blooms bright before her pressure dissolves it into relief so sudden my head drops forward.
“You’re an idiot,” she says, her voice close behind me.
“We’re both adults. We both paid for this suite.
You don’t have to wreck your spine to prove a point.
” Her thumbs drag down along the channel of muscle beside my vertebrae and I stop breathing for a full beat.
“Just sleep in the bed, Alec. It’s a king. There’s room.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. The couch is too short, my back is wrecked, and the noble sacrifice of sleeping six feet from her bedroom door has done nothing except leave me sore, sleepless, and replaying the sound she made when I kissed her every night until my self-control is a thin, fraying thing.
“Fine,” I manage. My voice comes out rougher than I intend because her hands are moving across my shoulders now, palms flat and warm, and every point of contact is sending low currents through my skin that have nothing to do with knots being worked out and everything to do with the fact that this is Ella touching me.
Ella’s fingers on my bare back. Ella’s breath warm between my shoulder blades.
I can feel the heat of her knees where they’re pressed against my lower back, and the thought that she’s this close, this deliberate, this focused on my body while wearing nothing under that T-shirt, is testing the roommates agreement in ways that would void the contract entirely if I let it.
I don’t let it. She finishes with a final press of her palms against the muscle she loosened, and the absence of her hands when she pulls away registers as a drop in temperature I feel across my entire back.
“Better?” she asks.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Thanks.”
She unpauses the movie. I put my shirt back on because leaving it off feels like tempting the sort of fate I can’t afford to test. We finish the movie, and we don’t talk about the massage, and we don’t talk about the bed, and the distance between us on the couch has somehow closed by a full cushion without either of us acknowledging it.
The transition to bed is brief and logistically awkward the way all shared-space negotiations are between people pretending not to notice each other.
We clear the room service tray. She takes the bathroom first. I hear the faucet, the hum of her brushing her teeth, the soft sounds of a routine I’ve memorized against my will.
When she comes out, I go in. Our toothbrushes are still side by side in the cup on the counter. I don’t let myself look at them.
The lights go off. I’m on the right side because the left has been hers since a nightmare about a monster when she was seven, and that’s a territorial claim I stopped contesting a long time ago.
We lie in the dark. Her breathing is close, but not the same closeness as two nights ago when I woke up wrapped around her. This is measured distance. Intentional space. Two people in a king-size bed, each very aware of the other, each very committed to the pretense that they’re not.
“Alec.” Her voice is quiet. “Are you… are you okay? Health-wise, I mean.”
The question is bigger than she’s letting on. I can hear it in the way she says my name, careful, like she’s been holding the question for a while and deciding whether to open her hand.
“I’m fine.”
The lie tastes the same as it always does.
Bitter. Reflexive. But lying to Ella after she just spent twenty minutes with her hands on my skin telling me to stop being an idiot, feels different than lying to Dr. Vaughn or deflecting Wyatt’s concern at the poker table.
It feels like offering counterfeit currency to someone who’s already shown you what real looks like.
She doesn’t push. She just waits. And that’s worse than a question because it gives me room to think, and I am tired.
Tired of the couch and the protocols and the distance I manufactured this morning on the beach.
Tired of the careful way she says “hey” when she used to say my name like it was the beginning of a conversation she couldn’t wait to have.
“I have a heart condition,” I say. The words come out clinical, factual.
“It’s hereditary. Same thing my mother has.
My doctor found it a few weeks ago after I had some chest tightness at work.
Elevated blood pressure, arterial issues.
He put me on medication and ordered me to take a leave of absence.
” I pause. “The vacation isn’t optional. It’s prescribed.”
Silence.
Then she inhales softly. “The fries.” Her voice is horrified. “Alec. You ate my fries. And the burger. And the shrimp. And don’t think I didn’t notice you eyeing the cake.”
Despite everything, I almost laugh. “One slip won’t kill me.”
“That wasn’t a slip, that was a full-blown mutiny from your meal plan.” She’s up on one elbow now, I can hear the shift of the sheets. “You have a heart condition and you ate a burger and half an order of fries and you didn’t think to mention it before you started stealing food off my plate?”
“Technically, you offered.”
“I offered under false pretenses! I didn’t have informed consent. If I’d known about your arteries, Alec, I would have moved the plate.”
The outrage in her voice is so genuine, something soft loosens in my chest. Not an arterial issue.
Deeper than that, in the place where I keep the things I don’t show people.
She’s not pitying me. She’s not handling me carefully.
She’s yelling at me about French fries like my continued existence is a matter of personal importance to her, and I can’t remember the last time someone cared about my health with this much indignation.
“I’ll go back to the fish tomorrow,” I tell her.
“You’re damn straight you are. I won’t aid and abet you in jeopardizing your heart health. Which, by the way, we are now both invested in keeping functional.”
I chuckle under my breath at her bossy attitude.
The care underlying it isn’t something I dare examine, especially not when we’re lying next to each other in bed again.
Nor is the way she said “we.” As if my heart is a shared project.
As if she’s on the team with me now, whether I recruited her or not.
She flops back down onto her back. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, quieter now.
I don’t answer right away. It feels strange opening up to her, even though she makes it easy to feel like I can. Still, the words take a moment to reach my tongue.
“I don’t tell anyone my problems, health-related or otherwise. My poker buddies got the bare minimum. My parents don’t even know the full picture.” I stare at the slow rotation of the ceiling fan. “I’m not good at needing help. Or admitting I need it.”
“Yeah,” she says softly. “I picked up on that.”
The silence settles between us. It feels full, the way a room is full after someone opens a window and the night air comes in.
I want to touch her.
Not the way I wanted her on the veranda, all heat and hunger and feral longing.
I want to touch her the way you touch something you’re only beginning to understand is important.
A hand on her arm. Fingers against her wrist. Contact that says I’m here, and thank you, and I don’t know what you’re doing to me, but I can’t make myself want it to stop.
I don’t do any such thing. I murmur goodnight, then I roll toward the edge of my side, putting my back to her, and I lie still until her breathing slows and stretches into the deep rhythm that means she’s asleep.
Four hours ago she wouldn’t look at me. Now she’s lying in the dark asking about my heart like she actually needs to know. I gave her every reason to stay cold and she couldn’t do it.
That’s the thing about Ella. She can’t not care. And that might be the most dangerous thing about her.