THE WINDUP GIRL #2
He blinked once, and those cold eyes landed on my face. “Do not blame this on the culture of Türkiye. If the neighbors or teachers had known how bad it was, they would have intervened, but she made us fear for our lives if we told anyone.”
“I understand.” That commitment to protecting his culture warmed me through the chilling things he’d said.
Rafael continued as though speaking to the air.
“I do not know my exact age, but I faked an ID to join the military early for my mandatory service somewhere around sixteen, and took a professional contract to remain a soldier for a few years after that.” His eyes lit on my face again.
“Yes, I have killed people on deployment. No, not since then. Yes, I have severe PTSD. Probably always will. Music is my escape. Music and fighting. I am very good at both.”
His frigid expression chilled me to the core. Those were definitely eyes that could watch the life drain from someone’s face with no remorse. Combined with his strength…I suppressed a shiver and waited.
Little by little, he thawed.
“I take it that ‘bleached blonde with dark roots’ relates to your trauma.”
“Same woman, yes. She couldn’t feed us, keep the rain off our heads, or even attempt to protect us from her fucking demonic boyfriends, but she always had her hair done.
She beat us if we dared to say anything.
Not a fan of hot pink fingernail polish for the same reason, and she wore a cheap lavender perfume that sank into my hair and clothes.
If you genuinely love blonde hair and pink nails, I will do my best to cope, but I draw the line at lavender. ”
“That’s not my vibe, don’t worry.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I defaulted to what I hoped was a concerned, compassionate look. Sometimes, my facial expressions conveyed something other than what I meant.
He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I have had extensive therapy, but it has not helped much. Apparently, I am ‘too smart’ for therapy—that is always the excuse for firing me as a patient—and medication makes the music stop thanks to my weird brain chemistry.” He shook his head. “I cannot survive that way.”
Damn. I pondered options. “What about alternative stuff like psilocybin?”
A weird light sparked in his eye. “Me on hallucinogens is not a good time for anyone, I promise you.”
“I hate that so many bad things have happened to you. It sucks about the medication, too. I can’t write without mine because otherwise I’d spend all my energy trying not to drown in depression. Love my therapist too. I only do check-ins once a month now to maintain my meds.”
He nodded. “There is a darkness in your book that only someone who has suffered it understands.”
I scratched my arm. “I didn’t mean to make this about me.”
“Maybe you should. You deflect, but you have such a vivid interior life. I want to explore it.”
Tempting to bask in the compliment. “I have a feeling you still have more to tell me.” Something tickled the back of my mind—a mention in one of the rare articles about him. “Didn’t you throw a chair at an exec during a meeting fairly recently?”
Should I try to make it work with this man? No suspicious patches in the drywall that I’d noticed, but he could easily hide them behind paintings.
Rafael snorted. “Gerald Hightower, that fucker. I threw the chair through the window, thank you very much. He tried to insist that I incorporate fucking AI slop into my music for a ‘better return on his investment’. I usually play nicer with the bigwigs, but he got in my face. So we had a little reeducation that day—in front of his entire board. I bullied Hightower into paying for the damages.” An evil grin spread across his face.
“Miraculously, no one has mentioned AI to me since.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Ok, that makes me like you even more.”
“You still say that after everything I just told you?” His brows raised.
“Maybe I’m terminally stupid. I don’t know, but I genuinely like you.” I blew out a breath. “Look, even if this dating thing doesn’t work, I’d still really like to be friends.”
A taunting smile curled his lips. “I would be a terrible friend.”
“How so?”
“I am not nice enough to mask my ulterior motives.” His eyes slid over my body, lingering long enough on my boobs to make my face burn.
“There is such sensuality in the way you interact with the world. You make these blissful, almost orgasmic expressions when you enjoy something. I want to discover what expressions you will make for me.”
My jaw fell open. “Sir.”
Rafael laughed under his breath. He propped his elbows on his knees; yet again staring into my eyes for an uncomfortably long time without blinking. Peeling away each layer of my soul as his fingers tapped invisible keys.
He stood and unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves. “You would have seen this eventually.”
My eyes grew until they threatened to pop out of my head. The composer shrugged out of his shirt, revealing a black tank top straining deliciously across huge pecs and the kind of muscle definition in his bared arms that bodybuilders had wet dreams about.
Arms covered from shoulders to wrists in full sleeves of scars I recognized all too well.
“Oh, Rafael,” I breathed.
He tossed the shirt aside. “This is why I fight. It keeps the urge to cut at bay and gives the rage a useful function.”
“Will you sit by me?” I patted the sofa cushion.
He perched cautiously.
I took a steadying breath. “I can’t fathom what you’ve been through, but I have similar scars on my thighs.”
His eyes swept over my legs as though trying to detect the scars through my jeans.
“This seems silly in comparison, but I started cutting as a sophomore in high school. My parents were going through an ugly divorce, and my classmates picked on me relentlessly for being fat and weird. I’d always made A’s, but my grades were slipping for the first time.
My best friend killed herself on my birthday that year. I was just really struggling.”
“None of that is silly.”
The validation buoyed me. “I kept doing it through college until I slipped and accidentally cut too deep. Well, I always claimed it was an accident, but it wasn’t, really.
Deandra saved my life. She walked in on me, whipped up a tourniquet, and drove me straight to the hospital.
I had to go through therapy to be released.
I’ve relapsed a couple of times—mostly after nasty breakups—but I’ve been ok for the past several years.
” David had almost broken my streak. Almost.
“I knew you would understand,” Rafael said quietly. “This is a lot, I know. It is a lot to live with as well. But I am so tired of being alone.”
Maybe finding love isn’t about healing yourself enough to be ready for it. Maybe it’s about finding someone whose darkness understands yours so you can heal together.
“Can I hug you?”
Rafael pulled me into his lap in a fierce embrace. I wrapped my arms carefully around his neck and pressed my cheek to his.
“Do not worry, it takes grabbing my throat or applying significant pressure to trigger me,” he murmured into my hair.
I nestled closer. “May I touch your face?”
Rafael blinked. “Yes.”
I stroked his cheek. “We have plenty of time to learn the nuances, but I’m glad you’re giving me the broad strokes up front. I want to know everything about you. Trauma, kinks, and all.”
He relaxed. “Authors write many things they may not actually desire, but with the way you described certain kinks, can I assume you have some experience?”
My face heated, and I giggled away my nerves. “Not as much as I’d like.”
A soft laugh buzzed against my ribs. “I can help with that. May I kiss you?”
I tilted my head back, and his lips met mine. Unlike the hunger of that first kiss, this one was gentle. Appreciative. Like coming home.
“Can I touch your scars?” Every cutter had a unique relationship with our permanent reminders.
Some of us wore them openly, some hid them.
For some, even seeing them could be triggering.
I covered mine mainly because I didn’t like seeing my bare legs.
Since he’d willingly shown me and had no coverup tattoos, Rafael likely wore the long sleeves to avoid more intrusive questions. But I’d let him tell me that.
He held a tentative arm out. I caught his wrist and traced the train track scars; the ladder rungs of self-harm, the long lateral rails from old suicide attempts. A map of the history of his pain.
“May I kiss your wrist?”
Rafael sighed an affirmative. I brought his wrist to my lips and tenderly kissed the thick, raised scars.
I plucked his other hand from where it rested loosely on my hip and brought it to my mouth for good measure.
In time, I’d learn all of him and kiss away all the pain.
Kiss him as much as he needed to keep it away.
Shit, I wasn’t just falling for this man. I was already six feet under and steadily sinking toward the core of the earth. How had it only been three short dates?
I released his wrist. “Until I know your boundaries really well, I’ll ask your permission for everything. Is that ok? I’d like to touch your shoulders and chest.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Thank you. Please touch me.”
I ran my hands up to his shoulders, drawing my fingers along his clavicles. Multiple rough spots from old, healed breaks. God, what horrors he had endured.
I almost dropped a kiss on those poor, abused collarbones, stopping myself at the last moment and checking his expression. The brightness of his eyes surprised me.
“Rafael? Are you ok?”
“You are exactly who I thought you would be. Your unselfconscious joy in my music struck me so deeply, I had to know more.” That bass shook, the vibrato humming up my arms. “I have always considered myself well-guarded, and yet…here you are. What the fuck.” He tsked, sucking sharply on his teeth.
“I should have asked more about your past. Instead, I have been trauma dumping on you all night like an asshole.”