Chapter 43 – Grant #2
“I don’t trust myself, Grant. I don’t trust my memory. I don’t trust that what I thought happened actually happened—”
“You didn’t make it up, Em,” I say, hating the defeat reflected in everything about her—eyes, posture, tone. I don’t understand why she’s so upset over this. “They were silly rocks.”
“It’s not just the rocks. It’s everything else.” The desperation in the way she says the words twists my heart.
I’d give anything to take her pain away, and for the briefest of moments, I consider telling her I have proof that her abuse happened.
That I have the evidence to erase the doubt from her mind.
Maybe if she had the choice to know the details, it would be helpful to her and make her feel more in control.
My eyes flash over the table stacked with blue and green file folders and know hers is somewhere in there. I’ve yet to open it, but I know it holds the detailed history of her abuse.
And as soon as I have the thought, I reject the horrible idea.
“I still don’t trust myself,” she whispers, the heat of her words warming my lips.
“I trust you,” I say, scrambling for anything to take the pain from her voice. I’m far from qualified to give her the answers she needs, but hell, I’d walk through fucking fire if it meant I could make this right by her . . . whatever right is.
“It isn’t the same.”
“People trust you with their lives every day. Every damn day, they jump out of airplanes and put their lives in your hands, trusting that you’ll get them back to the ground safely. How can you say they don’t trust you?”
“They trust the name on the building. They trust the certificates lining the wall. They trust the reputation that’s been around for fifty years. They don’t know a damn thing about the woman behind the desk in the flight suit.”
She looks lost, eyes wild, body language unreadable besides anything other than scattered, and I hate seeing her like this.
“It’s going to be okay, Em. We’ll figure it out. It’ll be okay.”
She pushes up off the couch, agitated and restless.
“It isn’t going to be okay, Grant. It will never be okay, and it will never go away.
Fucking hell, I’ve gone twelve years without doing this, and now I have and what does that say about me?
That I’m not strong anymore? That I’m no longer coping?
That I’m just as fucked up as everyone would expect me to be?
” She screams leaving me completely lost in regards to what she is referring to.
“Twelve years?”
“This!” She shouts throwing her arms out so the angry red marks on the inside of her right arm scream out to me.
“This, Grant. I spent years cutting myself to cope. Years hurting myself because the pain I caused myself overshadowed the pain he caused me. It made me feel in control of something. I was the one responsible. I was the one who knew the ugly on the outside matched the ugly on the inside.” Her voice breaks again, breaking my heart right along with it.
I’m out of my seat in an instant and by her side. “Em.” I don’t even recognize the grief in my own voice.
“You once asked me how I coped. This, Grant. This was how I coped.”
“Emerson.” My God. How did I not see this?
I expect her to fight when I slip my arms around her, I assume she will resist, but she does everything but.
Her arms are around my waist, and her head is buried in my chest as we hold on to each other and weather the torrent of emotion that is raging inside both of us.
“Emerson.” I say her name again, needing to see her eyes, to know she is okay, maybe to know that I’m going to be okay knowing this, too.
Fuck if I know. She tilts her chin and looks at me with red-rimmed eyes full of shame and sorrow before leaning forward and pressing her lips to mine.
It’s the last thing I expect, but the kiss is slow and hesitant—a woman trying to find her way through the power of the storm swirling around her.
I kiss her back. Gentle and tender. Giving her whatever she needs from me and promising that I’m going to do everything in my power to help her.
Salt from her tears is on our lips.
Her desperate need to lose herself palpable.
There’s definitely pleasure in our kiss, but there is also so much more. Her well-being. My sanity. Our belief that we can see our way through to the other side of this.
My normally assured Emerson is anything but. She’s timid, hesitant. She may have initiated this, but I know it’s because she’s trying to lose herself in the physicality like I now see she always has. She’s trying to forget the ugly in her.
And that fucking kills me.
For a man who prides himself on being able to handle every situation—womanly or otherwise—I’m at a loss as to what to do.
God yes, I want her. Especially when she scrapes her nails against my abs under my shirt before lifting it over my head. The taste on her tongue. The smell of her skin. The knowledge of how goddamn good she feels when I bury myself in her. They all collide, vying for my focus.
And I may typically be a let’s jump right in when it comes to sex, but something is stopping me from ripping her clothes off and giving her the exertion she craves.
If I do that, I’ll be giving her exactly what she needs to run away from me again. I’d be giving her the tools to close off, when what she really needs is to know what I see when I look at her.
She needs to see the beauty in her ugly.
The thoughts are clouded with lust, lost in its haze, but when she reaches for the buttons on my jeans, I grip my fingers around her wrists.
“Em,” I say, my breath coming in pants as my dick begs me to let her hands stroke it.
“No.” She fights my hold, and I just keep my hands cuffed over her wrists as I lead her into my bedroom. “I don’t . . . just please . . . I need—” she murmurs between kisses, her lips meeting mine over and over, each time more urgent than the last.
I push her back onto the bed, her mile-long legs working her body closer to the headboard as I crawl over her. She looks up at me with eyes so intense they steal my reasoning. My words. My breath.
Her lip quivers.
Her eyes well again.
When I reach down and pull her arms up so that they rest beside her head, palms up, her breath hitches.
With my eyes locked on hers, I lower my lips ever so slowly and press them softly against the fresh and angry red mark on the inside of her bicep.
She freezes, and I know it’s taking everything she has not to pull her arm away from me.
I know if she tries, I’ll let her. But if she doesn’t, then I’ll know she trusts me, if only just a little bit, and a little bit is enough for now.
While I wait for her decision, I can see the shame in her eyes, the discomfort in my knowing, the struggle to let me in. Her inhale is shaky, but she doesn’t move.
She puts her trust in me.
I lace a row of kisses across the scars on her right arm, my heart breaking and temper firing as my lips ghost over the ridges that mark her pain. There are so many, and all I can think of is how many times she’s felt the need to cut herself to cope with what that fucking bastard did to her.
How much pain was she in that she needed to mar herself?
Permanently scar herself to cope? With my lips against her skin and her perfume in my nose, I can picture her huddled in a corner, drawing a knife across her arm.
Over and over. Tears falling like the drips of blood were.
Alone and isolated from everyone and their help.
And then I realize it’s not past tense. It’s not how much pain she was in, because she just cut herself again. The pain is still there. Still prevalent. Still haunting this incredible woman.
My need to show her she isn’t alone, that she’s beautiful inside and out takes hold.