Chapter 6 #3
He came over to dinner again the following Friday, and he brought another bottle of wine.
This time, things went much better.
I had a good time, and he seemed to enjoy himself too, and we moved to the couch afterward. Since we were still talking, he turned on some music instead of the television.
Eventually he put his arm around me, and I leaned against him. The music was low, pleasant, and innocuous, and I felt agreeably relaxed from the wine.
“Can’t she have surgery for her knee if it’s that bad?” I asked. He’d talked on the phone to his mom earlier in the day, and she was having a hard time walking with a bad knee.
“Yeah. She just keeps stalling. It’s hard enough to get her to use a cane when she walks.” He reached over and picked up one of my hands with his free one. He started to stroke the palm with his thumb, the way he’d done once before. “I don’t know how I can convince her to have surgery.”
“But if she can’t walk, she won’t have a choice, will she?”
“Well, she can choose to walk as little as possible and suffer through it when she does.”
“But knee surgeries are pretty common, aren’t they? And not particularly risky?”
“Right, but it’s not really the risk. She’s just stubborn. And she doesn’t like to not be self-sufficient.”
I chuckled and stretched my arm slightly since his little caress was feeling so nice. He slid his fingers up from my palm to the heel of my hand. “That reminds me of someone else I know.”
“I’m not really that way.”
“Sure you aren’t,” I said dryly, tucking his arm around me more securely. “You’re not stubborn or self-sufficient at all.”
“I’m not that bad.” It sounded like he was smiling. “I’d have knee surgery if I needed it.”
He was caressing my wrist, and my breath hitched from the sensations. I’d never realized that the skin there was so sensitive, but even the slightest touch made me tingle.
“I’ll remind you of that when you’re old and gray.” I’d intended for my tone to be cleverly ironic, but it sounded strangely slow and thick instead.
“I guess you’ll still be telling me what to do then. You’ll most likely give me a little lecture about how I need the surgery.”
“That’s right. If you need a lecture, I’ll give it to you.”
He laughed again, and I could feel it through his whole body, which made me feel even nicer. I loved how he felt against me—like all the warmth and strength and life in the world was concentrated in his body.
He pushed up my sleeve and stroked slowly up to the inside of my elbow and then back down. My breath hitched at the sensations. He did it again, and I heard myself making a husky groan.
There was some little voice in the back of the mind, telling me that something was wrong, that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. But it was too far distant for me to heed.
For the moment, things felt nice and slow and safe and good, and I didn’t feel that way very often, so I didn’t want it to end.
He lifted my hand and pressed a soft kiss into the palm, and that felt good too. When his lips brushed down to my wrist, no harder than the stroke of a feather, the sensations were so sweet that I gave another silly moan.
He spent some time kissing my hand and wrist, moving so slowly I was barely aware of how things were progressing. I just really liked how it felt, and I liked being close to him.
Then, for some reason, I turned toward him more fully and looked up at his face. I’m not even sure why. I saw something on his face that was startling, terrifying, but then he lowered his face toward mine so I couldn’t see his expression anymore.
He brushed his lips across my cheekbone, the way he’d been brushing them against my palm and wrist. Just as gentle. Just as slight. It felt every bit as good, so I felt myself tilting my face up toward his touch.
He trailed his lips down until they’d found my lips, and the sensations were more intense as he brushed his mouth against mine. But they didn’t linger. Just kept trailing their way to my other cheek.
I was breathing heavily now, and my whole body was pulsing with all the pleasant sensations. When he returned to my lips and then gently took my lower lip between both of his, I gasped and reached up to clutch his shirt.
It seemed to change things. It didn’t feel so light and gentle and slow. He raised one of his hands so his fingers could stroke my face, and he murmured out, “Diana,” in a hoarse voice at the back of his throat.
The kiss still wasn’t deep. He just gently stroked and played with my lips with his. But my mind was blurred over with everything I was feeling, and it felt like my whole body was flushed.
But then I felt something sharp, deep, forcing its way through my consciousness. I hadn’t felt it in ages, but I recognized it immediately. It was a sharp pulse between my legs. A pulse of arousal.
The panic, which was never far from the edges of my mind, rose up in an instant, with the demons not far behind.
Flashes of memory, of images, of scents, of feelings from that terrible night rushed through me with terrifying intensity.
I pushed him away desperately, almost violently, and leapt off the couch to get away from him.
He looked like he’d been sucker punched as he blinked and stared over at me.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, rubbing at my lips, which had felt so good just a moment before. “What are you doing?”
“Diana,” he began, shaking his head in a visible attempt to pull himself together. “It’s going to be all right. Please don’t get scared.”
“Don’t get scared? What the fuck am I supposed to do? We don’t do that. We don’t do that.”
“I know we haven’t before, but I really think—”
“No! There’s no even thinking about it.” I rubbed at my face, at my arm, everywhere he’d been kissing me. How could I have let him do that? How could I have not realized what was happening as soon as it started? “We can never do that.”
I heard him sigh as he pushed himself to his feet. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry it’s upset you this much.” His face twisted as he rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I thought… but I moved too fast. We can work this out. Let’s just talk—”
“No!” I was being loud, rude, irrational, but it felt like the demons were all around me, ready to devour me, awakened to fury by the way I’d just been feeling. “No! You need to just get out.”
“Diana, please.” He was flushed, and his hair was mussed, and he looked gorgeous and masculine and sensual and absolutely terrifying. “It’s not as bad as you’re thinking. Can we please just—”
“No. I can’t talk about it. You just need to leave.” I felt sobs rising up in my throat, but I was too horrified to let them loose. “Please, just leave.”
“Okay.” He sounded reluctant and worried and a little bit hurt, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that now. “I’ll leave for now. But we are going to talk about this.” He glanced around and found his phone on the side table, sliding it into his pocket.
“Please, just leave,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut and trying to hold the pieces of myself together.
“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” I heard him murmur. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Please don’t do anything except go to bed tonight.”
I couldn’t even understand that last part. I just stood perfectly still, hugging my arms to my stomach until he’d walked out of the house and his car had started down the drive.
Then a sob ripped up through my throat, and I bent over as it wracked my whole body. I choked on a few more convulsive sobs until I couldn’t stand up anymore.
I ended up in a fetal position on the couch, crying until I no longer had enough energy.
It felt terrible. It felt like the world was ending. And I couldn’t even explain why.
But gradually I started to think about Gideon and how he’d sounded when he’d left. I’d figured out what his last words had meant.
Even after everything, after the way I’d pushed him away, after the way I’d treated him, he’d still been worried about me. Afraid I might hurt myself because I was so upset.
I gurgled on a few more sobs and then reached over to grab my phone. I hit his number and waited as it rang.
“Diana,” he said, picking up on the second ring. He was obviously still driving back home. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have treated you that way.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” My emotions were so torn that I started to cry again.
“Oh, please don’t cry. It’s really okay. I understand why it upset you so much. I just think we can work through it if we can talk about it.”
“I can’t stand for everything to fall apart. I was starting to feel a little better.”
“I know you were. But it’s not going to fall apart. I promise.”
It would fall apart. If I lost Gideon from my life, then it would fall apart. It was simply the truth of the world.
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow. I’ll come back over. Is that all right?”
It took a minute before I could force myself to answer. “Yeah.”
He let out a breath—maybe of relief. “Okay. Good. Please don’t panic about this. We’re going to get through it. I promise it’s going to be all right.”
I didn’t believe him, but the words soothed me just a little bit anyway. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just go to bed.”
“That’s good. I’ve got a while left to drive. We can leave the call on if you want.”
“We don’t have to.”
“I want you to know that nothing has changed.”
It had changed. It had transformed irrevocably. But hearing the words was better than not hearing them, was better than nothing.
Since I was already curled up on the couch, I just pulled the blanket over me and lay with the phone near my ear.
After a few minutes, Gideon asked, “Are you still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“I guess. What about you?”
“I’m okay.”
I wasn’t sure either of us really meant it, but at least he was still there at the end of the call.
I couldn’t bear to think of a day when he wouldn’t be.