Chapter 8
The next morning, I woke up fuzzy and disoriented. It took me a full minute to even figure out where I was.
When I realized I was in Gideon’s apartment, I sat up straight in bed, the covers falling down to my hips.
He wasn’t in the bed or in the room, and he must have turned the television off at some point the night before.
The blinds were closed, so it was still fairly dark, but I could see from the edges around the blinds that it was morning.
I’d been a complete disaster last night—as much of a failure as a person could be—but Gideon still wanted me. I wasn’t sure how to wrap my mind around that fact.
But the morning felt better, righter, than the day before. Because we were together.
I was just processing this incongruous fact when Gideon came back into the room. His hair was in wild disarray, and he still wore nothing but a pair of low-slung pajama pants. When he saw I was awake and sitting up in bed, he smiled. “Do you want some coffee?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
I’d been darting my eyes between him and the covers because his lack of clothes made me feel awkward, but I didn’t want him to know. I told myself to get a grip when he left to get me the coffee.
He came back with two cups, and I took mine gratefully. “Do you mind opening the blinds so it’s not so dark in here?”
I watched as he opened the blinds and the morning light shone into the room, shone on him.
I’d always known his body was beautiful, but this was the clearest I’d ever seen it.
His broad shoulders curved down gracefully into arms with rippling biceps and a strong back that tapered to a lean waist and hips.
I could see the curve of his ass beneath the fabric and the flat planes of his belly from the side.
He looked golden in the morning light—his hair, his face, his body. But I couldn’t look away from the varied, intricate tattoos that laced over his back.
He’d had the tattoos on his forearms removed, so I’d simply forgotten about the fact that he’d been covered with them before.
Evidently he still was.
Just like a couple of the Albanians in that house.
I almost choked on my coffee as I fought through the flash of nausea.
“It looks like a nice day,” he said, still looking out the window as he drank his coffee. “If you feel up to it, maybe we can do something outside. Maybe take a hike?”
I couldn’t stop looking at the ink covering his upper arms and back, fighting through my reaction. When he turned around, I saw he had more on his chest.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, his forehead lowering.
I tried to focus on his face, but my eyes kept dipping down. “Nothing. Sorry. Yeah, a hike would be fun.”
He obviously didn’t believe my denial. He watched me for a moment as my eyes drifted down to the largest stylized image on his chest. It looked like an animal of some kind. The first man who had raped me had a snake on his neck.
“Shit,” Gideon breathed. “It’s the tattoos.”
“No,” I began, my hand jerking and almost slopping my coffee. “It’s not—”
I couldn’t even finish because he was striding over to the dresser and pulling a T-shirt out of a drawer. He’d started to pull it on when I said again, “No! You don’t have to cover them up.”
“They bother you,” he said, the T-shirt half on. “I’m not going to let anything about me upset you like that.”
“They don’t. I mean, they won’t. I just forgot about them. I haven’t seen them since… before, and they surprised me. But please don’t put your shirt on.”
He still looked dubious, but he pulled the shirt back off.
“You can come back to bed with me if you want,” I said since he just stood in the middle of the floor, watching me. “Unless you want to get moving on the day.”
He took his coffee and came over to the bed, where he propped up on a couple of pillows. “Are you sure?” he asked, studying my face.
“Yes. I’m sure. I’m not punishing myself or anything. I was just taken by surprise. I wasn’t thinking of you as having them, so… I guess, if I thought about it, I maybe assumed you’d gotten them removed like the ones on your arms.”
“I thought about it, but it’s such a long process, and there are so many. It just didn’t seem worth the trouble. But I can get them removed if you need me to. I don’t want anything on my body to trigger bad memories for you.”
“You don’t have to get them removed. Seriously. Do they…” I almost didn’t ask the question, but then I decided to risk it. “Do they trigger bad memories for you? Of when you were… you were acting like one of them?”
He sighed and reached out a hand to brush my hair back from my face.
“They used to. Sometimes. That’s why I got the ones on my arms removed.
I didn’t want to see them every time I wore a short-sleeved shirt.
But now I think I’ve just gotten used to them.
They’re just what I expect to see when I look at myself. ”
“Go around looking at yourself naked a lot, do you?” I asked with a quiver of my lips. Just talking about it was making me feel better.
He laughed outright. “Absolutely. I’m a fine specimen of a man, you know.”
His voice was dry. Obviously ironic. I put my coffee on the nightstand and scooted closer to him. “You are a fine specimen of a man,” I murmured.
I pushed back some lingering resistance and reached over to trail my fingers over his chest, very lightly. I felt like my fingers were trembling a little, but I didn’t let that stop me.
I felt the smooth skin, the scattering of hair, the peak of one of his nipples, and then I brushed along the largest tattoo.
I made sure not to hesitate or change my expression. I knew his eyes never moved from my face, and if I’d shown even the least reluctance, he would have put a shirt on immediately and then made appointments to get them all lasered off.
But I didn’t want him to have to do that for me. I wanted him to know how much I appreciated and admired him exactly as he was.
His breath hitched slightly as I brushed my fingers back to his nipple. “Is this language Albanian?” I asked, moving my hand up to the words with lettering I didn’t know spanning in spaces just above his collarbone.
“Yeah. Just generic words like ‘strength’ and ‘honor’ and stuff. We had whole brainstorming sessions with the team about what kinds of tattoos I should get.” He gestured toward the tattoo on his bicep.
“The double-headed eagle is the coat of arms for Albania. I was supposed to be a guy really committed to his roots.”
“Some of them look higher quality than others.”
“Yeah. My cover had me in prison for several years, so a lot of these are supposed to have been done in prison.”
“What about this one?” I asked, stroking the line of his chest down to the large stylized animal on his chest. “Is it a tiger?”
“Yeah.”
“Why a tiger?”
“It’s an animal that hides and then strikes.”
I thought about this and then looked up at his face, my hand resting on his chest. “That’s not you, Gideon.”
He gave me a little smile. “I think maybe it is.”
“I don’t think so.”
We lay together in silence for a few minutes, me stroking his chest and him stroking my hair. Then he asked in a different tone, “Did you want to talk about last night?”
I swallowed hard since the flashes of memory from the night before made me feel a little sick. But he deserved my honesty—as much of it as I could face—so I said, the words stilted. “I didn’t want to be with that… that guy.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“It was like it wasn’t even me. I was just so upset about… about…”
“About me? Being with Maria?”
“Yeah. I know I had no right to be upset since I told you to date. But I couldn’t stand it.
And I couldn’t stand never being able to be like that myself.
I wasn’t thinking. At all. But I guess maybe I somehow tried to force myself to…
” I shuddered. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t found me. ”
“I knew you were upset. I should never have left you on the sidewalk by yourself.” His voice sounded rough, the way it did when he was getting emotional.
“It wasn’t your fault! It was all me. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
His arm loosened, and he raised himself slightly on the pillow.
I looked up at him and saw his face was dead serious.
“But I did. I…” His face twisted slightly.
“I canceled on you Friday evening on purpose. I was feeling frustrated and selfish and… I guess, kind of desperate. So I was pulling away from you on purpose. I kept myself from calling you all week. I wanted for you to realize what it’d be like if I wasn’t around.
I wanted you to get jealous about the idea of me with someone else.
I thought… Oh, Christ, it’s awful, but I somehow thought it might prove something. I wanted you to be upset.”
I stared at him, surprised but not really angry since he looked so guilt-ridden. “So you didn’t have other plans on Friday?”
“No. I didn’t have plans. I sat at home all evening, thinking about you.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I saw your face last night when you saw me with Maria.
I knew how you felt, how much it hurt you.
It was exactly the way I would feel if you were with another man.
And I knew then I’d accomplished nothing but hurting you, and I’m so sorry for that. ”
I shook my head, trying to process what he’d said. “No, I don’t think you did anything that bad. You didn’t hurt me on purpose.”
“I did. I justified it by saying it might prove we should be together, but hurting you can never be right. I was just being selfish. And I can’t help thinking, if you weren’t already upset about my pulling away, you wouldn’t have reacted so… so dramatically last night.”