Confusing emotion creeps up on me. I feel like he’s holding me hostage. Playing with me. “I don’t know what I should want.”
He removes his touch, and it’s painful. So painful. “I’m not stopping you from leaving.”
Is he for real? “Yes, you are,” I breathe, my voice wobbly. “You know exactly what you’re fucking doing, and I don’t know why you’re doing it.” I need to get out of here. Collect my thoughts. Find space to find reason. I back up toward the door, mentally locating all my things as I go.
“Beau?” he says.
“If I go now, will you leave me alone?”
“No.” He reaches for me, and I swipe my arm out fast, knocking his intended touch away.
“Why, James? Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“Because you need me.”
Infuriation flames. I can’t control it, but I keep backing up. “And what about you? What do you need?”
“I need you to stop fucking running.”
I halt at the door, incensed. “Then start being honest with me!” I don’t know what I’m saying, anger fueling me, driving me.
“You want that?” he asks. “Do you, Beau? Because I already tried being honest with you, and I’ve spent the rest of the evening trying to stop you from walking away from me.”
“Then stop trying,” I say calmly, turning and hurrying away, not knowing what the fuck I’m doing. Do I want to go? Do I want to stay? My head is a fucked-up mess of I-don’t-knows.
I reach the stairs and grasp the handrail, my feet taking the steps fast. I only make it halfway down before my wrist is seized and I’m swung around. Pain radiates up my arm, his hot skin heating my wounds, and I hiss. I expect him to drop his hold. He doesn’t. I expect him to apologize. He doesn’t. I look up at him, damn tears clouding my vision.
“Maybe you’re right, Beau.” He takes a few steps down, maintaining his hold, until he’s looking up at me. “Let’s just fuck. Every morning. Every evening. All fucking day, let’s just fuck.”
“Fuck you,” I whisper, my treacherous body singing for him. Begging. “So you can build a library of videos of us?”
“I didn’t hear you complaining when I got you off while we watched it together. I bet you weren’t complaining when you fucked yourself with your fingers when you watched it alone.”
I blink, looking away.
“Don’t turn away from me.” He grabs my cheeks and forces my face to his. His eyes are raging. His body poised, ready to pounce. “It’s time to show your hand, Beau. What do you want from me?”
“Escape.”
“Why?”
My teeth grind under his fierce grip. “I want escape, and I don’t want to be forced into explaining why. What do you want from me, James?”
“Peace.”
I recoil, stunned, and my eyes fall to his shoulder where his scarred skin ends and the perfect, flawless flesh of his chest begins. “What happened to you?” I whisper.
“I got caught up in an explosion.”
My body jolts, staggering back, and I grab the handrail to keep me upright. James’s hand falls from my face, and I gaze at him, shocked to my core. An explosion. My arm is suddenly burning, my head invaded by screams. And in James’s eyes, I see a replay of the scene, of frantic people running, escaping the fireballs bursting up to the nighttime sky. Escaping the vicinity of the car I’d got out of only ten minutes before. The car where my mom burned to nothing. I look at my scar that pales in comparison to the beast coating James’s back. And shame grabs me. Shame I can’t bear. “How?” I whisper.
He removes himself, stepping down a few more stairs, putting too much space between us. “Right place, wrong time,” he replies stoically, and I can see with perfect clarity that he’s struggling to talk. Which begs the question why he’s been so adamant about sharing secrets. “Do you want to know more?” he asks, offering to kill my curiosity with information that I honestly don’t know if I want. Or, selfishly, can handle. And, again, will I be expected to reciprocate?
I know nothing right now, nothing at all. Except one thing. I extend my hand, my lip quivering, and wait for him to accept it, and he does, slowly, watching as our bodies come together again, albeit only our hands. It doesn’t matter. It’s still earthmoving. I move in, taking the steps down to meet him, and curl my arm around his neck, burying my face there. It’s not an answer to his question. James knows that. I’m simply instigating what we both need. To give each other control.
He slips his forearm under my ass, lifts me to him, and carries me back to his room, placing me gently on his bed. He crawls up, spreading his body over mine, and my hands circle his back and stroke over his scars as he draws faint lines up and down my damaged arm.
I doze off to the sound of James’s light breathing close to my ear, his lips on my throat.
His soul blending with mine.
39
BEAU
I wake with my cheek on James’s chest, the sun rising over the buildings, the weight of my thoughts still heavy on my mind. I gently ease myself up, being careful not to wake him, and I stand at the edge of his bed watching him. He looks so peaceful. So serene. Every muscle on his face is relaxed, smooth, nothing cutting his features or tarnishing his handsomeness. Last night, something altered between us. Understanding. Yet, ironically, I don’t think either of us know what we’re trying to understand.
Pulling my eyes away from him, I find a T-shirt and pull it on as I go down to the kitchen, collecting my strewn clothes and purse as I pass, checking my cell, certain I’ll have plenty of missed calls from Lawrence. I’m wrong. There’s nothing. My mind wanders to the standoff outside the house last night, to my uncle’s face. The disappointment. The judgment.
I sigh, flicking on the coffee machine, looking out of the window, following the path of a bird as it flies across the tops of some nearby buildings, gliding gracefully, swooping and climbing. Swooping and climbing. So free.
The machine churns in the background, and I rest my forearms on the counter, my eyes circling, following the bird. Its moves seem to become more elaborate, its swoops lower, its loops bigger, like it’s aware I’m watching. My own private performance.
I’m mesmerized.
And then the coffee machine beeps, and I’m yanked from my trance, seeing steam rising and dissipating. I look back to the view. The bird is gone. Flown away.
Fly away.
I glance around the kitchen, to the endless frosted glass cupboards, and start opening them in search of cups. The first reveals stacks of glass plates and bowls. The second endless glasses. The third glass coffee cups. Glass. So much glass, so much transparency. Is it indicative of the man asleep upstairs?
I got caught up in an explosion.
I feel awful for wishing he hadn’t told me. It makes it all too real. Makes me more curious. It also deepens the connection that I’m feeling, and that’s not good. His burn is of a similar severity as mine, but bigger. So much bigger. A deep partial thickness burn. One layer of skin away from destroying nerve-endings. I often thought that would have been a blessing. No nerves, no pain. Instead, we both endured excruciating agony, and now unsightly scars. We’re the same.