Turnus, who would have bedded her in darkness, fucked her from behind whenever possible, and avoided looking at her face the same way he’d avoided looking at her face since meeting her.
But at least he’d have taken her to bed. Unlike her actual husband.
Her husband, golden in the sunlight. Her husband, smooth muscles and features polished to perfection. Her husband, polite and attentive and distant as the moon overhead.
For Aeneas, evidently, no amount of darkness was sufficient to disguise whom he’d married, whom he’d have to fuck. For him, she was more than simply homely and awkward and everything else her father had ever told her. She was untouchable. So ugly he couldn’t abide a fingertip’s worth of contact.
Or so she might have gone on believing forever, until she got drunk one night. Very, very drunk. For the first time ever. At Dido’s bachelorette party, drowning her stupid envy over how Aeneas’s ex—now Lavinia’s faithful friend—had managed to get over the man and move on in a way Lavinia never could as his wife.
When she came home in a cab, he met her at the end of their driveway, forewarned of her arrival by Dido’s text. When she staggered, he tugged her against his side and supported her with a strong arm around her shoulders.
When she looked blearily up at him and slurred, “Don’t have to touch me. Know you don’t want to. Made that clear enough,” he stopped dead on their front sidewalk, still holding her, brow furrowed in confusion.
Then, when she repeated the horrible, humiliating truth, he glared at her with eyes blazing like the stars above and spat out his own truth.
“I have wanted to touch you every minute of every day for months now,” he said. “What the actual, ever-loving fuck are you talking about?”
24
APRIL HAD SHRUGGED AWAY HIS ATTEMPTED COMFORT IN her parents’ guest room, so Marcus didn’t try to reach out to her again. Instead, he silently accepted her keys, passed her the tissue box and a bottle of water, set the GPS to her apartment’s address, and began driving them home.
She didn’t want him to touch her. That was her right, and no doubt she had good reason to distance herself from him. He simply didn’t understand what that reason was. And he might not be allowed physical contact, but he could still steal glances at her as he drove. At stop signs and red lights, and when he needed to wait behind someone making a left turn.
In fleeting glimpses, he scanned her tear-stained countenance for some hint of what he’d done wrong, and found . . . nothing. Nothing.
Her face was speckled stone. Impervious.
His confusion and anxiety ballooned by the moment, filling his skull until he wondered how his ears hadn’t popped from the pressure.
Without warning, she pointed to the right. “Pull off here.” They’d reached a little park not too far from the freeway, and he obediently turned into its lot. “Pick a space without anyone else nearby, please.”
The farthest corner of the lot offered spots with the most privacy, and he chose the last space on the end. Within moments, the car was parked, and the hum of the engine went quiet, but he kept his hands clutched tight on the steering wheel. Because he was nervous, and because he needed to keep them away from her until she was ready to be touched.
He studied her blotchy face and the balled-up tissues in her lap, his jaw aching with tension, his need to offer comfort overwhelming but stymied.
She didn’t speak. Not one word.
“April . . .” he finally said, her name a gravelly plea. “I don’t know what happened with your mom, and I don’t know how I fucked up, but I obviously did. I’m sorry.”
He’d thought he understood. Her father was an asshole, and being in his company upset her. If Marcus offered himself as a human barrier, then she could spend time with her mother and escape the visit home unscathed. Simple as that.
Only she’d emerged metaphorically bloodied instead, and Jesus. Jesus. Evidently he hadn’t helped at all. Best he could tell, he’d hung her out to dry instead.
His skin fucking crawled with shame at having inadvertently abandoned her in need. It was the absolute worst feeling. The worst.
Had he simply not listened hard enough? Or had she told him less than he’d realized, less than he needed to support and protect her? And if so, how could he have failed to notice such a glaring omission?
After another torturous silence, she finally responded to his apology, her words blunt and abrupt and startlingly loud in the hushed confines of the car.
“My father despises fat people. Including me. My mother wants to save me from the judgment of people like him, so she constantly advises me about my body.” She pressed her trembling lips together. “I told her today I would no longer visit her if the two of them came as a package deal, because I have no desire to see him ever again. Then I said I would cut off contact with her entirely if she didn’t stop discussing my body.”
Metal in his mouth. He’d drawn blood somewhere, lip or cheek or tongue, and it felt right. Blood should be spilled in response to what she’d just told him.
That motherfucker.
There were assholes, and then there were—
He didn’t even know what the right term for her father was.
Even then—even ravaged by tears, her cheeks blotched with distress—April glowed in the sunlight through the window. How her father couldn’t see her beauty or value, how he’d turned away from the daughter who should have been his greatest pride, Marcus had no idea.
And her mom. Her mom.
In some ways, that was almost worse, wasn’t it? In the end, a dismissal by her malignant asshole of a father might be easier to shake off than the inadvertent slights of her mother.
Brent wasn’t worth a moment of April’s time or a single one of her tears. But JoAnn . . .
JoAnn wanted to protect her daughter. JoAnn had the best of intentions. JoAnn loved her daughter, loved her sincerely, but hurt her anyway. Again and again.
The thought of April growing up like that gutted him.
Fuck, he wanted to hold her. Needed to hold her. Instead, as he tried to find the right words, he fisted the steering wheel so hard he was surprised he didn’t pry the leather free.
But when his mouth opened, she held up a hand. “Let me get this out, please.”
More copper spilled over his tongue, but he nodded.
“I wanted you by my side today, holding my hand. To show them I don’t need to change how I look to have a good relationship, and to support me as I had a hard conversation with my mom.” She rubbed her bloodshot eyes and sighed. “I really needed my boyfriend, not the public version of you. But I didn’t tell you any of that, so you don’t have to apologize. It’s fine.”
Amid the upheaval of the afternoon, her near-instant forgiveness was graciousness he hadn’t expected and wasn’t certain he even deserved. Maybe she hadn’t told him enough before the visit, but he should have asked what she needed from him, not assumed.
His failure roiled his stomach, but this wasn’t about him. Not at its heart. He had to remember that.
He didn’t speak until she met his eyes again.
His hand was an inch from hers, but he didn’t close the distance. “May I?”
When she nodded, he let out a slow breath and interwove their fingers, placing their joined hands on his thigh. With his free hand, he reached over and swept away a stray tear from her jaw, keeping the pad of his thumb gentle and light on her salt-stained skin.