by Ella James
“Hey…” She grabs my hands and looks up into my face. “How did it go?”
I find I’m waiting for her to come closer. When she doesn’t, I step closer and pull her up against me.
I can’t think of anything to say.
Her arms squeeze me. “I’m glad to have you back. It’s kind of lonely here without you.”
“Thanks.”
I’m surprised to find I want to talk to her. I want to tell her that he said Breck was a nice guy.
Oh fuck. My stomach seizes up. I let go of Gwen and lunge toward the sink. I shut my eyes and try to fight the sick feeling back down.
I feel Gwen beside me. “It’s okay. I have bleach spray underneath the counter.”
I can’t help laughing. Gwen’s trying to get me to barf in her sink. Somehow that pulls me out of it. I turn slowly to face her, smiling even though I still feel like someone scrambled all my insides.
“It was hard, huh?”
My jaw clenches, aching. I set my gaze down on my shoes. I don’t want this. I don’t want to keep being this way in front of her. Why can’t I just be normal?
Gwen’s hand catches mine, her pinky finger hooking through mine in this gentle, flirty way that makes me smile.
“Want me to tell you a funny story about my first time in therapy after my wreck?”
My stomach bottoms out again. I force myself to nod through it.
“Come sit down—if you want, that is.” We move toward the table together. Gwen guides me into a chair and takes the one beside me. “Beer cheese soup.”
“Smells amazing.”
“So,” she says, spreading a napkin in her lap, “I was taking anti-seizure meds, and something else too. Who even knows what. I was having bad headaches then, after the craniotomy I had those for a while, so could have been some kind of painkiller. They tried the low-dose thing, but that doesn’t really work for me, so I was out of it.” She laughs and shakes her head. “But I freaked out anyway and tried to run away. Of course, I was still using a wheel chair, so that didn’t work out well. I ended up rolling uncontrollably down this long ramp outside the building.” She cackles, covering her mouth. “And I crashed into this old man on crutches. He called me inconsiderate and asked what happened to my face. I was too doped up to think of something good to say so I said, ‘Your mom.’”
Gwenna’s silly face makes me laugh even though the picture she paints doesn’t. She howls and has to wipe her eyes.
“I wish you could have seen it. He was small and skinny, like this mean little old bird. Had to grab the rail to keep from face-planting.” Her eyes shut as she shakes her head. She’s smiling softly when she opens them, her eyes glowing as she looks at me. “So, did you mow anybody down?”
“Can’t say I did.”
“Well, I’m calling a win.”
Somehow, Gwen pulls me through dinner. I polish off a bowl of soup and a bunch of that good bread she makes, her leg hooked through mine under the table. Then we settle on the couch. I lay across it and Gwen stretches out between my legs. She rests her cheek on my chest, with her back to the couch’s spine.
We watch an episode of 30 Rock that’s old to Gwen and new to me, but I can’t focus. I can’t think of anything but Breck. My chest and shoulders ache, as if they’re trying to cave in on themselves. My stomach feels weird and unsteady, like a hole is growing there.
I wrap my arm around her shoulders, and I think of talking to her. But I can’t. I shouldn’t. If it’s going to last with her, I can’t take more than I already do. It’s one of the only vows I’ve made regarding her. That all the time I’m with her, I’ll try to do good. Be good. She doesn’t need my darkness.
When she snuggles against my chest and turns her big brown eyes on me, I tell her I’m okay. When she turns to me and unbuttons my pants, I welcome her hands on my hungry cock. Before I lose control, I find my way inside her, fucking her slowly at first, then faster, harder, until she’s almost crying. Then she comes and she does cry.
“Too good,” she giggles, wiping her eyes.
I savor the word, trying to hold it in my mind, let it expand to fill my whole head.
“You’re good,” I whisper.
“We are.”
But she’s wrong. Gwenna’s everything that’s good. I just have to change until I’m someone better.
ELEVEN
Gwenna
The next few weeks are something like magic. Barrett sees his therapist, Sean, two days in a row, then every other day for four more days. His nightmares go unchecked until he comes home with a prescription for Prazosin from Sean’s partner, a psychiatrist.
“I don’t know if I’ll take it. I told Sean that.”
“I tried it for a while.”
“And?”
I rub his leg with mine under the dinner table. “I thought it kind of helped. It made me dizzy. But I got some sleep before I went off it.”
He passes me the folded paper. I open it. “So just one pill right before bed? That’s a pretty low dose. I have that in a drawer here. You don’t have to fill this if you want to try mine.”
He nods, chewing tenderloin. The subject drops while we make ice cream: Bear’s idea—something he and his brothers used to do with their mom on their back porch. We have sex on the armchair in the den, and while I slip off to the bathroom, Bear slips into the garage to pluck a petal from one of my gardenias. I find him cupping it in his big hand, looking embarrassed.
I grin. “How’s all that going? Blossoming?” I tease.
He smiles. “You can probably bring them in soon. Even now.”
“I’ll let you do that.”
He does the dishes while I package some stuffed bears and watch Papa on the tracking software. He’s not staying in one spot, which is strange, so I’ve been monitoring him. No sign of anything odd, and definitely no humans, so that’s good.
When I go back into the kitchen half an hour later, one of my gardenias is in the center of the table.
The dishwasher is going, and Barrett’s leaning against the counter going at a block of wood with—
“What is that?”
He stops carving and smirks. He holds a knife up. “This?”
“What is that?”
He turns the block of wood around. I laugh. “A pig!”
“For you, my dear.” He grins.
I throw my head back laughing. “That’s— adorable. So I’m Piglet now forever, am I?”
“Pig and Bear. Next thing I do, I’ll do us both.”
“That sounds dirty.”
He arches one brow. “Dirty Piglets need baths.”
We find ourselves lying underneath the shower water, fucking more like rabbits than a pig and bear. After that, we watch The Princess Bride while Barrett whittles the pig’s flank, and after that, I brush my teeth. When I come out, he asks for one of my Prazosin.
We go to bed wrapped in each other’s arms and Barrett wakes me up some time later, his hand locked around my upper arm.
“Gwen?”
I frown up at him. Is he…standing by the bed? His face is troubled. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry… I can’t stand up straight.”
“Ohhh…I see.” I sit up, take his shoulders. “It’s okay. Can you get on the bed?”
“I don’t know. Fuck.” There’s a cord of desperation in his voice that makes my heart twist.
“It’s okay…” I slide down with him, and we sit together on the floor.
“What woke you up?” I murmur.
“Thirsty I think.”
I stroke his hair. “Do you feel sick, or just dizzy?”
“I don’t like being dizzy.”
“I’m sorry.”
He draws his knees up, rests his temple against one of them, and I take his hand.
“I should have thought about it,” he says roughly.
“Thought about what?”
His hand squeezes mine. I see his shoulders rise. “Reminds me of Landstuhl.”
Oh. The U.S. Army hospital in Germany, where he went after the awful day on which his friend was killed and he was so hurt.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
I scoot close to him and wrap an arm around his back…another one around his front, until I’ve pulled him into my arms. I wrap my legs around him, too, and lean against my bed. Barrett’s weight is heavy on me.
I take a tiny trigger risk, stroking his hair over his scar. I try to think of what it must have been like for him: waking up at Landstuhl. The first time he was fully aware of what had happened to him. I’ve looked up epidural hematoma since he mentioned it, and if I’m correct, he would have had a period of normal consciousness after he first got hurt, maybe when he and his friend Breck were making their way to the armored car. During the time his friend died, too. And after that, he would have not really been conscious for a while. They probably drilled some holes to relieve pressure at the nearby hospital, and if I was betting, I would put money on the fact that they did the full-scale craniotomy in Germany to get him really stable.
“Was anybody with you there?”
He shakes his head.
I struggle to swallow.
“I had the shrapnel wound. The craniotomy.”
So he probably woke up sedated, having no idea what had happened, with tubes everywhere, a piece of his skull removed and then screwed back together with titanium plates, a drain going into the site of the surgery…
“I remember waking up,” I murmur. “I was scared. I had a lot of people there…and it was terrible, still.”
I kiss his temple.
Barrett pulls away from me, or rather sits up straighter. His hand squeezes mine. His eyes on mine look depthless.
“I wish I had been there with you.”
His lips find my forehead…then my mouth. We kiss sweetly, then harder, then he pulls away, his shoulders heaving.
His eyes shut.
“Some of the nurses there were German. Some were American. When I first woke up…I had trouble talking. Not for long. Just for a few days while my brain was still swollen. The doctors were busy. Lots of bad shit happening, a lot of wounded coming in. They would be in and out, the nurses would. They’d have to turn me over to get to my back. I couldn’t move my body. Too doped up and…I don’t know.” His hand goes to his head. “Maybe the swelling. I don’t remember it that well. I just remember, they would turn me on my side and…touch me. Just my head…and back. I had a tube in my nose…”
“G-tube. I had one of those too.”
He nods. His hand covers my cheek.
“They would talk about me like I wasn’t there. Like they would say, ‘You’ve got those pretty eyes,’ and, to each other, ‘It’s sad that he’s blind in that eye. Wonder how much he’ll recover’ and ‘why is no one here.’ One of them said once, ‘Maybe he’s an asshole.’” He shakes his head. “They were the only people touching me. The IVs.” I see him struggle to swallow. “They had to change the catheter. All this shit that made me think about…my mom dying. I was always dizzy.”
“When I came to more, and thought about Breck…” Tears fill his eyes. My heart feels shredded. “I could talk, but I didn’t care enough. They kept testing my hand.” He draws into to himself, shaking his head.
“You were by yourself. You probably needed someone with you. Kellan couldn’t come, I guess?”
“He’d had his relapse. But he wasn’t talking to me. Just a little bit. Because…of Lyon,” he says with difficulty.
“What about your dad?”
He laughs, a small, dry kind of sound. “Tight OR schedule.” The words are bitter. I don’t even think he tries to hide it.
I think of lying in my own bed, wishing to be held. Crying underneath my covers for Elvie, who’d left me.
“I think I might write the dreams down.” He hugs me, and in a quiet voice, says, “Tell me it was different for you, Piglet.”
“I had parents there. My brother. Jamie. I talked right away, even though I cried all day too. But my boyfriend never came. He went on a study abroad program. Just couldn’t handle it I guess.”
Barrett’s eyes are hard. “I’m glad you’re not with that asshole, but him leaving like that? It makes me want to kill him.”
“It was for the best. He was all about himself, Elvie was. With parents like his, he’d been raised to think he was the second coming, there to rapture country music fans. I can tell he still thinks that. I’ve watched an interview or two.”
“I don’t care. I still want to hurt that bastard.”
“It was hard, him leaving me like that. I think his parents were embarrassed. Felt bad.”
“I hope they did.”
“Want to lay down here on the floor and go to sleep?”
“I’ll try getting up.”
We go to sleep with my head on Bear’s chest, his arms around me.
“I won’t leave you.” That sweet promise is the last thing I hear before I drift off.
The next night, I find Barrett in the bathroom rug with a little yellow reporter’s notepad on his lap.
He looks beautiful in the dim lamplight. His eyes are heavy and his face is drawn, but something about the way he’s sprawled out, legs out, one knee raised, his bare, broad back against my wall, makes him look fierce.
I step partially in the small room. “Hey, you.”
His face is tight.
“Just checking on you. I can go now.”
“No.”
He holds his hand out, and I go sit by him. I lean my head against his bicep…take his hand when he offers it. With no prompting, he passes me the notebook.
I arch a brow, and he nods once, and then looks down at his lap.
I’M DRIVING AND THERE’S MOONLIGHT, EVERYTHING IS COATED IN A WHITE SHEEN. I’M CRYING AND AN ANGEL FALLS. THE BLOOD IS EVERYWHERE. I CALL FOR BRECK. HE COMES AND HELPS ME. HE TAKES ME AWAY IN ANOTHER CAR. I GET SICK.
There’s a few blank lines and then:
EDIT—
I’M DRIVING. I HIT A SNOW BANK. EXCEPT IT ISN’T SNOW. IT’S SAND. THE SAND SCATTERS EVERYWHERE. I KEEP DRIVING. BRECK AND I LISTEN TO THE RADIO.
I hand it back to him and lean my head against his arm again.
“That looks good. That’s how I did it, too.”
He moves so that his arm is behind me.
“Sean wants me to bring it every time.”
“When you talk about it over and over, it will become boring.”
He smirks, but it’s a sad smirk, like he can’t believe that’s true.
“I’ve never understood time,” he says in a low voice. His eyes hold mine. “I saw a quote once—Einstein, maybe?—that said time exists so everything doesn’t happen all at once. I wish I was there for you like you are for me.”
“What do you mean?”
He squeezes me against him. I feel him inhale, but he just shakes his head. He stands up. “Back to bed?”
He helps me up. I go with him.
As we get back into bed, I see his phone light up. He grabs it.
“Dove.”
“Did you say Dove?”
He frowns down at the phone, then puts it back on his nightstand.
“Seth,” he says.
I nod. I’ve heard him mention his friend before.
I wonder why the name Dove made me feel so weird just now. Maybe I’m just tired and delirious.
We go to sleep together. The next morning, we go into town on his Harley—me wearing the helmet he grabbed me the other day—and look at the studio again.
“What do you think?” he asks me with his big hands in his pockets.
“I like it. It’s in a good location.”
I go use the restroom and when I come back, he’s hanging up with Mallorie.
“I’m making an offer.”
I squeal and he swings me around the empty space.
“You want to ride bikes home?”
“Um…huh?”
“You told me you used to love to ride
your bike. When’s the last time you had a bike?”
“I don’t even know.”
“Let’s get some. On me.”
I laugh. “That’s crazy?”
“And?” He grins and kisses my nose. “C’mon. Any color you want. There’s a bike shop half a block away.”
“You and your GPS.”
“You think it’s hot,” he teases.
I giggle. “I totally do.”
Holding hands, we walk down the block and exit the bike shop with matching royal blue Giant bikes. Barrett’s got a charcoal helmet; mine is lime green.
“You think we should ride these home?”
He laughs. “Gwen. How else will we get them there?”
“We could stash them in the studio?”
“The one we don’t own yet?” My heart leaps a little. “We.”
His fingers grip my chin loosely. “I know you’re not scared of a little bike ride.”
“It’s on a big road. What if someone hits us?”
“There’s a wide bike lane. I looked. I’ll ride on the outside.”
“No way.” I grab his hand and squeeze and end up kissing his knuckles. “Gotta protect my prince charming.”
I get the small, sweet smile. “Are you my princess?”
“Yes.”
The ride home takes about an hour, and by the time we reach the top of my driveway, all the endorphins swimming through my brain have made me giddy.
“I feel great!”
Barrett takes his helmet off and leans his head back. His chest swells with a deep, half-panted breath. “Me, too.”
Damn… His curls are dark and pasted to his perfectly-shaped head. His temple and throat are damp with sweat. His beard, which he trimmed to just scruff last night, looks so freaking sexy; I just want to lick him.
I take my helmet off, and his eyes roll up and down me. He takes my bike’s handle. “Why don’t you go inside? Wait for me on the coffee table?”
My neck flushes.
“No?” His eyebrows lift.
“How do you always know?”
“Know what?” He smirks.
“When I want it.”
“Because,” he says darkly. His hand slaps my backside. “I do, too.”
