“Sorry,” I mumble quickly, and her head whips back around to look at me.
“For what?”
“For… Um…” I don’t even know why I’m apologising, but something just shifted in the room, and I’m sure it’s my fault. “I feel like I just made you uncomfortable.”
“By kissing my hand?” Amber scoffs, putting her cup down on the side table and drawing her legs up tighter against herchest, and wrapping her arms around them. “Why would that make me uncomfortable?”
“Amber, what just happened?”
“Nothing,” she snaps, and dashes her hand across her face. It takes me a beat to realise that she’s starting to cry.
“Honey.” I kneel down in front of her, but she won’t look at me. “What’s going on?”
“I… I don’t know.” She shakes her head, chewing on her lip and angrily rubbing her face against her shoulder to stem the flow of more tears down her face. “I’m being stupid.”
“No you’re not. Something got to you, what is it?”
“You’re just… You’re so nice.” Her head drops against her knees, and her shoulders shake as she starts to cry.
I reach out to take her hands, and suddenly she’s on the ground, wrapped around me and sobbing into the crook of my neck. I hold her, stroking her hair, whispering comforting words to her as she cries her heart out.
I don’t know how long we sit like that, but finally she calms and quiets, all her tears cried out.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, turning her head against my shoulder to gaze up at me. “You probably think I’m crazy, huh?”
“Crying doesn’t make you crazy, honey. If you’d run around my house screaming bible verses, I’d probably be a little worried, but crying, I can handle.”
Amber’s face breaks into a smile, and she covers her ruddy face with her hand as she laughs. “I’ve never even read the bible.”
I puff out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Good. Because the last woman I let in here who had, she wasterrifying.”
Amber keeps laughing against my chest, then sits up and rubs her face with the sleeve of her cardigan. “God, I’m so embarrassed.”
“Please don’t be,” I say, stroking her cheek with my thumb. “I just need to know you’re OK. And if I did anything to bring that on.”
She shakes her head and sniffles. “You didn’t. I promise you didn’t. It was just…” She exhales shakily, and wets her lips with her tongue. “The last time… The last time I slept with James, my um, I guess my ex-boyfriend, it was… I told you he didn’t rape me, but that last time, I guess it felt like I was out of control, but in a bad way?”
Great. Last night did fuck her up. Nice one, Rembrook.
“Amber, I am so sorry if I did anything last night that-”
She takes my face in her hands and shakes her head. “No no no, Theo, listen to me, that’s not what I meant.” She places a hasty kiss on my lips, and she tastes like saltwater from her tears. “With James, it was never about me. I know that now. And the morning after… I was telling him that I wasn’t comfortable, and that what had happened had… hurt.” Her brow furrows, and rage swells in my chest. “I told him that he’d hurt me, he’d pushed me too far, and I needed him to not do that again. And he told me…” She inhales through her nose. “He told me that if I wanted to ever have a man who would stick around, I’d have to get used to it. Because all men wanted that.”
I’m so angry I can’t talk for a minute. My tongue is heavy and laced with venom in my mouth. I want to find this little punk James and beat the ever living shit out of him. I want to kill some college kid and bury him in a pit so deep he’s never found.
Easy, there. Calm down.Focus on Amber.
“You know he’s full of shit, right?” I lace my fingers into Amber’s hair and look into her eyes. “You don’t owe a man anything, especially nothing sexual, in order to keep him. Anyone who expects that isn’t worth keeping.”
“I know.” She nods, then laughs breathlessly. “I mean, I do now. You, doing that last night, it felt like I was doing thatwithyou. You know what I mean?”
I nod slowly. “You said you wanted to do all these things with someone you trust, someone who wouldn’t hurt you, and then you discovered that you can do those things-”
“And have coffee made for me in the morning.” Amber smiles softly, and brushes her fingers over my forehead. “Have my hand kissed. Have a sexy, smart, muscly man tell me his innermost thoughts.” Her warm brown eyes search my face, and she smiles as she shakes her head. “I knew you’d be good to me. And I was so nervous yesterday, coming over here. Thinking you’d still see some kid that used to drink all your orange juice and put on bad music.”
“You’re not that kid anymore, honey.” I run a finger under her cardigan, slipping it from her shoulder, and brush my lips over her warm, bare skin. “You’re a woman. A beautiful, smart, funny, witty, ridiculously sexy woman, who has the whole world at her feet. Me included.”
She laughs softly, letting me kiss her, letting me peel the cardigan off her body, letting me hold her, naked, warm and inviting, in my lap. I lay her out in front of the fire, and spend an eternity kissing her all over, not wanting to miss an inch of her. She lies there, her arms stretched out over her head, eyes closed, and it feels like renewal. Like she’s cleansed herself of something, the bad that was weighing her down, and now that’s all been released, she can be more herself.
