His eyes opened. They were hard, almost black tonight as they focused on her face. The air sparked with their connection. “I did.”
She pictured him doing it and her body jolted. All thoughts of lasers and therapy obliterated by the harsh image. There was nothing pretty about this man’s existence.
Leaving one hand on his side, George nudged up closer to his body, letting the other palm rest over his heart, which beat fast and strong.
“Is that where you go?”
“What?”
Her trailing fingers explored the topography of that traumatic scar, this time as a woman, not a doctor. “When you have your…attacks. Do you go back to that moment?”
He jerked once with what might have been a snort of laughter. “Hell no. The burn was nothing.”
“Oh.” She continued to touch him, stroke him—so, so very gentle. He seemed to sink into it, vibrating on a different level, a different plane almost. She wet her lips. “And what about when I touch you? Where do you go?” she asked.
“Go? Dunno,” he responded, already dreamy, already gone.
“But it’s good, right?”
“Told you, baby. Best thing. Ever. But I can’t hold my shit together.” He shook his head, stopped, and pulled her to him, her face tucked into the soft part of his neck. It felt intimate, but George suspected he’d moved to hide, rather than to bring her closer. “And it kinda hurts.”
George tried to pull away, to look at him, but he held her close. Her words were muffled. “It still hurts? Your skin’s—”
“No, baby. It hurts other things. If that makes sense.” His mouth opened against her temple, the wet heat of his breath oddly arousing. “Of all the shit I’ve gone through, the worst part’s when you touch me. The pain, I can handle; the other shit’s fine. It’s the…the soft stuff I’m not built for. You know, the feeling that something could be better. Something like hope, I guess, which everybody knows is, well, hopeless.”
George opened her mouth in protest, but he cut her off, his voice hard. “Can you honestly look at me and say you see someone with a future?”
“You don’t think you deserve a life?”
He lay flat back on his pillow, pulling her even tighter to his side. “I think we’re all allowed a certain number of mistakes. I’m pretty sure I’ve reached my quota.”
She let that sink in, wondering just what he’d gotten up to that made him feel like he didn’t deserve another chance.
“Who were you before?”
“What?” He blinked at her, not understanding.
“Before your…before Carly died?”
“Doesn’t matter, babe. That kid’s gone.”
“But maybe it does matter. It does! If you want to have a life again,” George said, her voice a little too close to pleading for comfort. “Like, maybe you’re supposed to forgive your young self for his stupid mistakes.”
“Have you?”
“What?”
“Forgiven your young self?”
George stilled. “Sure.”
“Yeah?” he said, his breath moving the hair close to her ear. “You all good with your past mistakes?”
It took a minute for George to realize she wasn’t actually breathing. Another second to force her body to start up again, to take in air.
“You must’ve been perfect, though, right? An angel.” He shifted back and caught her eyes with his. “Perfect little Georgette Hadley.”
“Jones.”
