He struggles with it, his hands moving hurriedly. He peels it off and starts over. When he does it a third time, the curse that explodes out of him makes me jump.
“Can I help?”
“No.” Another curse, more vivid this time. Then he blows out a sharp breath. “Do you have any alcohol?”
“Um . . .”
“Rubbing alcohol,” he clarifies. “It’ll help lubricate the sleeve.”
“Sure. I think I have some.” I check the cabinets and find a bottle near the back. “What else do you need?”
“Just that.”
I bring it to him and stand back while he pours some into his hands, then smooths it onto the silicone sheath. He sets the open bottle down and starts aligning the rounded cup of the sleeve at the bottom of his stump. I can see the sides catching again, friction tugging against it instead of allowing the sleeve to roll smoothly over his knee and onto his thigh.
“Do you need some more?”
He nods tightly. “Just a bit, right here.”
I kneel down in front of him, then pour the alcoholin my palms and rub it onto the silicone where he indicated. His skin is warm beneath the sleeve, his thigh muscles taut and strong. The silicone covering slides easily under his hands now, and he finishes adjusting it into place.
He gives me a rueful glance. “Bet you think I’m real fucking sexy now, right?”
“Just real,” I tell him. “And that’s okay. More than okay.”
He scoffs quietly, his lips pressed flat as he reaches for the prosthesis. “I hate that you’re seeing me like this. That’s why I don’t do this kind of shit.”
“Stay over at a woman’s place, you mean?”
“Relationships,” he says. I hear the anger in his voice, but it’s the deeper wounds that open up an ache in my breast. It’s the fear I see in his gaze now that moves me. “I don’t do this. I haven’t been with anyone like this—like you—since I got out of the hospital. Hell, I wasn’t very good at relationships even before I got injured.”
“I don’t do this, either, Gabe. I haven’t wanted to let anyone in for a long time.” I rub my hand along his covered thigh, caressing him, drawing on his strength. “After I left modeling, I spent a long time in hospitals too. Emergency rooms. Rehab programs. I even checked myself into a mental institution for a few months.”
“Christ,” he whispers, reaching up to engulf my hand in his.
I force a laugh. “Real sexy, right?”
“Just real,” he says, returning my answer in a voice that’s so tender it nearly breaks me. “What happened? You mentioned eating disorders and the drug addiction, the physical exhaustion. But I know there’s more.”
I nod. “There’s more.”
“The subway?”
I swallow, unsure I’m ready to admit out loud just how weak I’d once been. No one knows the depth of my self-destructive impulses because I haven’t dared speak them out loud. Not then, and not in all the time since. But Gabe’s hazel eyes hold me gently, a tether I feel myself reaching for even through my fear and shame.
“It was about a year before L’Opale opened. I had finally come through everything. I’d gotten better . . . so I thought. I was clean and sober. My weight had rebounded. Anyone looking at me would think I was completely healthy.” I shake my head, glancing down as the memories swamp me. “I’d fought my way back. I’d survived something that should have killed me.” The words clog in my throat. “I should have been happy. Why couldn’t I have just been happy?”
“Baby.” Gabe curses, bitter and sharp. He gathers me up, lifting me onto the edge of the tub beside him and swinging my bare legs over his so that I’m halfway on his lap. He pivots toward me, caressing my face, his brow furrowed. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
“I should have been grateful simply to be alive, but instead—”
“All you wanted to do was die.”
“Yes.” I’m astonished that he knows how I felt, that he understands. And yet I shouldn’t be. Because I can see a similar pain in his handsome face, in those haunted eyes that have seemed to reach deep inside me from the moment our gazes first met.
“I bought groceries that morning,” I tell him. “There is this great farmers market in Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan.”
“I know the place,” he remarks. “I don’t live far from there.”
