“So I’ve heard, once or twice,” I admit, smiling.
“And you’re beautiful,” he adds, reaching up to caress the side of my cheek in his palm. “You’re more than beautiful, Melanie. Your goodness glows from inside. You take my fucking breath away.”
A soaring kind of warmth opens up in my chest at his words, and at the earnest way he says them. His name is a sigh, my breast too full with emotion to form any true sound. I turn my face into his gentle hand, pressing my lips to the center of his palm. I can feel the throb of his pulse there, beating strong and heavy.
But I feel something else, too.
His fingers tremble against my cheek. More than tremble, they’re shaking.
He draws his hand away from me, letting it fall slowly down at his side.
“Jared.” I look at him in alarm, realizing the tremors I noticed in his hand when we were making love and that I dismissed in the heat of the moment were something more than I thought as well.
I reach for his hand, but he moves it behind him.
“Don’t, Melanie.” His deep voice is clipped, toneless. “It’s nothing.”
“No, it isn’t,” I reply, cautiously because I can see how ready he is to deny it. To shut me out completely.
I can’t let him do that. Not now, when I’ve let him into my body, into my heart.
“What’s wrong with your hand, Jared? Please, let me see.”
His eyes hold me in an inscrutable stare, bleak and unblinking. I can see him wrestling with the decision to let me in, debating whether he can trust me. Like a wild animal caught in a snare, he watches me, coiled and ready to lash out.
“It’s okay,” I assure him. “Let me see.”
He stands so still I don’t even hear him breathing as I reach down and take his strong hand in my grasp. The spasm has worsened, affecting not only his fingers and hand but vibrating up the muscled length of his forearm.
“It’ll pass in a few minutes,” he murmurs, his eyes still trained on me. Searching for cracks in my reaction, I have no doubt. The way he stares at me, it’s as if he’s waiting for me to shrink back and turn away. Or daring me to. “Early onset Parkinson’s disease, in case you’re curious. A little DNA parting gift from my old man.”
The explanation hits me like a physical blow. Not because I consider it a death sentence, but because it’s immediately, painfully, obvious to me what that kind of diagnosis means to someone like Jared.
“My father’s tremors came on around the same age as mine, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.” He shrugs. “I had my first noticeable symptom a couple of years ago. Blew the shaking off as a consequence of too many bad habits and a few too many long nights in places I shouldn’t have been. But it wasn’t just one time. It kept coming back. Kept getting worse and more frequent, until I couldn’t ignore reality anymore.”
I’m amazed he’s still allowing me to hold his hand while it shakes in my light grasp. That edge of wariness hasn’t left his sober gaze, though, and I wonder what it must cost a strong, larger than life man like Jared Rush to be forced to confront this kind of mortal vulnerability.
I want to apologize for what he’s going through, but I know he doesn’t want my sympathy. I’m not even sure he’d accept it.
What’s more, every time I’ve looked into his haunted brown eyes I could tell that he’s been through far worse than any physical challenge could ever pose. I bear my scars on the outside of my body. Jared’s are buried deep.
And now, this.
“Two years ago,” I whisper, glancing away from his gaze to look at the elegant fingers that are normally so in control, so brilliantly gifted. The tremors are small, but bad enough to make holding a pencil difficult, never mind a paintbrush. “That’s why you stopped painting. I accused you of letting alcohol interfere with your art, but that wasn’t the problem, was it?”
“No,” he says. “I had myself convinced the drinking helped smooth out the shaking. Sometimes, it did. But drinking’s only given me an excuse to ignore the truth.”
“Can you paint at all?”
“On good days I can. Those are becoming fewer and fewer all the time.”
“But you were willing to pay me to pose for you.”
He nods, and I’m not sure if the regret I see in his eyes is because of his declining ability to pursue his art or something else.
“I thought I could give it up.” He reaches up with his other hand, the one that’s steady and infinitely gentle as he sweeps his thumb across my lips. “I likely would have walked away from my art for good, but then I saw you.”
I can’t pretend it doesn’t move me to hear him say that. Yet it confuses me, too. “Today you said you weren’t interested in painting me anymore.”
