Not because his description isn’t accurate but because it’s too right.
I felt it, too.
More than once. Damn near every time this man looked at me or touched me. It was a constant buzz that charged through me and kept me energized. He kept me going through some of the hardest weeks of my life.
When I was spiraling, he held me steady. When I was lost, he helped me find home. When I didn’t recognize the person I was becoming, he helped me find myself in a way no one else has ever been able to.
And it was all predicated on a lie.
When I open my eyes again, he’s watching. He’s waiting for something. For me to cry. For me to rage. For me to hit him. For me to do anything other than just stand here. But that numbness has returned, that feeling like I’m not even in my own body anymore.
“I know you can never forgive me for what I did, Bishop. You can never forgive me for the lies I told. I don’t need you to do that, but what I do need you to do is listen.”
Gage doesn’t deserve a single thing from me except my hostility and hatred.
He doesn’t get to make demands of me, not anymore. The days of letting Gage tie me up, emotionally and physically, are gone.
“Why would I do that, Gage?” I shrug, my ability to argue fleeing as quickly as my energy seems to have once I actually stopped. “Why would I do anything for you?”
Like I’ve seen him do so many times, his right hand slips into his jacket pocket. “Because deep down, you know I’m still the person you thought I was.”
24
GAGE
Bishop winces at my statement, pressing her hands over her chest, like even suggesting she knows me after what I’ve done is enough to cause her physical pain.
Maybe it does.
And that’s saying a lot.
The blood on her split knuckles and the fact that she’s probably been here for hours, going relentlessly when she should still be taking it easy and recovering from her injuries, proves just how oblivious she’s become to it.
That makes her reaction all that much worse.
Those words hurt her more than anything she’s done to her body today.
All I want to do is stalk across the distance between us and pull her into my arms, to hold her steady as she falls apart, to wipe away the tears she’s fighting, to bring her back to where we were just last night.
Moving together so perfectly.
Completing each other and giving one another exactly what we needed.
So connected that our hearts began beating in time against each other as we laid tangled in the sheets…
It was the first time in my entire life that I understood what people mean when they say “making love.”
We’ve shared plenty of intimate moments, times when I felt like our bodies were speaking words we couldn’t say, but last night was like seeing home for the first time after being away for years.
Only I never had a home before her.
I want that back, but all my touch would do now is disgust her. All I would do is upset her more by reaching for her, by even suggesting she might need to be held, might need to fall apart and feel all this before she can start to put herself back together.
So, I hold my ground, my left hand flexing at my side, the other wrapped around the one thing that always grounds me when it feels like my life is spinning wildly out of control or the decisions I’m making aren’t easy ones.
Seeing the consequences of them now, playing out in front of me like a car crash I can’t prevent or look away from, only makes me clutch it tighter.
When Bishop reopens her eyes, they’re so dark, so steeped in her doubt that I can barely see any of that smoky bourbon I love to stare into so much. “I don’t know who you are, Gage. I never did.”
