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It doesn’t matter. I can’t stop myself from snapping, “You’re ruining this. You’re ruining everything.”
His face shutters like I’ve slapped him, but he doesn’t move away. Instead, he looms closer.
“Wait,” he commands, even with his voice soft as a whisper. He grasps my wrist in his hand, his other settling on my cheek, his pinky firm against the soft skin beneath my jaw, his thumb slowly caressing the swell of my bottom lip. “Paloma—”
“You don’t want to know that.” I try to shake my head, try to force myself to jolt away. But I can’t. I don’t want to, body pliant in the steadying strength of his hands.
“There is nothing you could say that would make me go, P,” he says firmly. “Tell me.”
A tear works its way down my cheek, falling softly over his fingertips.
“I was ten when someone kissed me for the first time,” I say, throat full with a trapped cry. That little version of myself shouts in my head, hands over her ears—Stop, stop, stop!—as if she knows I shouldn’t say this. He’ll leave.
Good. He’s better without this.
“He was . . . one of my mom’s friends.”
I see the words hit him. The implication.
A huff of his breath through his nose. He nods. “What else?”
My brow dips. “You—that’s not—”
“Someone hurt you,” he says, brow furrowing. He doesn’t ask. He just says it, as if he can see everything I’m desperate to hide. “Tell me, Paloma. Let me be there for you. Trust me, please.”
His words are a plea. The sob I’d tried to smother wrings free, pathetic and needy.
“What else?” he asks again.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Paloma—”
“Stop,” I cry, my voice louder than I mean for it to be. I move back away from him again. “Please, Bennett. I don’t—I can’t talk about this yet. Just . . . please.”
“Okay,” he says, hands up in a placating gesture that’s meant to be as calming as his tone.
We sit quietly in the ruinous aftermath of the mess of my own making. You ruined this. Like you ruined him. Like you ruin everything.
Bennett stands slowly, naked but not desperate to cover himself in the way I am—the sheet drawn up over my body.
“You didn’t eat,” he says, eyes focused on his feet. “I know you’re hungry. I’m going to make you food, okay?”
I nod, too afraid to ask him the questions burning in my throat—Are you angry? Do you hate me? Do you regret it all?
I reach out for his hand, but my stomach swoops and I pull back. It feels wrong to be allowed to touch him after I yelled at him.
“Can I . . . can I sit by the water again?”
“Of course you can,” he says, voice exasperated. He leans in, hands in my hair, cupping my head in the massive stretch of his palms. “You can have anything you want, P.”
His words feel intense, blanketing me in safety and warmth. Guilt and anxiety war in equal measure. I’ve never felt safer than I do with him. And yet, the terrifying thought of losing that is enough to drive me almost mad with wanting to keep it.
“Just wear something warm, okay?” He kisses my forehead long and hard, as if he can tattoo the feel of his lips on my skin.
It doesn’t stop the pain from the physical loss of him and the safety of his arms.
Chapter 45
