by Sara Arden
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He exhaled a heavy shuddering breath.
“You won’t. I’ve had worse than a couple little bruises on my wrists. You probably haven’t looked very closely at my hands, but they’re so scarred from the ovens and slips of the knife, it’s ridiculous. They’re not very pretty.”
“They’re beautiful hands.” He grabbed her hand and pulled it down for inspection, as if he hadn’t seen the mess of scars and flaws that came with her chosen profession.
At least he was letting her do this. Even though this was supposed to be about his hope, hers blossomed. He’d shed the bitter facade as soon as she made it clear she wasn’t demanding anything from him, didn’t expect anything from him other than what he’d given her.
She tried not to shiver as the pads of his fingers explored her palms, her knuckles and even her wrists. “I burn myself there all the time,” Betsy managed in a voice that was too high-pitched, too tinny.
“I never noticed. Your hands are always so soft. Scars are supposed to be hard. Rough.”
“It must be from how many times I wash my hands. I use a lot of shea butter lotion.” He didn’t care what kind of lotion she used. It was the most inane thing she could say. The man was in her lap because he’d drunk himself nearly into a stupor to deal with something she couldn’t begin to understand and she was talking about lotion. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He inhaled deeply. “Can’t smell the sugar. The vanilla. Where did it go?”
His question was almost childlike. A stark contrast to the way he’d spoken earlier. The barely leashed anger and disgust.
“The whiskey took it,” she answered. Betsy didn’t want to needle him, but she wasn’t going to lie to him.
“I should stop, then,” he murmured, and turned his face against her stomach, his arm curled around her waist.
Another clap of thunder and strike of lightning rattled the space around them, and he stiffened, but relaxed into her again. She continued stroking the short buzz of his hair tenderly.
The storm seemed to fade in the background compared to the white noise of helplessness that slammed in her ears. She didn’t know what else to do for him. Why had she thought she could do this? That she could save him? Her heart ached so much she felt it all the way in her bones.
“I know you love me, Betsy. I wish I was worthy of it.” His breathing evened and he passed into sleep with that revelation on his lips.
Alcohol was the universal truth serum.
She’d been struggling for a way to let him know how much she cared about him, and that yes, she did love him. Not with some little girl declaration of happily ever after and bubbles and fairy tales. She wouldn’t deny that part of her still hoped for that, but it was more. He had to know he wasn’t alone and that she wouldn’t turn her back on him no matter which parts had broken.
But that wasn’t the problem at all. He did know. Now she was at a loss. Betsy continued to watch over him, stroking his hair, his neck, his shoulders with a soothing motion that seemed to calm him. Or maybe he was just too drunk to keep his eyes open. She didn’t know. The storm abated until all she could hear was the slight patter of rain on the windows. The soft, repetitive sound lulled her to a state that wasn’t quite sleep, but her brain was mercifully silent.
The storm hadn’t quite exhausted itself, and when it began to pound and howl, its fury renewed, Jack jerked awake. His eyes were wide, but they weren’t haunted. He scrambled away from her—awkward and desperate for something.
He ran to the bathroom, and it seemed that his stomach was rebelling at the inhuman amount of alcohol he’d been swilling.
Betsy sat on the couch for a few minutes, giving him time to comport himself. She smoothed her hands down her skirt, staring absently at the happy cupcake print until she heard the water for the shower running.
She went to the door. “Are you okay?”
“No, Bets. I’m really not.”
“I’m coming in.” She waited for him to tell her not to, but he didn’t, so she cracked the door and slipped inside. “What’s wrong?” Betsy laughed nervously. “I guess that’s a stupid question.”
“You were right. I don’t want to spend my time like this. I don’t want to be my dad.”
“You’re not,” she said through the shower curtain that hung between them almost like a confessional.
“It’s either pain or numbness. Why can’t anything feel good?”
“You said I felt good,” she blurted.
“We’ve been over that.”
“And neither of us likes the answers we found. So we change them.”
“How?”
His question caused that little candle flicker of hope to explode, but she didn’t have an answer for him. “I don’t know yet, but we can figure it out.”
It seemed he thought the same thing about the curtain, that it could be used to hide his sins, because he said softly, “I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That I can’t figure it out. That there aren’t any other answers.”
“Maybe we should just change the question.”
“What would you change it to? Right now if you could change it to anything you want, what would it be?”
There were a hundred things on the tip of her tongue, but only one that was going to get her what she wanted. “Why I’m not in there with you.”
A low sound rumbled from his throat. “You can’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“You can have anything you want, Bets. You always could.”
She shed her dress with trembling fingers. Both times they’d been together, it had been amazing—until afterward. Then it had all turned to crap. Betsy hoped this time would be different because her heart couldn’t stand to break again. She’d heard something somewhere, maybe a bit of prose, and it said that you had to keep breaking your heart until it opened. Her heart was so open it would never fit back together again.
“Can we not do the regret-and-guilt after party, though? If you don’t want me to stay, I can go home, but—”
He pulled back the curtain and met her stare. What she saw in his eyes cut her off. “No more guilt. I’m done with it.”
Betsy knew she should’ve found it comforting, but there was something in the way he said it. Not even his tone, but maybe it was the set to his shoulders...Not that she could pick it to death anyway while she was staring at them. Water sluiced down his hard body and she found her line of sight drawn down every contour, every plane of granite-carved muscle.
She’d thought he was handsome and well made when he left the first time. After BUDs he was leaner, stronger, but now? After the world had had its way with him, it hadn’t worn him down like a pebble in a stream. His experience, his pain, had cut straight through him like the glaciers that had formed in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It was stark, harsh and beautiful.
Most of all she liked this comparison because the canyon was still standing. It had persevered while the the glaciers had inevitably melted away under the sun.
Betsy wanted to be his sun, in every sense of the word.
She stepped into the shower with him, the hot water beading on her skin, causing her hair to cling to her face. Betsy was thankful she’d opted for fresh-faced today, so her makeup wasn’t streaking down her face making her look like some kind of demented clown.
Although the intensity on Jack’s face made her wonder if it would have mattered. If she could be made up like a circus freak, but he’d still be intent and aroused because it was her, that was a good feeling. Even better than the first time she’d made a successful soufflé.
She stepped close to him, the smell of his body wash strong in her nose. It was comforting and familiar. His hands were hot and slick on her skin. Rough, but still pleasing, like raw velve
t.
Just being in his arms like this was an intimacy that bespoke things words and even making love couldn’t.
I love you, Jack. It was on the tip of her tongue, welling up like some great fountain, but he already knew. She didn’t have to say it. In fact, she knew it was best if she didn’t. He wouldn’t understand that she was speaking her heart, not asking for a return declaration.
She wanted him to feel it, to be sure. She definitely wanted to hear it, but she knew he wasn’t ready. The confession would be hollow and empty because it wouldn’t be real. Betsy knew he had to love himself before he was ready to love her. Jack hadn’t even asked himself out yet, much less fallen in love. He’d never spent any time in his own head.
While patience was a virtue that she didn’t possess, Betsy could be content with this for a time. After all, she had to get to know him all over again, too. She loved him, felt the emotion well in her heart so strong and sure, but she didn’t know if she was in love with him. Her little girl heart was still in love with the boy who left, but she knew they weren’t the same people. She’d changed and so had he. Everyone made sure to drive that point home with a Louisville Slugger. Betsy had been so caught up in her fantasy of him and saving him that she realized she might have forgotten there was a real person beneath that.
And he knew it. It was why he’d fought this so hard, pushed her away. Maybe she hadn’t changed so much after all, because it seemed he knew her better than she knew herself.
Of course, the revelation didn’t change anything. She still wanted to be here with him, wanted him to touch her. No matter what had transpired or how long they’d been apart, the chemistry still sizzled between them.
She hated it when he was right, though.
For all of his strength, touching him was like holding a baby bird with a broken wing. He clung to her as if his very breath was dependent on hers.
Betsy wanted to make him feel something else good. They both needed it.
She kissed his neck, his sternum, down the hard lines of his pecs, and she journeyed lower still until she was on her knees. Betsy held eye contact as she leaned down toward the place on his thigh that he hadn’t wanted her to see. The place where flesh turned to metal. She thought it was amazing that the titanium was part of him.
In fact, she thought it was beautiful. His sacrifice for something larger than himself, his nobility—yes, even tonight when he’d drowned himself in whiskey.
She traced the pads of her fingers over flesh, over metal, all the time holding his gaze so he could see her reaction and know it didn’t matter to her. She pressed her lips to his thigh, and his eyes fluttered closed and he tilted his head back in ecstasy. “I feel.”
So she did it again, her hands mapping him, loving him. She wanted him to feel everything, to fill his senses up with all things good, all things right.
His gaze locked on her face and she wrapped her hand around him and took his length into the hot cavern of her mouth. The intensity on his face was as sharp as a knife, disbelief hanging around him like a shroud. As if he thought she couldn’t possibly want to do this, want to be here.
Yet she did.
Marcel always wanted her to do this, and it hadn’t done anything for her one way or another. It hadn’t spurred her arousal and it hadn’t even made her happy to bring him pleasure.
But just like everything else with Jack, this was different, too. She felt like a supplicant at the altar of a god. His pleasure was hers. So many feelings roiled through her, and the way he looked at her was as if he thought she was Aphrodite herself.
This was how it was supposed to be.
His fingers threaded through her hair and cupped the back of her skull, but he didn’t try to guide her, or set the pace for her caress. This was all as she wanted. He was a blank canvas before her and she could paint her desire with any brush she chose.
Their eyes were still locked when she pushed him over the edge and he found culmination.
But if she thought he was finished, she was mistaken.
After drying them both and wrapping her in a towel, he carried her to the bedroom. She loved it when he picked her up. It wasn’t only that it made her feel delicate and feminine; it made her feel cherished.
Betsy loved how his muscles felt while he held her, taut, but it wasn’t any great strain on him to carry her.
“You should always be naked,” he said against her ear.
“I’ll always be naked if you always carry me.” In fact, Betsy would swear that a man who could pick her up, especially if his name happened to be Jack McConnell, made all her clothes fall off like magic.
“We’ll never get anything done.”
“Being productive is overrated.”
After easing her down onto the bed, he worshipped her with his tongue, his lips and his hands. In only minutes, he had her screaming and clawing at his back as bliss took her.
When she settled into his arms afterward, she knew something had changed. She hoped it was for the better and that if nothing else, he could sleep through the night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JACK AWOKE TO a cold, gray fall morning with a soft bundle of warmth pressed against his side. Betsy burrowed against him like some small, hibernating mammal. Her cloud of hair was a mess over her face, and the sight was endearing. It reminded him of when they were kids and she’d want to come to the backyard campouts with him and Caleb. Many a night after telling ghost stories, she’d climb into the tent with them because she was afraid to sleep in her room alone.
Only they weren’t kids anymore. Betsy was very much a grown woman, as evidenced by the night previous.
His eyes fluttered closed as if that could hide him from his actions. He’d been so pathetic, so weak, and Betsy, she just didn’t give up. She pushed so hard, no matter the cost to herself. He remembered her lips on that bottle as she tried to drink herself into a stupor with him.
The storm. Christ, what kind of man was afraid of a storm?
Then it occurred to him that it was Saturday.
He had a standing date with fate.
Jack eased out of bed and grabbed his .357. Even though it was gloomy and overcast, he could still see daylight streaking through the windows. He was late. It was usually still dark, still quiet. Yet he could hear the sounds of the world outside. Birds, cars and the neighbor’s dog.
He sat on the couch, the metal cool in his hand, a familiar and welcome texture.
He hadn’t donned his whites; he couldn’t risk waking Betsy.
As if the sound of a gunshot in the living room wouldn’t.
Looking at the gun, he thought about what that would do to her. If she had to find his body. She’d be stuck with another one of his messes to clean up. She’d wonder if it was something she’d done. If there was something else she could have done to help him.
The comforting weight of the weapon in his hand was suddenly wrong. Thinking about last night, and the way he felt—the way everything felt—he wanted more of that. Not just the sex, but the feeling.
The living.
He was tired of pain, tired of feeling useless.
Betsy didn’t think he was useless; she didn’t pity him. She loved him.
He remembered what India had said about love. That if he was worth loving, his life was worth living.
And to do it wholeheartedly.
He didn’t want to play roulette with his mistress this morning.
Jack didn’t want to die.
He didn’t know how to live, but it was quite something for him to realize that he wasn’t ready to die.
“Jack? What are you doing?” Betsy whispered.
He looked up to see her standing next to the couch, a look of horror on her face.
She knew. He could see it in her eyes.
“Nothi
ng. Just need to clean my weapon, but I didn’t want to wake you up. My kit is still in the bedroom.”
“Do you swear?”
“I swear. Do it every Saturday.”
“I think that’s the first time you’ve ever lied to me, Jack.” She turned and stuffed her feet into her shoes. “I’ll put up with a lot of things from you, but lying isn’t one of them.”
“Betsy,” he called out. “Don’t go, okay?”
She just shook her head.
“Come here.” He stood and held his hand out to her.
“No. Tell me. Say it out loud. What were you doing?”
Jack closed his eyes, trying to shield himself against everything he would see in her eyes. “Deciding to live.”
“Is that going to change as soon as I leave?” Her voice was small, quiet, as if she didn’t want to ask the question because she was afraid of the answer.
“No.”
“You need help, Jack. More than what I can do for you.”
He nodded. She was right. He hadn’t been ready to see it, not until she showed him that he could still taste, still feel, and most important, that he still wanted to.
“There’s a support group at the V.A.—”
“I’ll go.”
“Really? You don’t have to say you will just to appease me. It won’t work unless it’s really what you want for yourself.”
He pulled her against him and she came, hesitantly. “I do. And I know it’s going to be hard and I know I don’t have any right to ask, but I need you, Bets. I didn’t even know I wanted to live until you showed me it can still be good.”
Her arms tightened around him. “Let’s go try that out.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Jack was ready to indulge any whim she had. He never wanted to see that look of pain and disappointment on her face again. He wanted her to forget what she’d seen, because that part was over. It had taken him a long time to come to that decision.