Why wasn’t he badgering her with questions about Roy? Maybe he wasn’t ready to ruin their reunion by grounding them in her ugly reality. “There’s nothing romantic between Nathan and I.”
Little lines fanned from the corners of his squinting eyes. “I saw you in bed together.”
She sighed. “We’ve been sharing a bed for three years. We’re on the run. We’re scared. We don’t leave each other’s sight, okay? Not even to sleep.”
The disbelief was still there in his eyes.
“As far as I know, he hasn’t been laid in a long damned time.” The reminder squeezed her chest. He deserved so much more than what she’d condemned him to.
“Then I really find it hard to believe that he sleeps next to you without feeling something.”
Her heart tripped. “When we share that bed, Noah’s there between us. Always.”
The tightness in his face ebbed. “Did you love him?”
An ugly mess of emotions balled in her throat. “Not enough.”
28
Jay looked down at their joined hands, his pulse a fuzzy squish in his ears.
Not enough.
He knew Charlee carried guilt over Noah’s death, but if she’d loved him, she would’ve known.
In the years that separated them, he’d written dozens of songs. Every creation bloomed from his memories of her and the emotions those memories stirred. “You can’t control love. It’s like creating music.”
That brought her eyes up to his. “How so?”
“Love is like a series of improbable, lonely notes landing together in meaningful chaos. Where every channel carries a rhythm that conveys an expression of emotion. It doesn’t feel flat or fake or hollow. It’s not exaggerated with overtones. The complexity might feel organized, but the creation is never controlled.”
Her eyes were huge blue portholes. She untangled her hands from his and reached a tentative one toward his face. The movement was a slow climb, allowing him time to welcome it or intervene.
The thought of her touching him produced a clash of feelings in his gut. He wanted to get fucking lost beneath the slide of her hands, but his reaction to touch was involuntary. His trigger would scare her away, even as he wished more than anything it would be different with her.
He caught her hand inches from his face, turned it, and pressed the backs of her fingers to his cheek.
She leaned into his hold, accepting the compromise. “What are your demons, Jay?”
A prickle lit his skin. “That’s a limit.”
“Talking about your demons is a limit?”
For a moment, he couldn’t shake the grip of the old shack. He saw his aunt’s deserted eyes and felt the stiff way she touched him.
The fingers against his face nudged him, pulling him back to the present. “Yeah.” His voice cracked. “That’s a limit.”
“What are your other limits?”
How could he convince them both they could be together when they couldn’t share the simplest thing? “No hands.”
“No hands where?” Her eyes flicked to her own hand resting against his cheek.
He sighed and lowered their arms to her lap. “Anywhere.”
Her auburn brows gathered. “Then how—”
“I had control of the touch. I put your fingers on my face and kept hold of them.”
She sat there, taking it in, becoming infected with it. She was probably jumping to the next logical question. What would sex be like with a man she couldn’t embrace?
She blinked. “Can I touch your toenail?”
He stared at her in stunned silence.
“Or your nose? Can I touch the tip?” She squinted and her lips bowed downward.
So fucking cute. “I don’t know how to respond to that.”
She was so still, studying his nose, her hands cupped in his. “How do you not know?”
His laugh stumbled out, as awkward and confused as he was. “No one has ever tried to touch my nose.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Maybe.”
“Then let me touch it. The teensy-weensy tip.”
The challenge in her tone suspended him in a moment of lucidity. Wonderful things were going to happen with this girl. She would push him. Maybe even fix him. If his nightmares chased her away, though, if she ran out the door, his existence would go up in an inferno.
He shook his head. “It could flip a switch. I don’t want to chance it.”
Women fixated on him all the time with intense wide eyes, wanting things from him. Never had a woman stared at him like that, as Charlee did then, wanting things for him.
“What would happen if we tried it?” She wiggled the finger laced with his.
He knew she was testing him with that minute movement against his hand, but his trigger was unpredictable. “Remember the guy curled up on the floor in the dining room?”
She pursed her lips. “Yeah. Okay, better not then.” Her eyes lowered to his nose as if she wasn’t ready to let it go.
That decided it. He would confront the thing that made him like this. He would become a man she could hold, despite his tattered and worn edges. First, he needed to know more about the man who hurt her. “Who took you, Charlee?”
She withdrew her hands and squared her shoulders, but the abused girl emerged in the falter of her breath. “Roy Oxford.”