“You can call him from my dad’s cell phone as soon as he gets here,” Evan said. There was pain on her face, but she gave a woozy nod, shuffled to the bed, brought the quilt back, and got under it, still wearing nothing but her towel.
Evan opened his mouth to ask her if she was okay, but before he could, he realized she’d fallen asleep the moment her head hit the pillow. He watched her for a second, her chest rising and falling, mouth open as she slept.
He looked at the mountain of furniture he’d somehow piled in front of the door, then he checked the lock on the window again, peering out quickly onto the sunlit street. People ambled by; a woman with a baby strapped to her back called out to a toddler running ahead, and a skinny dog lay in the shade of a building.
Evan turned, wanting nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep for an hour, just one, but before he did that, he turned to the bathroom, headed inside, and shed the clothes he’d first put on in another life entirely.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Noelle woke to the light streaming around the edges of a curtain. For the briefest of moments, she thought she’d awoken in her own home, having fallen asleep on the couch. She’d had a terrible, traumatic dream. The boy from school, handsome, popular Evan Sinclair, had been in it. How odd. How vivid.
But then she smelled the smoke. Her eyes opened wider, and she blinked around, everything coming back to her in a horrid rush.
The cage.
The hunger.
The dreadful loneliness and fear.
The men, their breath hot on her face as they tore at her body from the inside. Taking.
Evan, smashing the bones of his hand.
The escape.
The fire.
The chase.
The ice pick.
The desert.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
It felt like a crushing weight, bearing down. She didn’t trust her freedom. She was flailing inside. She couldn’t accept it. It would be taken from her. This was a dream or a wish or a prayer, and in a moment, it would burst and she’d wake behind bars. Trapped like an animal.
A sound met her ears. It was her. Moaning. The whimpers were coming from her. She couldn’t stop them.
A hand, reaching, fingers linking with her own. Her breath released in a whoosh, her lungs expanding with air. She could breathe. In. Out. She took in gulping breaths until her heart slowed.
“You’re okay,” he said. His voice was groggy. “We’re free. It’s real.”
A sob was welling in her chest. She clutched his fingers with one hand and gripped the sheet beneath her with the other, holding on. He was solid, and the sheet was soft, so very soft. Outside she heard the distant sounds of children playing, a dog barking. Life. People. The world moving around them. They were part of it again. They’d risen from the depths of hell.
She turned her body toward him. He was already on his side, his broken hand resting on his hip. His chest was bare, and she saw the top of a towel wrapped around his waist. She could see his ribs. He’d lost so much weight. He’d showered as well. Washed as much of the filth and smoke and horror from his skin as he could.
And yet she knew, like her, it still remained embedded inside. She’d never feel clean again. She’d never feel free.
Their eyes met, and she saw the same desperation in his that must be in her own. The vital need to feel alive. To grasp control. To prove that they hadn’t been irreparably broken. To freely consent to another person’s touch. She came up on her knees, dropping her towel as he rolled to his back. Then they were clutching at each other, both making animalistic sounds that might be sobs or grunts or pleas for help. Maybe all that and so much more. Unspeakable things that must be expelled. He ran his hand over her breast, and she wrapped her palm around his penis, which was already hard. She moved it downward, cupping his balls, and he hissed, pressing against her hand.
She had the vague sense that choosing Evan, choosing anyone, truth be told, would erase the memories of those others. And so when the sob burst free, the words that rushed from her mouth were “I can’t forget. I want to.”
He sat up, turning her so he was on top. She didn’t mind, but she kept herself propped on her elbows so they were both in control. Her eyes were open, because it was essential she see what they both chose to do with each other. For each other.
“Forget with me. Make new memories. We’ll only think of this. This is all we’ll let ourselves remember.”
“Yes,” she breathed as he entered her. “Yes.” She wasn’t wet, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t about pleasure. It was about much more than that. It was about survival, a form she hadn’t even known existed. She was trying to save her soul, and she looked in his eyes and knew he was too.
He began moving, plunging into her. He wasn’t gentle, but she didn’t want gentle. She wanted hard and pounding. She wanted it scored into her flesh. She wanted it to smash and beat out the smells and the sounds and the feelings she’d experienced against her will. “Harder,” she breathed. He complied. He didn’t have to tell her he needed this too. They couldn’t have explained it to anyone else in all the world so that it sounded right or good, or even sane. But they had been there, and they were here now, and they knew.
They knew.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, and then she did fall back, landing on the pillow. He followed her down, still thrusting, and she chanted in his ear, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” The word was healing. It was medicine. It was the beginning of knitting some terrible gash closed, tiny stitch by tiny stitch.
It wouldn’t close the wound, but in that moment, it felt like a start. One so desperately needed.
When he came, he came with a growl and a sob mixed up into one. She tightened her legs around him, and she held him there, breathing in the scent of his skin. She realized she was crying, hot tears that leaked from her eyes and dripped into her ears.
Their breath evened, muscles loosening as she lowered her legs to the bed and he pulled himself away from her. There were no words, no eye contact as they sat up. Evan brought the discarded towel around his waist, and Noelle covered herself with the one she’d slept in.
“Three hours,” he murmured, looking at the bedside clock. “We slept three hours.”
“I feel like I could sleep for eternity,” she said as he stood.
He glanced back at her, a small sad smile playing on his lips. He didn’t say anything, but she knew what he was thinking. We avoided that. You will sleep for eternity someday, but not yet.
Not yet.
She stood, too, smoothing her hair.
Evan held up his bandaged hand. “Do you think you might . . .” He nodded to the bathroom, and it took her a moment to understand, but then she did.
“Of course,” she said.
Evan turned on the shower, and they both dropped their towels. She supposed it was odd that they weren’t embarrassed by their nudity, but in some ways, she felt that she’d spent the last however long with him, completely stripped bare. What was naked flesh when a person had seen your soul?
They’d had sex, and yet it almost hadn’t been sexual, in a way she was too cloudy headed and close up to make sense of. Maybe later she’d be able to articulate the meaning of it, but now she neither wanted nor needed to.
They stepped beneath the hot spray, and Noelle used the bar of soap to wash his body. She poured a generous amount of shampoo into her hands and scrubbed his hair and the beard that had grown on his face, and then she repeated the process.
When she was done, she washed herself again, including her hair this time. A few hours ago, she’d wanted a shower more than anything in the world, but she had been too exhausted to do more than the minimum. Now she was thorough about it, leisurely.