It’s just me and this girl, our bodies locked into one, breathing together, moving in tandem, milking the last drops of our pleasure.
Can’t remember the last time I’ve held a girl after sex. And that’s because the last time was—
“Matt…” Her soft voice jerks my mind back before it wanders down that path again, that dark path that leads back to the past and all the pain I’m struggling to keep locked down.
She’s shaking underneath me, and a fierce wave of protectiveness washes over me.
“Okay?” I ask her. I need to hold her against me, erect a wall around her. Shield her from the world.
She nods, a slight dip of her head I barely feel.
The warmth spilling in my chest makes no sense. Unless… unless somehow the need for her has shifted, migrated from my brain to my heart. Turned from hot and urgent to warm and deep.
And the realization turns my blood to ice.
Shit. Shit! How do I fight this? Where do I go from here?
I’m not fucking ready for this.
Not yet.
Not again.
“You haven’t explained yet,” she mutters as she pulls her panties back on, and fuck, I wish I could smoke a cig watching her do that in the faint light from the small window of the bathroom.
Watching as she pulls her dainty little panties up her long, pale legs.
Fucking beautiful.
“Explained what?” I’ve stuffed my dick inside my jeans already, zipped up. I know I reek of sex, and I don’t give a damn.
“Why you told me not to wear dresses, if you like them.”
I lift my gaze to her face. “You really don’t know?”
She shakes her head, eyes bright over her flushed cheeks.
She has to know. I wave a hand between us. “This.”
Didn’t want to fuck the nanny of my kids during her interview, dammit.
“That’s not the real reason,” she whispers, low but defiant, and damn if the challenge in her eyes doesn’t have my cock thickening again in my pants.
Plus, she’s right.
It’s not the only reason.
Suddenly I wanna tell her the truth. “Emma… she used to wear dresses. Those pin-up little things with the cut waist and off-the-shoulder straps, like yours.” I reach out, straighten a plait in the skirt of her dress. “She was really thin. A lifetime of malnourishment does that to you, apparently, and she never gained much weight, not even when she was pregnant with the kids. Said the dresses made her feel sexier. More feminine.” I scoff. “She was always feminine, and sexy, and she couldn’t…”
Couldn’t see it. Couldn’t believe it. No matter how tough she was, she was scarred deep in her soul.
But my throat has closed up with a boulder the size of the fucking planet, and I can’t swallow or breathe, let alone talk.
Gotta get out of here.
So I slam my fist into the door as I stagger out and stalk into my bedroom, the walls breathing, the floor moving.
I haven’t drawn any air yet, maybe that’s why. Black spots are swimming in my vision. My lungs burn and my heart is knocking about in my chest. I stumble to the window, try to open the latch but it won’t budge.
Fucking shit.
“Matt?” Her voice. Her steps. She’s inside my room, coming up behind me. I’d hoped she’d head downstairs to check on the kids. “Are you all right?”
Not sure I ever will be. I shove at the latch again, manage to throw the window open and lean outside, struggling to draw some air.
She doesn’t ask anything else, just rubs my back, between my shoulder blades, and it feels good. Much better than it has any right to.
It eases my breathing like nothing else has managed to—not the whiskey, not the smokes, not punching the walls and anyone in my path.
I close my eyes and let her touch ground me. She presses herself to my back, a reversal of our positions, her soft curves and sweet scent a balm to the jagged pain in my chest.
“You’re hurt,” she says softly, and I have no clue what she’s talking about. “Your hand. What happened?”
I realize I’ve been rubbing at my left wrist. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s a scar,” she says slowly and steps beside me, takes my hand in hers, and I’m too exhausted to stop her. “Under the ink. Matt…”
I see the horror dawning in her gaze. But hell, I’m done hiding. Done running.
The end of the road. I thought that. I said that.
“I’m fine,” I grind out. I pull my hand away, and she claps hers over her mouth, her eyes glassy.
“You tried to kill yourself?”
I think about that. “I fucking wanted to.”
Tears escape her eyes.
I frown, reach up and wipe them with my thumb. “But I didn’t.”
Because I knew exactly what to do. How to do it. How to cut. I read up on it. I wasn’t gonna to a half-assed job.
Which is exactly what I did. I botched it. I hesitated. Because I wasn’t sure I wanted to die.
That’s why I’m still alive.
She takes again my hand, traces the scar with her fingertip. I shiver. The scar is raised, half-numb, and her touch sends uneasy shivers down my spine. “No, you didn’t,” she whispers.
That scar is a hesitation wound. That’s what it’s called. The doctor told me later. I cut deep enough that it affected some tendons in my arm, and a nerve in my hand, but otherwise I got off easy.
I flex my hand and she gives me a soft smile, her cheeks still wet. “You never really mourned her, did you? Your wife.”
What’s this have to do with it? “Of course I did.”
I drank and cut myself and tried to… to end it.
But fuck, no, I never really buried her. In my mind, she’d always walk back through the door one day. Her ghost has always been with me.
I don’t know what she sees in my face as the new hit is driven home—the fact I’ve been haunted all this time and never even realized—but she throws her arms around me and rests her cheek on my chest.
“It’ll be okay, Matt,” she whispers. “You’ll be okay.”
I didn’t know I needed to hear that, but fuck, I did. How did she know? I’ll be okay, I’ll be there for my kids, and for the first time I think I may start to believe it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Octavia
The kids are quietly playing when I finally make it back down to the living room. It’s like stepping into a different universe after all that’s happened upstairs. The toe-curling, wild sex in the bathroom. Matt’s explanation about the dress and his past behavior. His small breakdown, the scar on his wrist.
The admission he’d tried to kill himself… but also that he didn’t.
Didn’t go through with it.
Not to the end, at least. The scar isn’t that long, doesn’t seem that deep. He has none on his other wrist.
And despite the despair that filled me when I saw the scar, what he said filled me with hope.
I’m helping Mary dress up one of her dolls in a red dress with Cole tugging on my sleeve to get my attention, when Matt finally comes down the stairs. Good. I was starting to worry all over again.