“I didn’t want you to be alone.” A tear slipped from her eyes and she didn’t brush it away. She was done hiding from him. “I’m here for you. For my friend. Because you’ve always been there for me.”
He grabbed her hands in his, squeezing them so hard they nearly hurt. Her breath shuddered. The look on his face…she’d never seen him so intense.
“I don’t want to be your friend,” he said.
“What?” she breathed, pain rippling through her.
“It’s not enough. Not anymore.”
She swallowed. The strap of her dress slipped down her shoulder. “That was what I was scared of. Because it’s not enough for me either. It’s not nearly enough.”
With shaking hands, they stroked back each other’s hair. And she felt impossibly open to him. Like she’d been unzipped somehow and was standing in front of him with everything showing. And it was the same for her with him.
She’d always seen him so clearly. The vulnerability he guarded with jokes. That physical ease that hid an emotional want that never got answered. Never got fulfilled.
And she’d been a part of that. She’d hurt him. With her own fear. Her own vulnerability. Probably in ways she didn’t even know about.
I’m sorry, she thought again.
But instead of saying it, she slipped her hands across his cheeks. Holding him still. Looking him right in the eyes, she didn’t hide. Or look away.
This is me, she thought. All of me. Wanting all of you.
He sighed, said something soft she didn’t hear or understand, and his hands gripped her waist, the strange fabric of her dress sliding between them, amplifying every touch, broadcasting it all over her body.
Hey! Dean is touching me now!
She rose up on her toes. He bent down. They met halfway.
His lips were dry. He smelled like pencil lead. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as hard as she could. For as long as she could.
I won’t let you go. Not again. Never again.
“Let’s go check on your mom,” she said.
“And then what?”
“Will you come with me?” she asked, pulling away from the kiss.
His eyes, his touch, everything about him said yes.
“Where?”
“To my house.”
“I’ve never been to your house.”
She wrapped her arm through his, pulling them into motion. “Well, you are in for a very short, very boring tour.”
“What are we going to do there?” he asked.
“Talk,” she said.
He booed.
“I think we have a lot we need to say,” she said. “I know there’s a lot I want to tell you. About how sorry I am and how much I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too.”
“I remember when we were kids and you said that this place would poison us. That our parents would.”
“I remember.”
“They almost did, Dean. They almost took all this away from us, and I think we need to get out all the poison.”
“Okay. Get out poison. Then what?”
“Well, then I imagine we’re going to be so emotionally wrung out and exhausted that we’ll fall asleep.” Now she was just having fun with him. And she wanted to keep having fun with him forever. She wanted it to never end.
“Nap. Got it. And then?”
“Monkey sex, Dean. Then monkey sex.”
“Excellent!”
“We got time, boy. We got plenty of time.”
He stopped and pulled her in close, breathing kisses across her face. “Merry Christmas, Trina,” he said.
“Merry Christmas, Dean,” she whispered back.
They stepped back into Marion’s tiny little hospital room and were both brought up short by the sight of Eugene, in a big black overcoat, leaning over Marion’s bed, pressing kisses to her forehead.
She felt Dean’s entire body tense up. And she wanted, badly, to get him out of here before something happened between Dean and his father.
“Sorry,” she said in a low voice, but the two adults jumped back as if they’d been caught necking.
“Trina,” Eugene said in his deep voice. “Thank you for taking care of her.”
“It’s no problem. None at all. Let me just get our stuff.”
Dean stepped out of the shadows with her and Eugene’s eyes beneath the bushy white eyebrows went wide.
“Dad,” Dean said with a short nod of his head while he grabbed his jacket off the bed.
“Dean.”
Trina nearly rolled her eyes. The testosterone was so thick she could barely see.
“Glad to see you could make it to your wife’s hospital bed,” Dean said while shrugging into his coat. “Had to finish that last cigar, I suppose.”
“Your mother asked me to stay at the party,” he said.
“Because that’s what Mom does,” he said. “Mom says that kind of thing.”
“And I mean it,” Marion said. “Stop, Dean.”
Trina had her feet wedged into her shoes and her coat and purse over her arm. She went back to Dean and put a hand against his chest. “Let’s just go, Dean,” she whispered.