The Other Side of Us - By Sarah Mayberry Page 0,47

retreated from Oliver in real life, but in her dreams she’d apparently welcomed him with open arms.

How...confusing.

Still half-asleep, she allowed the images from her dream to wash over her. Warmth turned into heat as she remembered the dream. Oliver’s strong, dexterous hands roving her body. Cupping her breasts. Sliding down her belly.

She stirred against the sheets. Her heart was racing, her breathing shallow. It had been a long time since she’d felt this way, a long time since she’d thought of her body as anything more than a damaged machine she needed to rebuild and repair.

Tentative, she slid her hand onto her stomach. Behind her closed eyelids, she imagined it was Oliver’s hand as her fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her pajamas. It had been a while since she’d done this, too, but she wasn’t about to question the urgings of her body. She felt too liquid and needy and ready.

She allowed herself to think about the way Oliver’s face had looked tonight, lined by firelight. She thought about the way the soft, worn denim of his jeans had showcased his long, strong thigh muscles. She thought about the breadth of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw.

She remembered the taste of him, the warm, firm press of his lips against hers. She let her imagination fly as her hand slid lower—and stilled as her fingers found the ridge of scar tissue that ran between her hips and round to her right buttock.

The fantasy unrolling in her mind stalled. Her eyes opened. Suddenly, she was wide-awake.

Funny, but in the scene in her mind, her body was whole. Her hair was long, a sensual sweep over her shoulders, and she was confident and strong and empowered.

That woman didn’t exist anymore. Certainly that body didn’t. If something happened with Oliver, it would be this body he would sleep with, not the one in her imagination. There would be no silken, sexy hair to drape over his body and hers. There would be other issues to contend with, too. Physical limitations. She’d broken her pelvis and her hip, after all, and she still didn’t have a normal range of movement.

She freed her hand from her pajamas, all the urgent heat of her fantasy draining away as she understood—finally—why she’d retreated so strongly, so instinctively from Oliver’s kiss.

She was scared.

Scared that her new body wouldn’t be desirable to a man once he saw it in all its scarred, stitched and stapled glory. Scared that sex would be different, maybe even bad, thanks to her injuries. Scared that she didn’t know how to be sexy in her new body. Or how to be confident or sassy or brave.

Everything in her wanted to reject the admission. She’d built a career, a life, out of being brave and bolshie and ballsy. She didn’t do afraid.

But she knew she would be doing herself a disservice if she pretended otherwise. She needed to face this head-on, the way she’d faced learning to walk again, the way she’d faced so many of the challenges in her postaccident world.

Very deliberately, she retraced the path beneath her pajamas. She found the scar on her belly by touch, following it with her fingertips, absorbing the hard smoothness of it. There was no denying that it was not a pretty, delicate thing. Where once her belly had been flawless and soft, it was now bisected. The section where the ridge of tissue curled over her hip was puckered, an artifact of the healing process that the doctors had assured her would become less obvious with time. In broad daylight, it was nothing short of shocking, a violent slash across her body. It had saved her life, though, this slash. The surgeons had pieced her hip and pelvis back together and removed her damaged spleen and repaired her liver via it. Without it, she would be dead.

The same went for the mess on her shoulder. She ran the fingers of the opposite hand over the scar tissue there, reading the history of her injuries with her fingertips. Without this scar, she wouldn’t have the use of her shoulder and arm. Her life would be infinitely more complex and difficult. Yes, it was messy and ugly, thanks to the postoperative infection that had required an extra surgery to rectify, but the bottom line was that her arm and shoulder worked.

Finally, she lifted her hand to her hair. Her fingers found the scar on her scalp unerringly, tracing the wicked curve of it across the front