Okay, I’d leave that alone.
Then, I blurted (mainly because I was stupid, curious and stupid curious), “Why’d you sleep with her?”
“You’re hot,” he answered immediately. “And there was the small fact you were all over me and not takin’ no for an answer.”
Well, it was nice to know he thought I was hot.
“Okay, then why’d you continue to sleep with her?”
His hand came out and curled around my thigh where he squeezed then let me go.
“Cora, babe, sorry but at first, it served a purpose and you…” He shook his head. “You got somethin’ about you. A promise. It just never was fulfilled and for some reason, signs you gave me or things I wanted to believe, I kept thinkin’ it would be. I gotta tell you, there were times when I hoped it would be, when I thought maybe, no matter the f**ked up way we hooked up, we could sort our shit out. But then you would…” he paused, “be you. You tried, I could tell you tried, but you couldn’t pull it off. But, if it helps, I know you tried.”
God, he thought I was a mental case and was trying to make me feel better about Cora failing to be able to play him.
Totally a sweet guy.
I looked back out the front window and muttered to myself, “I wonder why she’d give it to you and not Tor, who’s her husband. That’s weird.”
“You said you were into me,” he answered my question and I looked back at him.
“I did? I mean, she did?”
“You did.”
“I said I was into you?”
“Not in those words. When you’re her, you don’t talk like you do now.”
“So, what did I say? Something like, ‘You’re my moon and my stars, my love?’”
He was silent and I got the message.
I turned back to facing forward. “Sorry, I shouldn’t ask about –”
“Fuck,” he muttered and I looked back at him.
“What?”
“Fuck,” he repeated.
“What?” I asked louder.
He glanced at me then back at the road. “You said I was perfect. Completely perfect. You said exactly that. ‘You’re perfect. Completely perfect. As you should have come to me.”
He was perfect, as far as I could tell (uh… mostly, when he wasn’t angry and saying jerky things that was), though not as perfect as Tor (who could also get angry and say jerky things, by the by, I just decided not to think about that).
“That was a nice thing to say, right?” I asked.
“It was nice and it was weird.”
“Weird how?”
“You said it while touching my face, where you touched it earlier.”
I sucked in breath.
Noc kept talking and now he was talking like it was to himself. “Later, when we were in bed, you kissed my chest and whispered, ‘perfect, no scars, no bloody scars’.”