And, even more than usual, I was powerless to stop the results of that shift.
Even if it meant the earth opened up and swallowed the whole of me.
* * * * * *
10:42 – That Evening
“Hey.”
My eyes moved from their contemplation of Nick’s super-cool reddish-pink glow light to his face.
He was curled up, head and shoulders to a pile of pillows in his bed at his headboard, his chest on display, his lower body partially tangled in sheets.
Somehow, between orgasm and post-orgasm cuddling-esque maneuvers (as we did them, Nick didn’t cuddle, I didn’t either—we both still did) to now, I’d shifted position.
I had some of his sheets tangled around my legs, partially around my ass, but my back was exposed, including my scar, and I had my arm on his gut, my chin to my arm, and my attention to the doom I sensed hovering in my world.
When he got that attention, I decided first things first and shifted the sheet so it covered my ass and the scars.
I watched his eyes shaft that way briefly, his mouth tightening in what appeared to be mild frustration. This was something he did whenever I showed any indication of embarrassment about my scar. Though, I had to admit, me doing that was happening on a rarer occasion. It was just that I felt vulnerable right then for some reason.
It was also something he wiped clean from his expression when he looked back to me.
“You’re a million miles away,” he noted.
“I want you to be someone else,” I blurted.
He blinked before he smiled, his body faintly shaking, his smiling lips muttering, “And she knows just how to gut a guy.”
“Someone I can trust,” I explained.
His humor instantly fled.
“In fact,” I went on ridiculously and definitely stupidly, “it’d be good if there was a single fucking person on this godforsaken planet I could trust.”
Knowing that was ridiculous and stupid, but it feeling good to get out anyway, I decided that was enough and it was time to go home.
So I pushed up and twisted around to exit the bed.
As I was learning with Nick, I shouldn’t have wasted the effort. If I dropped a bomb like that, he’d not let it go and make it so I couldn’t either.
So it was not a surprise I found myself on my back, more tangled in the sheets, now hopelessly so, and if that wasn’t enough, a good deal of his weight was bearing down on me.
“You okay?” he asked.
I looked up at him and I did it hard, searching, trying to find anything, absolutely anything that would tell me where he was at, really at, with me.
But all I could see was marginal concern, the rest he held hidden.
Which told me where he was at with me.
Which was precisely where I was at with him.
And lastly, it was exactly where we’d always be.
I was never okay but that wasn’t for then or ever, for him or anyone. It was just what it was and it was all for me.
So I weighed my words and gave him what I thought was safe.