I think about her fingers on my face.
I think about us in her bed. Me in her bed.
I think about my bedroom at my last spec ops base. Maybe because it was about the same size as her little kitchen. I used to always wonder why the ceilings and the walls in that place were so fucking ugly, this gray-brown color that made you feel like you were in a file cabinet drawer. My bed there was too small. I remember turning on my side and covering my head and curling up and wanting to feel…real. No one knew how dead I was.
I look at Gwenna, and I try to remember how her hands feel on me. Did she really ever touch me, though? I’m just a watcher; almost never touched. I look at my left hand and it’s shaking. All the fingers. They can’t move, but they can all still shake.
Gwenna pours the batter into a pan. As soon as she’s finished, she turns and takes my hands. She squeezes them and looks into my eyes. Hers are dark and knowing. A small notch forms between her eyebrows as she tilts her head, her face impassive in her quiet assessment, her hands still holding mine firmly.
“Can you finish this for me?” Her eyes gesture to the cake over her shoulder. “One of the egg shells cut my hand.”
GWENNA
His moods remind me of an ocean. It’s a pattern I remember from my own PTSD and I still know sometimes: crest then trough, crest then trough…
I’m good at feeling his. Maybe only good at troughs. His crests are smooth and sometimes small: like when he wrapped his arms around me from behind, before we ended up tangled on the floor.
I can feel the trough over my shoulder as I pour the cake batter. It’s like a disappearance, even though he’s still right here. I can tell for sure I’m right—he’s gone away somewhere—because when I cut my eyes at him, his don’t meet mine. His face is vacant and his body seems too still.
It’s like our traumas are swirled together, because every time I sense this happening to him, I start sweating and my heart pounds. As soon as I can sit the batter bowl down, I turn around and take his hands and squeeze them tightly, tight enough so his gaze lifts to mine.
“Can you finish this for me? One of the egg shells cut my hand.” It’s true. I turn my hand so he can see the small cut on the outside.
He blinks slowly at me. “Yeah.”
God, I love his voice—that low, sweet voice.
I wash my hands and lean against the counter as I tell him how to pour the batter for the other layers of the cake. It makes me glad to see his eyes on his hands, his body moving steady in the present.
I pre-heat the oven and we slide the round pans in.
“Now for the icing.” I turn a slow circle, trying to think of where I put my big bag of sugar. “Sugar, sugar… Laundry room.” I hold a finger up, but Barrett moves past me.
“I’ve got it,” he says quietly.
I’m holding my breath as he opens the door.
I watch as he stops in the doorway. He turns to me.
“Gwenna.” His voice is very soft. He turns back to the laundry room.
“I moved them into the garage. No biggie.”
He looks back at me, and he reminds me of these horses from the stables where I rode when I was younger. His eyes are kind of wide and leery, like he might buck and run. I move slowly over to him.
I take his wrists in my hands. Turn his palms over. I trace his fingers and his palms and look into his pretty eyes.
“Have you ever had your palm read?”
He smiles, small and slightly pained. “In Hindi.”
“Sit down.”
He does, and I sit in the chair beside his. I take one of his hands and trace my fingers gently over his palm. “You have big hands.”
I look up to find him smirking.
I smile and roll my eyes. “Pervert.”
His brows arch. He chuckles. “I’m the pervert?”
My face flushes. “Yes. You were thinking something like that.”
“Something like what?” His hand squeezes mine as he gives me a small, dimpled smile.
“I’m not going to spell it out.”
“I don’t even know what you would spell.” He makes this little “o” with his mouth and arches his brows, looking like a surprised owl.
“Shut up.” I smack his hand gently. “You let me