Jase merely stares at his front door as he turns off the car. Not speaking, not acknowledging what I’ve said for so long that I eventually move closer to him and almost repeat my suggestions until he takes my hand in his and squeezes lightly.
Hope moves between us, drawing us closer.
“Can you give me a name?” I ask him, praying he’ll trust me this time. It’s a futile prayer.
“I’d rather not.”
“Do you have anything new?”
“No.”
I have to swallow to keep from telling him that there’s no point if all he’ll ever be is a sea of dark secrets to me. I nearly breathe out, what’s the point? and storm off. I can already hear the car door slamming. Instead, I stay in the parked car with him, letting him hold my hand.
Our relationship is uneven; it may always be. Jase needs this. I think he needs it more than I do.
That’s the point. This is for him. I can take what’s mine another time. “I don’t know that I can live with all the secrets,” I admit quietly.
“Ask me something else,” Jase says, the slow stroke of his rough thumb pausing on my knuckles as the crisp chill enters the car in place of the heat.
“Whose blood was it?” I dare to ask. There’s a pitter-patter in my chest that keeps me from inhaling when he hesitates.
Clearing his throat, he answers, “A man’s. Someone who hurt a lot of people.”
I push for more, staring at him, willing him to look at me, but he still doesn’t.
“Name,” I demand. “I deserve to know whose blood was on me.”
“Hal.”
Settling back into my seat, I note that he doesn’t give me more, but he’s given me something. “I don’t think I like that name anymore.”
My off-handed comment is rewarded with a slight huff of a laugh from Jase before he looks at me, really looks at me. The kind of look I’ll remember forever. Not at all like the way he was in the bathroom this past weekend.
“Are you okay?” he asks me, and I don’t know what prompted it.
“You really do scare me… sometimes.”
“I don’t want to.”
I squeeze his hand when he stops squeezing mine and say, “I know you don’t.”
“Ask me something else,” he says, looking out of the window.
“Are you okay?” It’s all I can think to ask.
He nods once but doesn’t say anything else and I get the feeling he’s keeping something from me. Enough so that I open the car door and head inside. It takes a moment for him to follow. The wind is unkind, ushering us inside as quickly as possible.
It seems like this is temporary. That we’re pretending it’s okay when it’s not. There’s something unsettling in the air between us as we walk to the bedroom quietly, our steps even and echoing in the empty hall.
“Do you have a ‘something?’” I ask him as his hand grips the doorknob. He twists and pulls it before looking down at me questioningly. “Something other than work?” I ask him and his answer strikes me hard. “Family. I have my brothers.”
The pain of loss is a horrid thing. It comes and goes; it sneaks up on you but it also punches you in the face at times.
It feels like it’s done all of those things to me in this moment. All at once.
Leaving Jase standing in the doorway, I drop my purse on the bed while kicking my shoes off without looking at him and try not to let it eat at me, but it is. Obviously so. Jase’s keys clink on the dresser, then his watch before he takes off his jacket.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he admits with his back to me before facing me. “I wasn’t thinking.”
The comfort of regret is what lifts my eyes to his.
“Yes, you should have. It’s what I needed to hear.”
Maybe he’s my something.
There’s no other logical explanation for why I’m so drawn to him. He’s talking as he walks to me, saying something but I don’t hear a word. Just the soothing cadence of his voice as I stare at his lips, his broad chest.
Just love me.
Pushing myself off the bed, I press my body to his, surprising him as I kiss him. It’s needy, it’s raw. His response is just as primitive. He tears the clothes from my body, but I don’t move to remove his; I don’t trust myself to loosen my hold on him. My fingers are braced at the back of his neck, keeping his lips to mine and urging him to devour me. To take from me, to use me. To make me feel alive and worthy of life.
I love you. The words are trapped inside of me. Maybe he can feel them when I kiss him. Maybe his lungs are filled with the knowledge when he breaks our kiss for only a moment to suck in air before tossing me onto the bed and then covering my body with his.