He crossed the distance between us in two strides, taking the plates from me. Our fingers brushed ever so slightly, and I flinched at the effect such a simple, casual touch had on me. He’d had his hands all over me, there were bruises to prove that. The tenderness between my legs as I moved was evidence of his presence in my most intimate of places, but the way he brushed his fingers against mine ... that was something else. Something gentle. Something precious.
The moment hung between us for a lifetime before he broke our stare and turned to take the plates to the small table by the window. I watched him walk through the living room, his scars rippling against his muscled skin. He’d let me touch them, I remembered belatedly. Through the blur that was the clash of our bodies, the writhing climaxes I’d barely lived through, I remembered my hands on his back. My nails sinking into his skin with the animal need to draw blood in order to make sure he was real. And once I’d realized he was real, I’d needed to mark him. I’d needed to add scars of my own to his body ... just in case. Just in case something happened. Just in case he left me again. So then he’d wear the reminder of me on his skin.
Because I wore all of his scars, regularly cutting myself on the sharp edges he’d created.
Reluctantly, I stopped staring at him and followed him across the room to sit at the table. We sat close, too close, but not close enough. The scrape of knives and forks against plates the only sound. I didn’t taste the food, ate it mindlessly, because my body needed it, because I needed to do something, needed to gather my thoughts.
Jay was here.
Sitting across from me eating eggs.
I’d imagined it so many times but it still seemed utterly surreal. There were many ways I’d imagined a reunion going, when I’d allowed myself to entertain fantasies I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. It had been hot sex, it had been his skin on mine, his scent, his presence. But none of the logistics, none of the realities. None of the questions answered.
Our problems hadn’t started that morning. The morning he left me. It wasn’t just about kids. Or even marriage. It was about the secrets he kept. The shadows he lived in. The laws he broke and the lives he took.
It was about my insecurities. My fears, my demons, my needs.
There were a million little details that went in to loving someone. To making it work. To repair the million little cuts that were still bleeding.
That’s what the rational part of me was saying, at least. The irrational, crazy in love—pardon the Beyoncé reference—part of me was happy to keep bleeding as long as Jay was here.
Those two sides of myself fought while we ate, my hand shaking each time I brought the fork up to my mouth. Unfortunately, there was only so much food on my plate, eventually I had to finish. I had to break the spell.
My stomach was in knots as I carefully placed my knife and fork close together on my plate, pressing a napkin to my mouth. My hands were still shaking. When I finally found the courage to lift my eyes, I found him already staring. He had been the entire time. I knew that. His gaze was a physical thing, peeling back the layers of my skin, brushing against every exposed nerve. Every wound.
You can do this, I said to myself.
“I need more,” I whispered, my voice rough. “I understand that you’re giving me a piece of you that no one else has seen, that you’re trying to make me understand your coldness, your cruelty, the pain you’ve caused me. I also understand that not all of that pain came from you, it purely came from loving you.”
I raked my gaze over this man, naked in front of me, his skin like marble, his scars only making him more attractive. He was hanging on my every word.
“I’ve figured out that I’ll never be able to truly love someone without pain,” I continued, my voice still low, raspy. “And as a woman who has been with you, I know that I’ll never love any other man as completely and wretchedly as I love you. You’re a poison. One I’ll never be rid of. One I don’t want to be rid of. But I cannot survive this with only a piece of you. If we are going to do this, if I am going to do this, I need everything. I need all of you.”
I sucked in a ragged breath when I was done, feeling like I’d run a marathon, or what I imagined running a marathon might be like. I wasn’t crazy enough to run one, just crazy enough to love this dark, twisted man.