He frowned. “How do I—?”
She closed her eyes. “You’ll work it out.”
He did, but she talked him through it too. He removed her fake lashes, peeling them away tenderly. He used the cotton ball and a handful of its jar mates with a special liquid to remove her airbrushed makeup. She angled her face so he could stroke slowly over her skin, each swipe revealing more of her translucent beauty and an insanely cute dusting of honey gold freckles. He smoothed his thumb over them. They were so unexpected. This was what he’d glimpsed in Gym Girl’s averted face. But this was different.
This time she wanted him to see.
He had to fight to keep his hands steady because her bravery and this revelation, this gift of her real self, was breaking pieces of him off and turning them to mush.
“Now my hair.”
He’s seen her blonde hair before as well, in swirls with the black and red or green, and tied tight and sweat banded in the gym, but he’d never seen it loose. She had to talk him though how to unwind her custom hairpieces. He was thick fingered, unsure what he was feeling. Apart from the various colours, there was no difference in texture or obvious pins or clips. Eventually he managed to separate the strands, remove the silky pieces of colour and her golden blonde hair was in his hands.
He brushed it back and held it in his fist, studying her face. Her violet eyes were full of moisture. Would she let him see them turn green?
“Will you show me your eyes?”
He stood between her legs, his hands resting on her shoulders while she pinched her coloured contacts out. When she lifted her face to his, her gaze was so fresh, so stripped back, so honest, it was as though he could see her through all the ages of her life to date. From before the accident at fourteen, her bright, bright future ahead of her; to her sudden adulthood at sixteen, newly orphaned, alone in the world with Rand; and at every age that brought her now into his arms.
He was overwhelmed. “God.” He shook his head, closed his eyes, swaying slightly. She’d given him what he’d always wanted at a time he was least deserving.
She rubbed her knuckles over his cheek. “Almost done.”
When he opened his eyes, she was smiling—gap toothed. No falsity, no armour. His wolf warrior woman was totally naked to him in all the ways that mattered.
She was Rielle and yet she wasn’t. She was Gym Girl and yet she wasn’t. She was Arielle, completely, unbearably exposed to him.
“You’re so fucking incredible.”
Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and she let them flow, over silken sun-kissed skin. Her voice shook. “I look like her.”
Jake wanted to touch Rielle, gather her, love her, but he was no longer worthy. “Like your mum?”
She nodded. “I don’t deserve to look like her. She was beautiful.”
“God. You’re beautiful, Rie.”
She shook her head violently. “Not like this. Don’t you get it? Not like this.” Her face crumpled. “When I’m like this, I can only see what I did to her, to Ben and Rand and me. I see what we lost. I can’t do it,” she finished on a sob, and collapsed into his open arms.
Now he saw. Now he really got it. This was the kernel of her conflict; her two halves, and the ghost in the mirror who haunted her made her prefer fake to real. He stroked her back, his face tucked closed to hers, struggling against the pull of his own tears. “You were only a kid. It can’t be your fault, Rie.”
She pulled back to look up at him, eyes heavy lidded and wet. “Not entirely, I can see that now. It’s a bad piece of road. I never realised how bad until today. It was wet and Ben was tired. But if I hadn’t caused an argument, things would be different. She’d still be here. He might too. They said the accident triggered his tumour.”
If this wasn’t real life, the part that can leave you forever wounded and bleeding, Jake might’ve had words of comfort, of hope or sustenance for Rielle. He had nothing. He was as stripped naked as she was. And even if he’d had a golden throat and visionary words, they’d have made no difference to her. He couldn’t touch her pain to heal it, only to band-aid it. She’d hugged this truth, this pain so hard it was who she’d become. She was the only one who could change that.
“I promised myself I’d make it up to her, to Dad, to Rand. But it doesn’t matter how successful we are, it’s not enough. I have to learn to live with it—to live with myself. There has to be a reason for me not dying too.”
He wrapped her legs around his waist and lifted her, snagging her robe from the back of the door, carrying her to the lounge room. He helped her tie the robe and settled her in his lap on the couch. Rielle snuggled into the curve of his neck and he held her with arms almost numb from a heart overfilled with emotion and no longer capable of supplying the rest of his body with what it needed.
“I should have bled to death. I could have died of internal injuries.”
“But you didn’t, Rie. It made you strong.”
“It made me scared. And being in Australia brought it all back like it was yesterday. I see it in my dreams. I see that road. I feel the rain and smell the blood and I hear Ben screaming. I see Maggie in the hospital. All the tubes. The noise of the ventilator. She never opened her eyes again. I made promises to her, but she never knew.”
Jake sighed. “Ah, Rie.” He swallowed hard, his throat aching with the tenderness he felt for her.
“If only I’d been different, been better—”