“Years ago.”
“Oh.”
His finger rucks my shirt up and his hand lays flat on my naked belly, skin to skin. “This okay?” he asks.
“You’re not…like…getting a boner or anything weird, are you?”
He chuckles. “You think boners are weird?”
“Never met one I liked,” I murmur.
“What?” he cries. He slaps his free hand to his cheek like the kid in Home Alone. “Never?’
I shake my head. “Never.”
“Have you met a lot of them?”
“My share.”
“Interesting.” His hand doesn’t move. We just lie there with his hand on my belly. I take a deep breath and watch his hand rise and fall. “You feel good,” he says quietly.
“Are you trying to seduce me?” I look into his face.
He grins. “If I was trying, I’d be inside you by now.”
“Can you…you know…do that?”
“My dick apparently thinks I can, all of a sudden.” He looks a little embarrassed.
“Wait,” I say. “You mean you haven’t…since the accident? And that was years ago?”
“Yes, Sherlock. You have put together all the clues.”
“The ex-con with the boner in the living room,” I say.
He pulls his hand back from my belly. I grab for it, because I think I just made a mistake. “I’m sorry. It was a board game reference. I didn’t mean it.”
I lift my shirt back up and press his palm to my skin, covering the back of his hand with my palm. He’s stiff as a board.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
He starts to relax around me. “It’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“I would understand it if that’s how you see me, but if that’s truly how you see me, I should go ahead and take you to the hospital.”
I look up at him. “It’s not. It’s not how I see you.”
“How do you see me, then?”
“I…don’t know.”
“Fair enough,” he says quietly.
“How do you see me?” I ask. I can barely hear my own voice.
“You’re like a Christmas present,” he says.
“How so?”
“Wrapped up really pretty on the outside with bows and glitz.”
“You think I’m really pretty?” I grin. I can’t help it.
“I think you work really hard to be perfect on the outside.”
And he just summed me up with that simple statement. “Yeah,” I breathe.
“But I think you’re soft as cotton on the inside. And I don’t think many people realize it.”
“I think you’re wrong.” So wrong. I’m not soft. I don’t have the ability to be soft.
“What happened last night?”
“Nothing.”
“You flinch when you lie.”
“Do not.”
“Do too.” He chuckles. His finger taps on my belly. “Tell me.”
“My brother came to see me. That’s all.”
“What did he want?”
“To reconnect.”
“And?”
“And I haven’t told Wren yet.”
“Are you going to?”
“As soon as I figure out how.”
“What did he want?”
“A place to stay while he’s in town.”
I sit up because I don’t want to talk about my brother. He’s the one that our aunt and uncle kept. The only one. Wren and I went to foster care when our parents died in a car accident. Our aunt and uncle could only take one of us and they picked him. I resent him for that and I know I shouldn’t.
“Don’t go,” Josh protests as I sit up.
“What’s up with this touching thing?” I ask.
“You started it.” He chuckles. “I didn’t climb into your lap.”
I squeeze his knee and push myself to my feet. Then I realize he couldn’t feel that. “Sorry,” I say.
“No worries.”
He transfers back to the wheelchair. “Are you ready to go to the hospital?”
“We probably should.” I need to keep my thoughts to myself, but I can’t. “I like it when you touch me,” I blurt out.
His brow crooks. “Really, now.”
Heat creeps up my cheeks. “Yes. I just wanted you to know. You know…in case I never see you again after tonight.”
“What if I said I want to see you again after tonight?” he asks. He stares at me.
“I’ll think about it.” A grin tugs at my lips and I turn away so he won’t see it. He passes me his phone and I put my number in it. Then he texts me really quickly so I have his too. I feel like a kid at Christmas.
“Are you still drunk?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“You sure?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You just let an ex-con touch you in the living room with his hands. And it was nice.”
I nod and bite my lower lip. “It was nice.”
“Let’s do it again sometime.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Okay.” His face falls. But what he doesn’t realize is that I’m really thinking hard about it. And I’ll probably say yes, as long as no one will ever know.