Fuck.
Gasping for air, I squeezed my eyes shut, relishing in the sound of her voice. To my surprise, my body began to still, the beauty of her voice falling all around me like the first spring rain. Healing and full of promise.
When my eyes opened again, a pair of lime green sock–covered feet were there. One of my hands fell away from thetop of my head, reaching out to pinch her pretty purple dress. Feeling the soft velvet between my fingers, I held on, letting the comfort of her proximity keep me afloat. She shifted after a few seconds, lowering herself to her haunches, the fabric of the dress being pulled from my grasp as her thighs and hips came into view, the smell of jasmine following closely behind.
“Hayes, look at me,” she requested.
“You’re not touching me,” I whispered, my voice like gravel.
“Do you want me to touch you?” She paused. “Please tell me what I need to do.”
Accept my truth.
Accept the tainted parts of my soul.
Accept me as I am, not who I was.
There were so many things I could say, but the fear of losing her compelled me to lie. “Nothing. I’ll be all right.”
A sharp growl left her and then her hands were on my face, pushing my head back. “Stop lying to me,” she hissed, dropping to her knees between my legs. “Just stop, Hayes.”
“I don’t know how,” I rasped, my hands falling to my sides, resting on the cool floor. “I have to do this.”
“Shh,” she cooed, those sage green eyes of hers drinking me in.
My panic. My agony. My imperfections.
“You don’t have to be this person anymore,” she assured, her honey dripping onto my soul now. “Not with me.”
Acceptance.
Love.
Truth.
Her forehead met mine. Evidence of her tears streaked down her cheeks with her makeup. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry this happened to you.” She took a breath as if to steady herself, her thumbs stroking my cheeks now. “But you can’t spend the rest of your life blaming yourself for something that was out of your control.”
A chill slammed into me then, chasing away the warmth behind her words. My hands were at her shoulders, gently urging her away from me so I could get a good look at her. “Out of my control?” I murmured coldly.
She knew she’d said the wrong thing, the proof of that laced through the panic dancing in her eyes. “Yes,” she confirmed. “Out of your control.”
The words left me slowly, each one carrying its own variation of anger. “I…was…flying…the plane…”
Pressing her lips into a thin line, she inhaled and pulled my hands off her. A fleeting moment of panic sparked in my chest, brighter than the guilt and shame weighing me down. It quickly faded as she laced our fingers together in a heap on her lap. My eyes dropped to them, loving the way we fit, how good her colorful tattoos looked beside my skin.
Perfection.
“Have you spoken to a therapist about this?” she asked.
I wanted to scoff, to pretend this was a normal, everyday conversation that we’d forget about in a few years. But it wasn’t. “Yes,” I answered. “Multiple.”
“Grayson knows,” she assumed out loud, her eyes never straying from mine, holding steady as the boat we’d found ourselves in rocked in the harsh waters.
“They all do.” They were my brothers, after all. A family I’d found during the darkest part of my life. We each had our crosses to bear, each different, but just as heavy as the next. “Dominic is who I normally talk to when shit gets bad,” I told her honestly.
Her finger started swiping back and forth over my skin. A small, seemingly insignificant movement, but it rocked my soul. She comforted me in ways I never expected. She wasn’t just an addiction, but a safe haven. Now so more than ever.
“Do you want me to call him?”