Page 80 of Golden Burn

Etta’s smile is so gorgeous I can’t think straight. I can’t believe she’s real sometimes.

“And your eye?” She asks, letting go of my hand to trace her fingers across the material. Fuck, I forget that’s there too, when she’s with me. I forget about being scarred and broken and guilt-ridden. I forget about how I failed at my role of being my wife’s protector, how I wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t smart enough. I forget about being a widow and all the suffering I’ve endured. I forget everything except her eyes, her smile, her kindness and her fire. Her golden encased heart.

“I lost it after that night, went on a rampage hunting down the men who helped Gregory. I found one randomly a month later and got into a fight. I was reckless, and he was smart. He pinned me in place and tried to cut it out. Dom found us just in time, but I was an idiot and didn’t want a new one. I just wanted them to sew it shut and leave me alone.”

“Can I see?”

I hesitate. The eye itself is gone and a patch of skin has been sewn to cover it up. There’s a scar running down the center, not large enough to reach my brow, but still prominent. There’s a tiny, microscopic part of me that worries she won’t like me without it.Idon’t like myself without it. I don’t remember who I was before I wore it.

She sucks in a sharp breath as I remove it and hold it in my lap, her face lighting up like she’s full of sunshine. “You’re so handsome.”

I chuckle, my fingertips tracing the patch of pink flesh instinctively. “Only Dom and Ford have ever seen me without it.”

She leans forward on her knees; her face coming close to my own, her hands braced on my chest. She presses a kiss on one cheek, then the other. My single eye closes, my lungs strain for a breath that I can’t take.

Then she kisses the skin over my missing eye and leans back so I can see her smile.

I want to kiss her so badly. Grab her face with my hands and hold her against me. Fuck her in this bed properly, like a real husband.

It’s a feat of monumental strength how I manage to resist.

Slowly, as if seeking permission, Etta shuffles to my side, scoots under the blankets. She lies her head on my shoulder and cuddles up next to me. The matching pajama set is soft against the exposed skin on my arms. The lightest touch and yet it sends my internal organs ablaze.

“Do you have a picture of her?” she asks.

I take my phone out of my pocket. I only keep one image of Gen on whatever phone I’m using. It’s a picture I took of her while we were traveling around Australia. We had just spent the day swimming in the Great Barrier Reef. Afterward, we decided to find a quiet section of the beach to eat dinner. We made love first, laughing the whole time as handfuls of sand got into crevices it really shouldn’t. We watched the sunset together, holding hands. Then, when the beach was bathed in darkness, I took out my phone and snapped a picture of her. She screeched when the flash went off, but I caught the image of her just in time.

Blond hair salty from the sea, brown eyes that always gazed upon me like I was her knight in shining armor, her court jester and her secret lover all in one. Tan skin with pink cheeks and a smile that might not have turned everyone’s heads, but it sure did turn mine.

Every single time.

Etta sighs. “She’s stunning. What a bright soul.”

“You two would have gotten along.”

She lifts her head, hands squeezing my bicep. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, she liked to scare the shit out of me, too.”

“How so?”

“Mostly pranks that involved serious jump scares. I nearly broke her jaw once when she jumped out of a closet and I swung my fist too quickly.”

Etta laughs, then silence ensues. She intertwines our fingers as she asks softly, “Your baby? Did you know the gender?”

My throat bobs. It’s something I try not to think about because it rips me apart every time. “It was a girl.” I show Etta the two tiny hands and feet I have tattooed on the inner part of my elbow. The place where she would have rested her head if I had ever got to hold her. “If she had brown eyes like Gen, I wanted to call her Hazel.”

“Hazel,” Etta repeats. Her fingers trace the tattoo with a reverence that makes my chest swell. Two tears trickle down her cheek when she says, “That’s a beautiful name.” She cradles my jaw, lifts my chin to meet her gaze. “I can’t even begin to wonder about the pain you’ve endured.”

“I couldn’t even describe it to you if I tried,” I say softly, my voice cracking.

To wonder is to be human. But to wonder what my daughter would have smelt like, who she would have looked like, what it would have been like to hold her in my arms and rock her to sleep, was the purest form of torment. To wonder who she might have become, and who I might have been as a father, was excruciating. So, I didn’t wonder. I didn’t think about it. It was physically impossible for me to even try. To receive your wife’s death certificate before the child in her womb could be born is incomprehensible, and sealed the lock on my soul, never to open again for fear I might do something stupid.

“Gen’s with your baby, you know,” Etta says, wielding her hope like a sword that she plunges into my chest, bringing me out of the shadows. “She’s keeping your daughter safe until you can meet her.”

“I know,” I say. My heart aches at the thought. My two girlsaretogether, waiting for me, and it’s as much comfort as I’ll get.

I take one of her hands, squeeze her warm palm. “Thank you for asking about her. About both of them.”

---