Page 44 of Taking The Virgin

He means that he wants to take care of me. Maybe it makes him feel good about himself, as if I’m one of his patients who needs to be saved from everything harmful in this world. But maybe there’s something else going on here, and all my fantasies about a true connection between us are comingtrue…

I have to know if I’m right, so I swallow hard, then take arisk.

He wants to know what I need, and what I need is for him to see the full damage that the hurricane did to me. I need to bare everything to him, even the wreckage, because there’ll only be more misunderstandings to come if I stay quiet.

“Can you tell me where you’re taking me, Owen?” Iask.

“To your hotel so you can pick up your things. Then we’re going tomine.”

A burst of stimulation tumbles through me at the thought of being together again sosoon.

“Can I show you something on the way?” Iask.

He clenches his jaw, then looks deeply into my eyes. I see even more of a thawing in them—black ice melting just a little bit forme.

I melt inside, too.

Then he nods, and I smile at him, on the edge of grateful, adoring tears for my rescuer, my knight in dark armor.

* * *

We’re standingin front of my family’s modest track home in a neighborhood that’s slowly piecing itself back to the American dream it was before the storm hit. The palm and oak trees that were uprooted during the hurricane have been cleaned up, but the deeper devastation that the flooding left behind is only partway erased.

My house—the one I grew up in, the only home my siblings and I have ever known—looks like an abandoned plaything, toyed with by nature’s wrath. Because we had no insurance at the time of the storm, the windows are still boarded up to hide the missing glass, and shingles are missing from theroof.

And that’s just the outside.

As Owen stalks around the sad yard, I follow him. He’s gone dark again, more serious than I’ve ever seenhim.

“After the storm,” I say, “my friends came over to help me clear the property the best we could. I keep assuring my neighbors that I’ll get things back in order, and they’ve been patient. But there’s only so long that will last, and I can’t blamethem.”

He traces his large hand over a hole in the side of the house where the storm gut punched the stucco.

“Inside,” I say, “there’s water damage from some flooding. The money you’re paying me will make all the difference.”

He comes to stand in front of the single window that miraculously wasn’t shattered. I’ve closed the shutters so no one can see inside.

Tears tug at my throat. “That was my parents’ room.”

My voice wobbles, and I will myself not to cry, dammit. Owen has stuck with me so far, tolerating this whim of mine to visit my neighborhood, to reveal every bit of myself to him. I’m not going to embarrass him with any hysterics.

When he turns to me, his expression is decisive. He’s such a stabilizing influence now that I’m back here at the site of my tragedies that I sob once, then hold it back. I pretend it was a laugh and try to smile.

But why would I be laughing rightnow?

I drop my act and let my face show my grief. “We planned to meet my parents at a motel far out of the storm’s path, but…”

I can’t hold my sadness in. Even months afterward, the pain is too fresh, and I sink down to a small hill of dirt where my brothers used to drive their toy trucks up and down, pretending it was a backyard constructionsite.

I weep as if Mom and Dad died yesterday, as if I’m in that motel room with the kids, waiting frantically for my parents to call and to tell us they’re almost there. I cry like I did that night when the authorities finally didcall.

I don’t expect Owen to sit down on the dirt with me. It would mess up his spotlesssuit.

But hedoes.

Just feeling his reassuring presence next to me is enough, and when he strokes the hair back from my face, I give my heart over to him completely.

My god, maybe I’m just projecting my need for a hero onto him, but that’s what he’s been today, through and through.

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