Page 45 of Taking The Virgin

I find the strength to go on. “Mom and Dad were helping a few senior citizens in a group home across town evacuate before coming to meet us. They were on their way back when a flashflood hit the road and took them with it. Meanwhile, we waited in that motel room. Waited and waited…”

Owen cups the side of my face and wordlessly brings me to rest against his shoulder. I cry harder against him, getting my tears and the mucous from my nose on his suit. But he doesn’t seem to notice.

“It wasn’t until a few days later that…” I take in a shuddering breath. “That they found their bodies, drowned.”

Owen holds me, rocking me like a child whose heart is breaking all over again. I keep crying, letting all the months of despair finally spill out of me. I’ve been everyone’s rock—my brothers’, my sisters’, even my own. But now I haveOwen.

Someone to leanon.

Someone strong enough to hold me up until I can get back on my feet again.

But for now I wrap my arms around his waist and cling to him until exhaustion takes me over. Sadness has wrung me out, and as my sobs subside, then eventually die, Owen keeps stroking myhair.

When I finally finish, I wipe my face with my hand, then use the sleeve of mysuit.

“Hey,” Owen says quietly, handing me a handkerchief.

Of course he has one, and as I wipe my face, the clean, crisp linen smells just as comforting as hedoes.

When I’m done, I’m keenly aware that my eyes are still puffy, and there’s no cleaning that up. I look away from Owen, almost regretting that I brought him here to see the complete disaster that he’s invited into his everything-in-its-proper-placelife.

But then he eases his finger under my chin and turns my face so that I’m looking into hiseyes.

What I see staggers me—it truly is painfully rough for him to sit here and allow himself to wallow in my turmoil, but my god, he cares forme.

It’s as if he’s making a valiant, desperate attempt to be normal for at least a little while, and it’s for mysake.

Once again, I’m turning to liquid for him, every bone that’s been holding me together melting. Every cell bubbling. Every beat of my pulse simmering during this naked, exposed moment.

Then he stands and holds out his hand for me to takeit.

It feels as if his gesture is about more than just helping me to my feet here in my abandoned backyard, and as I take his hand, I know he realizes that, too.

After a fraught moment, he pulls me up. He keeps a hold of me, rubbing his thumbs overmine.

There are still no words.

All I can do is surge into him with an all-consuming embrace, eternally grateful forhim.

Willing to give him anything he needs from nowon.

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