Page 12 of Reading Between the Lines
“Diem?”
“And Christ, what’s with the fucking smell. It’s burning my nostrils. Isn’t it bad enough to have flowers everywhere? Do we need to burn the goddamn petals too? We should go to a motel. Fuck this. Fuck it.”
I moved to the doorway but felt the weight of Tallus’s disappointment. Stalling, I pivoted and paced to the window instead. It wasn’t the Easter bunny vomit decor. It wasn’t the mismatched metronomic pulse of too many fucking clocks. It wasn’t the gag-worthy scent of dried flowers and fresh flowers and too much old lady perfume.
It was the fucking bed. He knew it, and I knew it.
“We can go.”
“Shut up, Tallus. I’m fucking processing. Give me a minute.”
I cracked my knuckles and pushed the lacy pink curtain aside. I couldn’t see beyond the windowpane. The illuminated room against the dark of night cast my reflection in the glass. Tallus had shifted on the bed to face me, a defeated expression stealing his beauty. I put that there. Me. Me and my failures.
He caught my eye in the mirrored surface of the window. “Don’t you want to share a bed with me?”
“Yes. Of course I fucking do.” I turned and took in the space available to us. King-size. It was bigger than both our beds at home, but I still didn’t know if I could make it happen.
“Are we staying?”
Tentatively, I nodded.
“Maybe I can make the idea more enticing.” Kneeling in the middle of the mattress, Tallus removed his glasses and set them safely aside.
I watched as he slowly undressed, one piece of clothing at a time, until he was bare. It was a striptease meant to crumble my walls and weaken my resolve, and it worked. All thoughts of my predicament momentarily vanished. My anxiety shifted to lust. My body hardened with need.
I’d never been able to resist him.
Tallus crooked a finger, encouraging me to join him on the bed. My feet moved of their own volition. Maybe… maybe I could do it.
Sex between us had improved—sort of—but even the intense longing and desire to hold Tallus in my arms after orgasming wasn’t enough to keep me there. I tried, but every minute that passed mounted new anxiety.
When Tallus eventually slept, I snuck out of bed, dressed, and wandered the house of ticking clocks. They mocked me. It was as though they marked a countdown to the doomed end of my happy relationship.
Tallus deserved more. He deserved better.
I needed to get my shit together, or I would lose him.
4
Tallus
Diem took the exit for the 401 east, and I frowned. “Where are we going?”
“Northumberland Hills Hospital. It’s in Cobourg, about ten minutes down the highway.”
“Cobourg? But… why are we staying in Port Hope?”
“It’s where the Mandels live and where the kid had the accident. I didn’t ask questions.”
Confused, hugging a takeout coffee between my palms, I settled in for the short drive, keeping an eye on the brooding man beside me the entire time. We’d come a long way in the six weeks since we started dating, but sharing a bed was one obstacle we had yet to overcome. If Diem had realized beforehand that we’d be sharing a single room at Ivory Lace, he would have never invited me.
No matter how often I pushed for overnights, Diem wormed out of them. Sexing him up never worked. The man might have learned to awkwardly fuck in a bed and had mostly overcomehis fear of touching me—although he remained hesitant and awkward most times—but I had yet to convince him to stay put after climax. The heat of the moment dissolved most of his barriers, but once sated, they returned worse than ever.
It didn’t help that I tended to drop like a stone after a good orgasm. The instant I was asleep, Diem fled. The previous night was no different.
I didn’t know where he’d slept, but it wasn’t in bed with me. The shadows under his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept at all or not well. When every clock in the establishment chimed simultaneously at seven in the morning, I’d dove from bed in a panic, thinking the world was ending. I’d almost sprained an ankle in my flight. Covering my ears, I spun, horror-stricken at the assault, unsure what to do. Until then, the steady ticking of clocks hadn’t bothered me, but what in god’s name possessed someone to set a hundred and ten alarms to go off simultaneously?
Diem had crashed through the door a moment later, cursing a blue streak, his hands also covering his ears.
