Page 114 of Worth Every Moment
“I came. If that’s what you mean.” He resettles himself, inhaling slowly and grinding the out-breath on a melancholy groan. A darkness settles over us, or perhaps it emanates from him.He’s ashamed of what happened. Deeply, deeply ashamed.
My heartbeat slows, my pulse thumping in the tips of my fingers. Should I change the subject? Talk about something else? But wouldn’t that look too obvious? He’d know exactly what I was doing, and that would only reinforce the idea that this is unspeakable. That some part of him is unacceptable and unloveable. I want to hold his pain if he’s able to acknowledge it. “Did you know her name?”
“No. She didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know mine either. We didn’t really talk.”
“Could you have said no?”
A humourless crack of laughter sounds. “No one says no to my father.”
There’s something so familiar about what he’s saying. Both our parents have been far too involved in our lives. My mother. His father. They’ve transgressed boundaries they shouldn’t have, and had influential decision-making power over things that ought to have had nothing to do with them. If that isn’t toxic, I don’t know what is.
“No one else should decide what you do with your body.”
I say the words so quietly that I suspect he doesn’t hear them, but then he says, “I didn’t think anything could kill my hard-on for you, but this conversation has done it.”
“Sorry,” I murmur, trying to hide the sadness I feel for him because nothing about his voice is inviting pity, and I know he doesn’t want it. But I can’t help feeling it.
He blows out a breath, but the sound rings with pain. Regret. Shame. I hear it all in that one exhalation, and without him having to confirm it, there are several things I know to be true all at once. This is why he’s never looked a woman in the eye when he comes. This is why he gives himself away so easily. He never meant anything to anyone, even his father. How could he value a body that was treated like that? Sex has to be meaningless, because then what his father did to him stays meaningless too. It’s manageable, but it’s miserable.
Seb Hawkston might have fucked a lot of women, but he’s never let himself be loved, and he’s never loved any of them.
Sobs leak from my mouth even as I try to stifle them with a hand. All his smiles, all his jokes and teasing… andthisis what was underneath. And to think, I called him amanwhore… The memory causes a stabbing pain in my chest, regret flowing like a poison in my blood. I dissolve into tears.
“Hey, hey,” he says, turning me in the water, cupping my face, wiping away a tear with his thumb. “Don’t cry. I didn’t mean to make it sound as though any of this is your fault. I’m so grateful to have you in my life. I have no regrets. I would retrace every step I’ve ever taken, willingly, because it’s the path that led me to you.”
The way he’s looking at me, his eyes full of love, only makes me cry more. Am I worthy of it? Is it real? It feels real, but I’m not the one who had a picture of him on my wall for years. Potentially even before we met in person. Does he feel the way he feels because I’ve kept him at arm’s length all this time? Did it give space for an infatuation to grow where it otherwise wouldn’t have? The need to know the answer consumes me.
I wipe my tears with the heel of my hand, voice breaking as I ask, “If we’d had sex that night five years ago when you slept on my sofa, would you have looked me in the eye back then?”
He kisses the side of my neck. “You? Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the other half of my soul, Lefroy.”
My throat thickens, and the back of my nose stings, tears throbbing behind my eyes. The need to keep him forever surges through me and I link my arms around his neck, pressing my naked body to his, the water sliding between us as he tugs me close.
“And you’re the other half of mine.” The words are a desperate, broken whisper against his neck.I love you.
He squeezes me, his arms around my ribs, and in his touch, I sense a need that matches mine. “I love you too,” he says, even though I didn’t say it out loud. “God, I love you, Erica Lefroy.”
39
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By the time we’re finished in the bathroom, the bedroom has been cleaned and tidied, with fresh sheets on the bed.
We spend the rest of the morning messing up the clean sheets, and I draw orgasm after orgasm from Erica’s body. The look on her face as she comes, the whimpers she makes, the way her fingers fist into the sheets, are like gifts I’ve wished for and never thought I’d get. When her head rolls against the pillow, and her dark hair spills over the sheets, it’s divine. I can’t get enough.
Afterwards, when we’ve exhausted one another, we lie tangled up, our hands clasped and fingers interlinked.
“You really are perfect,” Erica whispers, glancing at where she’s holding my hand. “You even have perfect hands. Perfect man hands.”
I let out a low laugh. “I thought you didn’t like the word perfect.”
“I don’t like it when Mum says it about me. She wants perfection at all costs, hence taking me to see the surgeon. And like I said before, anyone who tells you what to do with your body… who doesn’t give you the choice… that’s fucking toxic.”
She looks away, and I know it’s not lost on either of us the parallels that run between us. My dad, my body. Her mum, her body. Both owned, controlled, albeit in different ways. A common toxicity, and for a fragment of a second, I wonder if it could be the thing that drew me to her in the first place. The sadness I saw in her eyes all those years ago, in that picture in the catalogue. Something shared, like an injection of the same poison.Romeo and fucking Juliet.
