Page 61 of A Photo Finish
I look down to realize I’m hugging myself and have my knees tucked up tight, and yeah, I am cold. “A little,” I confess quietly.
With no warning, his arm comes over me and pulls me back into his body, tucking me against him safely. I can still feel his hard-on against my ass, but I force myself to ignore it, relieved to feel his heat around me.
He surrounds me, chin on my head, arm draped over my ribs possessively, and legs tucked up underneath mine. The perfect fit.
“Cole?”
He sighs audibly. “Yes, Violet?”
“Do you think the Sasquatch is real?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he pulls me closer and holds me tighter. The feel of him wrapped around my body soothes me, lulls me off into a light sleep where I’m resting but still intimately aware of every part of him. Every point of contact hums with possibility, something I can’t quite stop thinking about. Something that won’t let me drift off completely. Which is probably why I don’t miss his quiet whisper several minutes later.
“What I was going to say is that this is perfect.”
18
Cole
We all make choices.
The message that fucking haunts me. What a dickbag thing to say to a girl you care about. A girl who just put it all on the line for you to, what? Jerk off?
I shake my head.
We all make choices.
Don’t I fuckin’ know it. I should take my own implied advice.
She hasn’t messaged me back, but she’s seen the message. That was last night, and there’s still no message this morning. That’s probably not a good sign. Fuck. Leave it to me to ruin the one good thing I had going in my life. The one thing I actually looked forward to in a monotonous, lonely fucking day. Because she was right all those months ago.
I am lonely. Actually, I don’t even know if lonely really covers it.
I’m numb. By choice. And talking to Pretty_in_Purple was like the one pinprick that was getting through, making me feel something. And I couldn’t even bring myself to fess up about my leg, just put it out there in the open. I was too fixated on keeping it secret. Something that doesn’t even make sense to me, and yet I can’t bring myself to change it. Maybe if she’d known, she’d have been more accepting of my not wanting to go on video. Maybe if she knew I ran a multinational company and couldn’t be recognized as the guy jacking off on the internet, it would make a difference.
Maybe she’d understand. Maybe letting someone in on my secret would be a good start? Someone whose face I couldn’t see when I told them. The pity. The disgust.
This cloak and dagger game I play with my leg is fucked up, and I know it. I never intended to let it get this far. It started out as something I just wanted to process on my own. After all, when I came back from Iraq, I had a lot to process. Apparently, watching your friends get blown to pieces will fuck you up. Never mind coming to grips with losing a limb after spending your entire adult life defining yourself by how physically capable you are. But the longer I went without sharing with anyone, the lower I let myself go. The more I focused on Hilary and her cruel words, the more it just became something I never wanted anyone to know about. The more I believed them.
Hiding it became integral. Like breathing. And now when I think of it, I don’t even know why I do it—but I can’t quite bring myself to stop. I’m stagnant like a swamp.
I pick up my phone and fire her off a message, determined to fix this.
Golddigger85:How are you?
Smooth, Cole. You’ve really got a way with words, pal.
After a few hours, she still hasn’t responded. She hasn’t even seen it. I tell myself she’s probably busy. It seems like her job lends itself to long hours without set weekends. But as the day wears on with no response, I get worried. In a year, we haven’t gone a single day without at least popping in to say hi or mentioning that things are busy. Not because we owe each other an explanation, but because we like each other enough to do it.
Golddigger85:Is everything okay?
Still nothing. I spend the evening closing the app and rebooting it. Uninstall and then reinstall. Hoping that it’s a technical error. Technology fucks up all the time. It’s probably that.
But when I wake up the next morning with my phone in my hand and still nothing from Pretty_in_Purple, dread takes up residence in my chest. I fucked up, and there’s no clear-cut way for me to fix it. Or something terrible happened to her, which is a thought I can’t even handle. I’d rather feel like the shithead I am than imagine her injured—or worse.
I can’t even let myself go there.
All I want to do is make this right.
