“And your right side is not bruised, huh?”
Now he tugs on his hair, messing with it absentmindedly. “Let’s get this straight.” He straightens, cringes slightly, and tugs on the hem of his shirt, like he wants to secure it there. I’m not going to rip his clothes off. God, if he thinks I’m a nympho, he really doesn’t know me at all. I’m still not sure I can get physical with a guy without choking for breath and not in a sexy panting kind of way but because I’m too afraid. “You want me to take off my shirt in this room.”
“You prefer your room?” I arch an eyebrow, something I remember doing a lot before Sean was in the picture. A trademark that tends to drive everybody crazy in one way or another.
“What’s gotten into you? Why do you want to see my ribcage?”
“Oh, please, Duke!” I say in annoyance, my shyness forgotten. I dry my sweaty palms on my jeans. “You don’t have boobs, so I don’t see why you can’t take your shirt off.” And now I’m blushing.
He opens his mouth and closes it. I’m craving to know what he wants to say, but instead, my brain blacks out when he takes the hem of his shirt in both hands and pulls it up just above his impressive pecs. My mouth goes dry at the view of his naked chest. He’s muscular all right and his abs are well-defined with the V thing disappearing into his dark blue jeans that hang casually on his narrow hips. My eyes follow the trail of dark hair between the jeans and his navel and then drift to his left side and up where his heart is under his oh so yummy naturally tanned skin. There, in fine black lines, a script that creeps me out and hurts to see. There’s a date in full letters with a red tear of blood next to it. It’s the date of Juliet’s death. I bite my tongue and force myself to look on the other side where I should be focusing already.
I don’t think he has a cracked rib, but the bruises are nasty. It must hurt like hell. If I’m not mistaken, it’s not kicks that caused it like I thought, but punches. God, what happened to him? I close my eyes. Behind my closed eyelids, other pictures come back in my mind. How many times did I look at myself in front of my tall mirror to assess the damage to my body? Too many. Way too many times.
“It looks worse than it feels.” His thick voice reaches me and pulls me away from these gloomy memories I don’t need to delve into.
I open my eyes and nod. “I know,” I say weakly and manage a smile that hurts my cheeks.
He lets his shirt fall back in place and nods. He knows what I mean without needing me to put it into words. That’s the thing with Duke; we don’t always need words and when we do use them, it’s more often to hurt each other rather than to ease tension.
He grabs his backpack in his left hand and takes a step toward the door, careful to not walk close to me. He’s about to leave, not even saying good-bye or see you. Is it that easy for him to give me the cold shoulder?
“You didn’t tell me what happened.”
He stops, but doesn’t look back at me. I hate it when he hides his face from me. “And you don’t need to know. I shouldn’t have shown you my bruises.”
“I just ...” I stop and take a deep breath. “I just want to know if someone attacked you and why?”
He finally turns around and relaxes his shoulders. He hangs his head for a couple of seconds and then locks eyes with me. The heat in them, from rage and nothing else, is both frightening and exhilarating. What does it say about me?
“Some son of a bitch needed a lesson. He’s in worse shape, believe me.”
I should be repelled at his words, at the violence of them, but I’m not. Instead, I’m intrigued and more curious. Duke has a dark side, darker than I thought, but I would never have pegged him for the fighting type.
“Who is he and why did you fight with him? It doesn’t really sound like you.”
He laughs humorlessly and looks me up and down and back again. “You don’t really know what I’m capable of, and you don’t know what I could do to some son of a bitch who spreads bullshit about someone I care about.”
I gasp, shake my head, bring a hand to my mouth, and walk to him. I stop only inches from him and grab his strong left forearm. “Sean? You got into a fight with Sean? When? Why?”
He purses his lips and cringes when the cut on his upper lip begins to bleed. He curses and licks the blood away. My eyes follow the movement of his tongue and it’s not because I’m focusing on his injuries. “Friday night. Listen, I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Please? You do want to talk with me.” I know I’m playing with fire and putting myself in a war zone without any protection, but if I want to reconnect with him, I don’t think I have another choice. And I’m desperate.
Also, knowing he ditched his date Friday night—the pretty blonde girl with whom he could have spent the night—to go defend me against Sean is doing funny things in both my head and my stomach.
“I don’t see what we have to say to each other, Skye.”
I level down my eyes, ashamed. “But you fought for me, Duke. It means something, right?”
He does something I didn’t expect, not when we’re treading in dangerous water. He puts his hot hand under my chin and brings my head up to look at him. His face is softer, his eyes warmer, but still crowded by darkness. “With you and me, I don’t know what anything means. We’re pushing each other away and yet I don’t seem to be able to let you go.”
“What if I tell you that I don’t want you to let me go?” I swallow, my heart beating furiously in my temples and my hands shaking along with my body.
He doesn’t pull his hand away from my chin and his thumb brushes ever so lightly over my skin. I’m pretty sure I’ve got goose bumps everywhere on my body, but I can’t feel anything else beside his hand on my face and the burn of his eyes on mine. I’m powerless, but it feels really good.
“Then I’ll ask you to not push me away the next time you’re suffering. I can’t deal with that again. I’m not the strong guy you thought I was, and I’m more fragile than I like to think.”
It’s incredible to see such a strong looking guy so openly vulnerable. It tugs at my own pain and my own torment. “Don’t push me away either,” I whisper back, not blinking in fear of breaking the link between us.
He nods and his eyes sweep over my face, leaving tingles in the wake of his gaze. Then, he releases my chin. “Coffee?”
I smile and lead the way. Maybe I should be more hopeful more often. We’re still on shaky ground, we’re still going to have trust issues to deal with, but he’s back in my life and the future looks brighter than it has for the last three years. Yet, I’ve still got one thing nagging at me. What will happen the next time Duke or I cross paths with Sean? Because if I know one thing about my ex-boyfriend, he’s not going to leave things like this. He’ll retaliate and it won’t be pretty.
Chapter Eleven
“So you and Duke are friends again?” Kate asks me that same night, my good mood is obvious and I can’t hide my little smile.
“It’s a little awkward, but we had coffee together,” I answer, shrugging off my jacket.
She stretches on her bed. This girl never does her homework at her desk, she only uses it to put her textbooks, papers, and laptop on. I have no idea how she knows where everything is considering the lack of order.
“What did you do to win him over so fast?” she asks me without looking up from her laptop, her face tense with concentration.
“I made him strip his shirt off,” I reply with amusement in my voice.
Her head jerks up, questions sparkling in her eyes. Her mouth is unattractively hanging open and her laptop begins to slide from her knees, but she catches it quickly. “What? Why? And what happened?”
I laugh and shake my head, but then I remember Duke’s bruised face and my smile fades. I can’t be that blasé with everything that’s happening and is bound to happen. Granted, I’m giddy to reconnect with Duke and elated to know he went out of his way to defend me, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t realize how messed up it is.
“It’s not that much fun when you know the whole story.” I calmly tell her everything. As I recount the story, I can see her excitement appears and disappears.
“And you didn’t believe me when I told you there’s more than just friendship between you and Duke.”
“Why, because he beat the crap out of Sean?” I say, opening my Psychology textbook to read the chapter Dills gave us to study.
“No, because of what he told you. There’s something going on and I’m eagerly awaiting the day when I’ll be able to tell you ‘I told you so’. Be warned,” she says, her chin higher in the air.
“Yeah right.” I dismiss her words with a wave of my hand. “I’m not ready to
get so close to a guy. It’s too ...”
“Frightening?” she finishes for me, understanding and sadness now in her voice. I hate it when I see how what Sean did to me affects the people I care about, and not just me.
“Yeah, frightening.” My vision blurs and I don’t even know why my eyes are getting all watery. It’s so ridiculous. “I’m not even sure I’ll ever be able to let a guy touch me again.”
She comes and sits next to me, putting an arm around my shoulders tentatively, but sighs when I don’t recoil. I’m getting better at this kind of contact with her. I don’t freak out as much.
“You have time. You don’t have to rush things.” She squeezes my shoulder briefly. “And look at me! I don’t even give a chance to guys I go out with or sleep with just because I’m afraid to fall in love. Lust I know, love I loathe.”
“You’re stronger than I am, or your mother, Kate. Even if you were in love with a guy but the relationship was hurting you, I know you’d be brave enough to say good-bye.”
She puts her head against mine and sighs. “I hope so, but I’m not ready to risk it.” Then she stands up again and laughs mischievously. “Now tell me, does he have other tattoos on his body?”
I chuckle and nod. “Yeah, but it’s not ... it’s kind of sad.”
“Why? What’s he got a skull or something?” she asks, her little nose scrunching up.
“More like the date his girlfriend died right where his heart is,” I reply quietly, the light mood flying away from our room.
“It’s kind of romantic. He really loved her.”
“I think he still loves her.” I remember his face at the cemetery. It’s amazing and frightening to see what love can do to the person left behind. It’s also tearing my heart out to witness Duke’s raw pain and impossible love.
“Don’t you think it’s more about the fact he can’t let her go than love?”
I shrug because I really don’t know. I’m not in his head and he doesn’t let me have access to his thoughts and feelings. He locks everything down, although I know he opens up a little to me. “Maybe.” I put my hair in a bun and brush away some strands that are falling back down over my face. “But I’m determined to understand why he feels so guilty about her death. He can’t keep going on like this or he’ll break down one day.”
“You want to help him like he did you,” she points out, sitting back on her bed and putting her laptop on her legs.
“That and I hate to see the pain in his eyes. He deserves to be happy, and not just pretend to be.”
* * *
“How are your bruises?” I ask, pointing with my pen at his right side where I know his bruises are slowly fading underneath his light grey shirt.
He looks up from his engineering book, which might as well be in Chinese for all I understand it, and smiles softly. We’re both on my bed, more or less sprawled on it. Yet, we manage not to touch each other. “It’s fine, but don’t ask me to strip again or I’m going to wonder what your intentions really are.”
I know he’s teasing me, but it doesn’t stop me from blushing like a teenager. It’s so embarrassing. He chuckles at my obvious discomfort and goes back to his work. If only he knew that I dreamt about his naked torso last night he probably wouldn’t be so prone to teasing me like that. It wasn’t an erotic dream, but it was slightly more daring than I’m used to. Kate cried with laugher this morning when I described my dream. It’s not proving as much fun for me with my heart beating wildly whenever I’m alone with him or whenever his eyes lock with mine. It’s quite pathetic when I think about it.
My eyes wander over his face, stopping at the half closed cut on his upper lip. His eye is still purple, but not swollen shut anymore. His injuries remind me a little too much of Sean for my taste and it makes me uneasy. I haven’t seen him since the last time he punched me, but whenever I leave my room I’m very aware of my surroundings, always expecting Sean to drag me to a secluded place to beat me again and break what little bit of my life I’ve gotten back.
“Stop overthinking, Skye,” he says, startling me and bringing me back to the present and away from my thoughts of Sean. He always knows when I’m not in a happy place.
“God, you weren’t even looking at me. How do you do that?” I ask and push my hair away from my face.
He grins and helps me with my crazy hair, pushing a lock behind my ear. Fortunately, I’ve anticipated the shiver his gesture would produce and move a little to adjust my position on the bed, leaning more toward the wall. Whenever his skin is in direct contact with mine, I get goose bumps and can’t help but shiver.
“Your body tenses when you’re lost in your thoughts.” His dark eyes are focused on my face and it makes me squirm a little. Grabbing his cigarettes from next to him, he lights one up. Kate and I are getting used to the smell of smoke even if it’s not that appealing. Though we both agreed, watching Duke smoke is quite a spectacle. When his well-defined lips suck on that cigarette butt it’s the stuff of fantasies.