“Whatever I’ve done to hurt you—”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I know it isn’t. But I’m trying—”
“No, I meant a blanket apology isn’t good enough. You don’t just get to say you’re sorry when you haven’t even figured out what you did to piss me off in the first place.”
Fuck. So he caught that. I rub the back of my neck, hoping to dispel a little bit of the tension that’s settled there. No such luck. “So why don’t you tell me why you’re angry and then we’ll talk about it. Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Yeah, right. I’ve heard that before.” He makes a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.
It scrapes along my nerve endings, starts to tick me off. I’m trying here and if he would meet me at just a quarter of the way, everything would be so much easier.
“What do you want from me?” I demand suddenly. “I know I’m fucking up here, but I’m trying. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Not really, no,” he says with a sneer.
That really pisses me off. “Goddamnit, Logan. You’re not being fair. How can I—”
“I’m not being fair?” The words come out choked and bitter and angry, so angry. “I’m not being fair? Screw you, Ash!”
He’s as frustrated as I am now, and he reaches out, pulls his chair a little closer, then goes to swing himself into it. It’s an awkward angle, especially with me sitting next to him on the bed, and I leap up. “Here, let me help.”
He knocks my hand away, moves to the chair. But he must have forgotten to lock the wheels when he got out, because it slides out from under him and he ends up on the floor at my feet before I can catch him.
“Fuck. Are you all right?” I bend down, try to pick him up, but he bats my hands away a second time.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!”
“Logan. Damn it. Let me help—”
“I don’t want your help!” he screams, and the words cut right through me. As do the unshed tears I hear in his voice. “Can’t you see that? Just leave me alone!”
Goddamnit.
Teeth gritted and hands clenched, I force myself to step back and watch as my brother struggles to pull himself up from the floor. But he still is only fourteen and he’s only been going to PT for a few months. He’s got good upper body strength but—
“Shit!” He punches out at the chair, sends it flying back into the wall. “Shit, shit, shit.” Harsh sobs are pouring out of him, loud and rough and so fucking painful that they have tears burning in my own eyes.
Knowing the last thing he wants from me is sympathy right now, I blink them back. And though I want nothing more than to go to him, to hug him and help him, I stay where I am. Watching. Waiting.
I swear it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than walking away from my Olympic dream. Harder even than burying my parents.
When his sobs finally quiet, and he’s wiping his face on the sleeve of his hoodie—more proof that he’s just a sad, scared little kid, in case I needed it—I crouch down next to him. “Can I help you—”
“No!” He plants his hands on my chest and shoves me away from him, hard.
I’m so shocked that I nearly end up falling on my ass, probably would have if I hadn’t managed to tangle my fingers in the bedcovers.
“Victor will help me.” He reaches for his phone with fumbling fingers.
“But I’m right here. There’s no reason to bother Victor—”
“No!”
“Damn it,” I tell him as the last string I’ve got on my temper snaps. “You’re acting like a spoiled brat!” Before I think better of it, I grab him. Haul him up. Then settle him in his chair.
“You asshole!” He swings out with his fists, punches me in the face and the ribs. He keeps it up, punching and screaming and swearing at me with every ounce of strength he’s got.
“What the hell!” I stumble back, shocked at the attack. More shocked at the look on his face and the words spewing from his mouth. It’s like he hates me. Like he actually hates me.
I’m not sure how long this goes on. It feels like a million years but probably isn’t more than three or four minutes. Logan finally winds down, ends up sitting in his chair with his arms wrapped protectively around his body while he glares at me.
“You know why I don’t want your help?” he screams at me. “Because you don’t understand. You don’t see me.”
“What are you talking about? All I see is you!”
“No! You see a kid in a wheelchair. You see your little brother, who you’re in charge of, who you’ve had to change your whole life for. You see your own stupid, stupid guilt. But you don’t see me. Logan. You haven’t seen me since the accident.”
“That’s not true.” I crouch down in front of him so that we’re eye to eye. I’m sick at what he’s saying, sick that he believes it. Even more sick at the idea that it might be true. “I love you, Logan.”
“You love who I used to be. You don’t love me. How can you, when you never listen? You’re too busy telling me what I should do or how I should do it or why I can’t do something to listen to what I want. To hear what I’m saying.”
“I don’t—” I break off, unsure of what I’m supposed to say. Of what he needs me to say.
“You do. I asked you to let me try out a monoski—”
“Is that what this is about?” I run a frustrated hand over the back of my neck. “Logan, they’re dangerous—”
“No more dangerous than outrunning an avalanche! No more dangerous than sitting a sick kid on your snowboard and taking him down a fucking half-pipe. How come you listen to Timmy, you give him what he wants, but I can’t even get you to think about what I want?”
“Jesus, Logan, Timmy’s going to die soon—”
“I could have died! Seven months ago I could have died in that car crash with Mom and Dad.”
“But you didn’t!”
“No, I didn’t! I’m still here. I’m right here, but you keep treating me like I’m not. You keep treating me like I’m just as gone as they are.”
“No, Logan. No—”
“See. You’re not even listening!”
Fuck. Shit. Goddamnit. “What do you want me to say? That I worry about you? That I’m terrified something is going to happen to you? That I don’t know what I’d do if you got hurt—”
“News flash, Ash. I’m already hurt! I’m paralyzed.”
Guilt twists sickly in my stomach. “Believe me, I know that—”
“See! There it is again. Right there. On your face. Right now!”
“What?!”
“You feel sorry for me!”
“Jesus, Logan, of course I feel sorry about what happened to you—”
“No! No! That’s not what I’m talking about. That’s fine. You can be upset about what happened. You can feel bad that Mom and Dad died, that I nearly did. But that’s not what you’re feeling. That’s not how you look at me. You pity me. You feel sorry for me.
“How do you think that feels? I wake up every day, knowing I’m going to see that look on your face. Knowing I’m going to have to spend the day pretending that I don’t hate the way you look at me. Don’t hate the way you feel about me. You know, I have to face that from everybody else every damn day of my life. I have to see it on the faces of people everywhere I go. Do you think that’s easy? Do you think it makes me feel good to know that they’re all wondering what happened to me? That they’re all feeling sorry for me?
“I take it from them because I don’t have a choice. I put up with it at school because it doesn’t matter what they think. But you’re my brother. You’re supposed to see more than that—”
“I do.”
“No!” He dashes at the tears making tracks down his cheeks. “No, you don’t! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You think you see more. You think you’re helping me. But you’re not, Ash. You’re not.”
I don’t know what to say to
him, don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to do here. Everything sounds wrong in my head, and I’m terrified that I’m just going to make things worse between us. God knows, that’s the last thing I want to do. So in the end, I just stand here, looking at him. Waiting for some clue that he has no interest in giving me.
Silence stretches between us, until Logan figures out that I’ve got nothing to say. Not that that’s true—I have a million things to say. I just don’t know how to say them. How to get him to understand them.
“Whatever,” Logan finally says, wheeling his chair around me and toward the door of our hotel room.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Z.”
It hurts that he’d rather be with my best friend than me, but I don’t stop him. It’s almost dark, so the others should be back now. And if it hurts a little that my brother would rather spend time with him than me, well … I’m just not going to think about it.
I grab my phone, fire off a quick text to Z to let him know Logan’s looking for him, then realize I’ve missed a text from Tansy. I start to answer her—she’s in her room, trying to warm up after spending almost the whole day outside—then decide fuck it. I’d rather just walk down there than waste time texting back and forth.
Besides, from the beginning she’s always seemed to know what to do with Logan. Maybe she’ll have some insight this time, too.
Chapter 22
Tansy
The shower curtain slides open without warning, and I freeze as images of the infamous Psycho shower scene run through my head in startling, terrifying detail.
I whirl around, hands clutched over my body and a scream frozen in my throat, only to realize that it’s just Ash standing there, a wicked grin on his face.
“God, Ash! When I gave you the extra key to my room, I didn’t think you’d use it to scare the hell out of me!” I drop the defensive posture, but keep one hand pressed against my still wildly beating heart. “Don’t you know better than to sneak up on a woman in the shower?”
He leans forward, presses a line of hot kisses across my collarbone. “Actually, I always thought that was the perfect time to sneak up on a woman.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not.” I pout at him. “Hitchcock ruined that for men everywhere.”
“Huh. That’s too bad.” He shrugs out of his shirt. “I was thinking maybe I could join you in there.”
I start to make some teasing comment, but when I look closer, I see the tightness in his jaw, the stress around his eyes. “What’s wrong?” I demand, reaching for him despite the fact that I’m soaking wet.
“Later.” He unbuckles his belt, slips off his jeans. Then steps into the shower behind me. “I just want to hold you for a minute.”
I smile at him before turning back toward the spray. “I think that can be arranged.”
His arms come around me from behind, and I nestle back against him, my ass against his thighs, the back of my head resting in the crook of his neck. He feels good, really good, and I concentrate on that instead of the worry that’s started niggling away at me. If he wants a few minutes to get his head together before we talk, I’m more than willing to give him that.
“You feel amazing,” he tells me, his hands skimming lightly over my skin. He’s touching me everywhere—my shoulders, my back, my stomach, my hips, my breasts—and it feels good. So good.
At the same time, I can’t help being nervous because this is the first time we’ve ever made love in lights this bright. The first time he’s really seen my body without the camouflage of shadows and I’m a little nervous. Not because I think Ash will say anything to hurt me—he’d never do something like that—but because I know I’m not what he’s used to.
I’m still too skinny, still too weak, and in a lot of places, my bones are visible beneath my skin. My ribs, my hips, my collarbone. It won’t be like this forever—it normally takes me six to eight months to gain the weight back after chemo and radiation—but I don’t look my best right now.
Plus, there are the scars. Yes, he’s seen the big one from the port, asked about it the first time we made love. But there are little scars, too. Lots of them. From all the biopsies and the tests and the IVs that were in my body so long that the needles marked me permanently.
I’m not ashamed of my body—how can I be when my heart is still beating, even after all the abuse it’s taken in the last ten years—but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to flaunt it yet. Or ready for the questions that I’m afraid will come, questions Ash has every right to ask.
He doesn’t ask them though, doesn’t say anything at all about the marks on my back, my arms, my legs. Instead, he just holds me with his strong, calloused hands, his touch soothing me even as it turns me on.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs as he presses hot kisses to the sensitive skin behind my ear.
“I’m not,” I tell him, and I try to turn so that I can look him in the eye. So that I can show him that it doesn’t matter. That he doesn’t have to lie to make me feel better.
But Ash’s arms are steel bands around me and he doesn’t let me turn. Instead, he keeps my back to his front as he presses hot, open-mouthed kisses over my cheek and jaw, down the side of my neck.
“You are,” he murmurs. Now he’s licking drops of water off my shoulder. Kissing his way down my arm.
“I love your eyes.”
“They’re hazel. Just boring hazel.”
“They’re beautiful and they’re never the same color twice. One minute they’re green, the next brown, the next gray. I spend way too much time thinking about what color they’re going to be when you wake up or when you smile at me. Or when I’m inside you.”
His words make my already too-fast heartbeat pick up even more. “Really?”
“It slays me that you don’t know.” He’s licking at my spine now, small, tender little swipes of his tongue that make my knees a little weaker with each second that passes.
“I love your hands,” I tell him, taking hold of one where it rests on my hip and bringing it to my mouth. “How big they are, how strong. How the callouses feel rough against my skin when you touch me. How easy it is for you to pick me up with them.”
I slide one of his fingers into my mouth, swirl my tongue around it and then start to suck. He groans a little in the back of his throat and I can feel him growing even harder against my back.
“I love your mouth,” he tells me, his voice harsher than it was just a minute ago. “I love the color of your lips, the way they get darker when I kiss you. I love the way your smile is always just a little crooked because your lips go up more on the left side than the right one. And I am fucking crazy about the way you taste—like vanilla and sugar all the time.”
It’s a sweet description, one that has me working his finger a little faster, a little deeper, in reward. And because I like the way his breath is coming faster, the way his hips are moving in short, little thrusts against my own.
He wants me. He really wants me. I think that’s the best part. That he sees me—not the sick girl, not the girl who needs to be protected—but me, Tansy, the girl who is too skinny and too awkward and who has no idea what she’s doing most of the time. And he wants me anyway. Almost as much as I want him.
“I love your biceps,” I tell him when I finally release his finger.
“My biceps?”
“Hell, yeah. They’re really good biceps.” I turn my head, kiss the area in question, pressing my lips gently against the kanji symbol he has tattooed high up on his inner arm. “You never told me what this one means. It’s beautiful.”
“It means sorrow. I got it—” His voice breaks. “I got it after my parents died.”
My heart breaks for him and I kiss the tattoo again, gently, sweetly. Ash is shaking a little now, and it’s not from cold—I can feel the heat of his body pressed firmly against my own. And when he presses his face into the curve of my neck and just breathes me in, I want nothing more than to hold him. To curl myself
around him and take away all the pain, all the guilt, all the sorrow that lives inside of him.
He’s so good, so kind, so generous, that it kills me to see him like this. Eaten up from the inside over a tragedy he didn’t cause and can’t change. I want to tell him that, to make him understand that sometimes bad things happen to good people and there’s no reasoning it out. No understanding it.
There’s only acceptance.
God knows, I’ve spent most of my life trying to find that acceptance and now that I’m healthy, now that I’m cured, I’m looking for a different kind of understanding. One that tells me why I got the winning lottery ticket. Why I get to live when so many others have to die.
But now isn’t the time for my issues. Not when Ash is trembling against me, shaking apart right here, right now, and he won’t even let me hold him. Won’t let me put my arms around him and kiss his lips and tell him that I love—
The thought breaks through the protective layers I have wrapped around me like a jackhammer, shattering me—and everything I thought I was doing here—into so many pieces.
I can’t love him. I just can’t.
This thing between us—it was supposed to be about fun. About losing my virginity. About having a good time. It wasn’t supposed to be about anything serious. He has too much going on right now to be in love with anyone and I—I need to just concentrate on being healthy for a while. On figuring out who I am and what I want. Loving Ash, no matter how wonderful he is, has no part in that.
Except, it obviously does. Why else would my heart feel like it’s breaking under the weight of Ash’s pain? Why else would I care so much about what he’s feeling, about what he’s going through? Why else would I want so desperately to make him smile?
To make everything okay for him again?
But I can’t. There’s no way to fix what’s happened to Ash. To his parents, to his brother. To him. No matter how much I want to.
And I do want to. Oh, God, I want that so bad.
He’s still shaking against me, but when I try to turn to face him, to hold him, he locks his arm around my hip. Keeps me in place. Keeps me facing forward.