Covet (Sinful Secrets 3)

I can hear the beeps and robot voice of the defibrillator. For the thousandnth time, I wish I’d never been brought back. I think about the lines of light crisscrossing—light on water; of the sinking and the thick, pervasive cold that was my death dream…and I feel so much worse.

Finley rubs my forearm. “I’m going to do a gauze wrap so the Band-Aids don’t tug at your hairs here.”

She wraps my whole forearm, starting at the top, where she takes for-fucking-ever wrapping the cut. Before she ties it off, she whispers, “Does it feel all right?”

I nod, and she does the rest. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t look at her. Not even when her hands are off my arm, and it’s becoming weird not to. I run my hand into my hair and hold my forehead. Force myself to swallow. Speak. “Hey—could you go now?”

I fucking pray she’ll take the out. When she doesn’t reply, I exhale slowly. “Just a sewing needle.” I train my eyes on the tablecloth. “Kind of like a fake-out…for cravings.”

I can see the moonlight on the water up above me. That’s how I know it’s a hell nightmare and not some peaceful heaven vision. The way it squiggles? That part’s how I know that it’s the ocean: waves. As I drift underneath the surface, I feel pain in every part of me. Not just my chest, where it makes sense because they were doing chest compressions as I dreamed.

I feel fury. Agony. A helplessness that’s so profound, I feel it ripping at my fucking soul. I remember trying to kick my way up. It felt so urgent, like I’d be okay if I could just get to the surface. Up to…someone.

I was dead, but I remember someone waiting for me up there. Ever since then…

I squeeze my eyes shut as I hear her push her chair back.

* * *

Finley

He can’t look at me. That’s what hurts the most, I think: to see him with his eyes averted, asking me to please just go—so that he doesn’t have to speak about it.

I imagine that he must have struggled quite a lot and jabbed himself to simulate a pleasure feeling, and then run to fire up his endorphins. When that didn’t work, he wound up at the cliffs, racked with so much pain he thought of jumping.

I think of how he seemed outside, the odd look on his face as we stood near the automobile. Just a look of pain, really. I saw it mostly in his eyes, the sort of squint about them. Now I understand. He was poorly the entire while, even as he offered to drive me home, telling me I would feel better tomorrow. My poor Sailor.

His hand remains over his eyes. I see the tension in his frame, his shoulders. How long has he struggled this way? Since the burrow? Thinking of the burrow brings to mind the time when we stood by the cave’s mouth—just before he moved the stone—and he crouched down in front of me so I’d be forced to look at him.

I take a deep breath, and then I sink down to my knees beside him. I crawl partway beneath the table cloth and tap his knee. When he shifts a bit, I laugh.

“Peek down at me. Please,” I whisper.

“What are you doing?”

“If you won’t look up…” I scoot my entire body beneath the table, and he gives a rough laugh.

For a second, he won’t move. I’m just sitting by his knees. I lean my cheek against one of his thighs and wrap my arm around his calf. I cross myself. Then, with whispered words, I gamble.

“If you knew how wonderful I find you…simply lovely—really in all ways. And I know you’re wildly wealthy and quite sought after.” I smile. “But that part doesn’t matter to me.” I press my cheek against his thigh, against the softness of his running pants, and hug his calf. I feel him trembling. “I could never pity you because I have so much affection for you, Carnegie, that I can tell you only from beneath a table. Because you’re right. I am shy.” I stroke his hard calf, feeling a bit surreal.

“I know you must be in such a horrid state, but that’s not what I see most clearly. I simply adore you…and it’s you I see. I think I cannot stay away.” I gulp a breath back, my heart racing even as my words are soft and measured. “Before tonight, I was afraid of being hurt. Then I saw you on the ledge, and the fear I felt…” I shake my head. “Not only was I terror-stricken, but… I wanted you. My heart ached the moment I saw you.” I blink against my tears, and his leg shifts slightly.

&

nbsp; “I’ve decided I don’t want to stay away. If it hurts—if feeling this way for you simply hurts—I’ll bear it. I want to be near you. I want you to hurt near me. I feel certain that together we’d be…better.”

I feel him shift a bit. I peek up, but I don’t see his face. I duck out from beneath the tablecloth and find him with his head down, his forehead resting on his right forearm. For once, his body seems completely motionless.

“I’m frightened now.” I try to laugh, but the sound catches. “If you feel I’m mad… If all of that seems quite apart from how you feel—”

He lifts his head, and I see that his eyes are red. His face is stoic.

I wipe at my tears. “I suppose I simply wanted to jump for you, and to hell with the consequences.”

His chair scrapes the floor, and then he’s wrapping me against his chest, holding me in a near-crushing hug. I feel his ribs flare, and I cling to him with returning force.

Then he’s scooping me up, carrying me through the living room as a groom carries a bride, his strong arms beneath my back, behind my knees, my cheek against his warm chest. Never, as he carries me to the bed, does he look at my face. Neither does he as he stretches out atop the covers beside me, drawing me against himself, his hands trembling.