Aw shucks… This boy. I kiss him again, but it’s not enough. I run my hands over his strong arms, lightly touch the bandages.
“Did you hit them hard? Busted their faces?”
He grunts, licks at my mouth. “Yeah.”
“God, I wish I was there to kick them until they beg for mercy. Bastards. Assholes. Mother—”
“Shh.” He kisses me again, wipes his fingers over my cheeks, scrubbing away tears—the tears he wouldn’t shed. “It’s okay.”
But it’s not, and he flinches when I trail my fingertips over his bruised ribs down to his pants. My hands shaking, I tug at the zipper, fumbling to get them off him, to have him naked in my arms. I want to touch every part of him, make sure he’s really okay, and he starts tearing at my clothes with similar urgency.
I’m still dressed in my soft sweater, yoga pants and Ugg boots I had put on for a quiet evening at home. So not sexy. Any other time I’d be embarrassed out of my mind, but I couldn’t care less right now. The Cassie I used to be wouldn’t have set foot out of her apartment without the shield of make-up and her armor of sexy dress and high heels.
This Cassie is a different girl.
Shane pulls my sweater over my head, practically tears off my blouse. He puts his hands on my breasts, eyes darkening.
“Perfect,” he breathes, and slowly, reverently he strokes my nipples and massages my breasts until I can’t remember my own name. “Like this.”
I’m desperate to feel him against me, in me. I crawl into his lap, brush kisses all over his face. “Please,” I whisper. “Please, Shane.”
He shushes me again. Calm, calmer than he’s ever been. “We have time. I love you,” he says it again, as if trying to make me understand. “I love you.”
And as he guides himself into me, steadying me as he fills me, as he gasps out my name and rocks into me—making love to me, showing me everything those three words mean, I wonder how I ever doubted him.
He told me from the start he didn’t play games. And he never has.
***
Seth and Manon are puttering around in the kitchen, making dinner. Shane’s sprawled on the sofa, in sweats and a dark sweater, fast asleep. His head is propped on the backrest, his chin-length hair fanning around his face.
He looks peaceful.
He also looks thin and exhausted, his jaw bruised and swollen. I lift my hand to stroke the hair off his forehead and stop myself. He needs his rest.
Carefully I sit down beside him. His drawing pad is propped against the side of the sofa and I pick it up. I flip it open, not sure what to expect, searching for something I don’t even know.
I flip through the drawings, nightmare after nightmare, a figure writhing at the center, torn apart on every page by faceless monsters and clawed hands. It’s so painful I think about closing the pad and going out for some fresh air, to clear my head.
But there is something I need to check. The nightmare doesn’t change much. The monsters move around the page, their limbs grow longer or shorter, the blood spreading from the figure lying in the center drips down one side or pours down the other.
Then, suddenly, there’s a change. The figure isn’t caught at the center anymore. He has moved to one side, away from the monsters. I check the date on top.
A few weeks back.
The next drawings are similar. Shane’s figure moves along the sides, looking on. Safe. Free. It makes me smile and I steal a glance at him.
He has shifted on his side, curled up, one arm thrown beside his head. My heart melts into a puddle of goo. All I want is to curl beside him and kiss his face.
Instead I flip more pages. The drawings darken, swallowing the shapes, then lighten up again as another figure appears across from Shane’s. It’s clearly a girl. I mean, she has boobs and all.
I put a hand over my mouth as I turn the next page, and the next, because the girl and the boy approach each other with each new drawing, until they are standing side by side.
On the last one, Shane has written “The future.”
Oh gosh… I close the pad before I start bawling again and set it down. I guess I’ve found what I was looking for.
Then I give in and curl beside Shane, sliding my arms around him, and he hums as he pulls me to his side.