I couldn’t take the helpless feeling anymore as I sat there so I went and stood outside on the small terrace listening to the city traffic. I lit a cigarette and sucked in as much of the bitter smoke as my lungs would allow. I closed my eyes and held my breath until my head started swimming before I breathed it all back out in one slow, steady exhale. I leaned over the polished cement wall that came up just a little over my waist and looked out onto Hyde Park as the wind undressed the few leaves left on the trees. I didn’t move with the exception of lighting cigarette after cigarette to the point that my throat was sore and my chest physically ached. And still the only thing I could do was think and rethink how I could’ve done things differently to save my patient. How I could’ve done more.
I didn’t even notice her until she wrapped her arms around me, the warmth of her hands seeping into the cold hard skin of my torso. She buried her face in my shoulder and didn’t say anything. I could feel her every inhale on my back as her chest expanded and pushed against me. I could feel her every hot exhale on the exposed skin of my neck. The sensation making my skin perk up with goose bumps. I could feel my scalp prickle and the unbearable ache to touch her spread through my arms. But I didn’t lay a single finger on her, instead I lit another cigarette and let it dull my aching head once again.
She nuzzled closer, her fingers pressing so hard into my flesh that it felt like they were burrowing underneath my skin. Her short nails cut into me over my shirt and her lips pressed flush between my neck and jaw. I could feel my blood rush right under her soft warm lips and my body warmed as she breathed into my skin. Her fingers worked a button out of its hole and she slipped her hand through the gap in my shirt. Her fingers splaying as I inhaled another drag.
She lifted her face and as her lips met my ear she whispered, “I love you, Jamie.”
The cigarette fell out of my hand and bounced off the grey stone to the street below like a spinning orange flame.
My heart stopped mid beat before it started drumming hard and loud in my chest.
The concrete beneath us felt like it disappeared leaving us suspended in mid-air.
Everything paused.
And then restarted in a frenzy that had my mind, heart and limbs all out of sync. Rough. Messy. Sincere. Just like our feelings throughout all these years.
I spun so fast that her hand twisted in my shirt and buttons popped off. I expected her to be smiling, but instead she looked up at me like she was just stealing another glance. Her eyes were soft. Her lips were parted. She looked at me like she had every other time. Like that moment was like any other we’d shared. She licked across her lip before dragging her teeth over it. Her chest expanded and contracted like she was at complete ease. Nonchalant.
“What?”
She took a step closer to me. Her feet planted between mine as she stroked my face with one hand and hooked the other on the buttonless gap of my shirt.
Her eyes met mine.
So calm.
Serene.
“I love you.” She said, like it was something she’d told me every single day of our lives.
And she had. Not every day, but she’d said it so many times before, yet this time it was different. Despite her calm, her words held a deep and welcomed heavy meaning.
She loves me.
Her eyes searched my face and her brow quirked as she smiled up at me.
“You do?”
She nodded slowly and deliberately. Her thumb dragging against the stubble on my chin as her fingers stroked up and down my cheekbone.
She dropped her hand slipping it down my chest and she laced her fingers through mine before she turned around and pulled me behind her. My feet stepped one in front of the other like a well-rehearsed dance as she guided me back to the sofa and pulled me to her. I stilled savouring the feel of her hands as they swept up my arms before she wrapped them around my shoulders and spun us around. The warmth of her hands as they slid back down to my chest and pushed me down onto the sofa seeped into my every bone and muscle. Her touch was like magic, it blurred and erased all the conflict and doubt inside me.
Her sultry gaze firmly fixed on mine as she toed off her red flats and swept them aside with her foot. Her hands reached behind her neck and she fiddled around until the high collar of her navy dress sagged onto her cleavage. It was one of those moments that had been such a long time coming, yet it still felt so surreal. Something I could have never prepared for.
My hands sank into the soft cream leather of the sofa beneath me. My fingers pressing so hard that the buttery material felt like it was melting at my fingertips. I swallowed as she hitched her dress over her body revealing inch by inch her soft and creamy skin. Her dark golden hair fell in waves around her bare shoulders. The wobble of her breasts exposing her racing heart as it betrayed her outward calm.
She reached behind her back and unclasped her lacy, peach bra. And then she paused. Her beautiful bright eyes falling to her chest and then all the way down her body before they climbed up mine. I thought she’d smile because for someone that carried so much sadness she was a smiler, but she didn’t, instead she licked her lips as her arms crossed over her chest and pulled the straps down from her shoulders letting the lingerie slip down her arms as she dropped them to her sides.
My gaze swept up her body to meet hers. She looked so vulnerable. It felt like a sharp blade slicing through my veins. Painful, numbing and draining, and at the same time it felt like the most consequential and fateful moment I’d ever had with the exception of witnessing the birth of my daughter. That look on
her face was nothing like I’d ever seen, not even when I’d first kissed her or after she’d lost her child.
I ran my eyes down her body to the hem of her underwear where the faint silvery line traced the edge of the lace. I’d seen so many scars in my life, but seeing hers gutted me. That scar represented so many things, and for a second, I didn’t understand how she was the one consoling me because I desperately wanted to incinerate all the sorrow and heartache that was so deeply embedded in her soul. So deep that I don’t think I’d ever really felt it until then. Not the brunt of it anyway. Not until she’d decided to offer herself to me on a platter that was overflowing with everything that she was.
“What are you doing, Quincy?”
Her fingers hooked on either side of her knickers and she shimmied them down her legs. Stepping out of them when they slipped to her feet. She took in a deep breath. Her eyes never leaving mine.