A Million Different Ways to Lose You (Horn Duet 2)

“I finished the last bottle this morning… I was about to order more when you showed up.”

“Are you nauseous?”

“Yes,” was his quiet reply.

Once I had him in the tub, I undressed. His eyes, large in his face, devoured the flesh each article of clothing I peeled away revealed. When I was done, I slipped in behind him. He hummed, his eyes drifting closed. I wrapped my arms around his waist and washed his chest, his stomach, between his legs. He gripped the sides of the tub when I pushed him forward and soaped his back, lathered and rinsed his hair.

“We still have a lot to talk about,” I said softly, running my fingers through the hair at the base of his skull. I stroked down the back of his neck and followed the long, elegant line of his now more pronounced spine. Melting into my touch, he leaned back into me. Quiet. So quiet it worried me. “Not now though,” I clarified. “Now I just want to hold you and take care of you…and show you how much I love you.”

It was like watching the same horror movie twice, except without remembering where all the scary parts were. That’s what it felt like. I spent the next few days emptying vomit filled buckets, changing sweat soaked t-shirts and sheets, and holding him when his body shuddered uncontrollably. By day three the cold chills had largely dissipated, though all the other symptoms remained.

“Can you forgive me?” His quiet voice found me in the darkness, the question cautious. Well past midnight, I was curled up in the stuffed armchair I’d pulled up next to his side of the bed. Although my eyes were closed, I couldn’t sleep. “Please.”

My eyes blinked open to find him lying on his side with his arm tucked under his head, watching me as if the fate of his life was in my power. I stroked the side of his hip and thigh, the body parts within reach, and answered him. “For what?”

“For treating you the way I did. For saying those things to you.” His scowl was directed at himself. “Nothing happened with Caroline. Nothing,” he adamantly repeated, his expression tortured. His growing agitation galvanized me into action. I crawled out of the chair and over him, straddling his hips when he rolled onto his back. With my face inches from his, I placed my hands on his lean cheeks and said, “Hey, I believe you.”

“Marianne said that you thought––”

I shut him up with a gentle kiss. “I did. And I’m sorry I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt. Do you forgive me?” I rolled off of him and lay beside him, rising up on an elbow where I could get a better read on him. Sifting my fingers through the hair at his temples, I waited.

“There’s nothing to forgive.” His eyes jumped all over my face. It was clear he was working up to say something. “I––I don’t know why you want to be with me.”

I knew what it took for such a proud man to make himself vulnerable. My body was no longer capable of containing all the love I had for him. “Because being without you is intolerable. We’re part of each other, for better or worse. There’s a reason they put those words in that little speech we had to recite. Let’s not kid ourselves, this isn’t the last time we’ll hurt each other. Just don’t ever stop fighting for us.”

His jaw pulsed, his eyes blinking rapidly. He wrapped a large palm around my neck and brought me down to his mouth. “There’s nothing on this planet more important to me than you. Don’t let me fuck this up.”

“I won’t,” I whispered. He sealed the promise with a kiss. And for the first time since I walked back into his life, he slept soundly through what remained of the night.

By the end of the week the color had returned to his face and he could actually keep solid food down. Our midnight heart to heart may have dispelled any lingering hurt between us, but it also pushed us into what I like to call ‘the polite’ zone. It drove me crazy. I wanted to shake some feeling other than contrition out of him. He constantly wavered between staring at me as if he’d seen a ghost, to not meeting my eyes at all when we spoke. With each day that passed and his health improved, the need to clear the air and discuss what had happened hung over us like a blade, the tension steadily rising.

Lying on the living room couch, I was reading when he walked in. Hair disheveled from his afternoon nap, jeans hanging low and revealing the absence of underwear. He was ridiculously handsome, much too handsome for someone who had recently been to hell and back. He stood in front of the couch with his hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans, shifting awkwardly.