Salvation (17 page)

“I’m telling you—”

“
Walk away,
” Gideon interrupted, his voice so cutting I would have flinched to be the target of it. “Walk away right now.”

The guy walked away, with somewhat undignified haste.

When he was out of sight and I was alone with Gideon, I just kind of collapsed. I slid down the wall and onto the ground. It was an alley, so you can imagine it was a rather unpleasant place to sit, but it was exactly the kind of place I belonged.

Then, to make it worse, I started to process what almost happened, what I’d almost done to myself. I could feel that guy’s hands and body all over me again, and my stomach heaved for real.

I threw up on the ground, next to where I was sitting, sweating and sobbing as I finally finished.

“Oh, fuck, baby,” Gideon murmured, pulling me up to my feet. “Let me get you out of here.”

I couldn’t hold myself up with my legs, so I had to slump against him. I buried my face in his shirt and clung to him. I knew I shouldn’t. It was wrong. I was dirty and smelly and my face was covered in vomit, tears, and snot, and his shirt was clean and smelled delicious, just like him. But I would have fallen otherwise, and he kept his arm around me, so I couldn’t have pulled away, even if I’d had the strength.

“It’s okay,” he was murmuring. “It’s going to be okay.”

It wasn’t going to be okay. There was no okay after this. I’d thought I was doing better. He’d thought I was doing better. Everyone thought I was doing better.

But I just couldn’t get better.

“Can you walk?” he asked. “I want to get you out of here, and then I’ll drive you home.”

It took a few tries before my legs worked, but I managed to get them to move. I could tell Gideon was about to pick me up to carry me, and I couldn’t let him do that. We didn’t go back in the club. We walked around the building and back to the main street. We’d turned the first corner when I realized something I should have remembered earlier.

“Wait,” I gasped, leaning against him. His arm was still around me. “Maria! Where is she? What about your date?”

“I sent her home in a cab.”

“What? No. You shouldn’t have done that. Go call her now and say you’re sorry.”

“I’m not sorry. Try to walk some more.”

“But Gideon—”

“But nothing. I told you to walk.”

I walked, mostly because he was making me. We got to my car, and I climbed in the passenger seat, hurriedly pulling my sweater on since I felt so exposed. He got my purse out of trunk and then got in the driver’s seat.

When he turned the wrong way, I blinked. “Where are you going?”

“It’s too far to your house. You need to clean up and get to bed. I’ll take you to my place.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d never been to his apartment, but I was intensely relieved that our drive would be five minutes instead of fifty. I felt a flutter of concern, but I wasn’t in a fit state to think through what it meant.

“How did you find me?” I mumbled, my eyes closed as I leaned back against the headrest.

“I saw your car was still there when we walked by again. I got Julie’s number and called to see if you’d gone back to her place, and she said you hadn’t. I knew you were upset, so I just took a guess and started to look.”

“You should have stayed on your date. It looked like it was going well.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Why not? She seemed nice.”

He’d already made it to his building, and he pulled the car into a visitor spot. He turned his head to look at me as he said, “She is nice. But she isn’t you.”

And that almost made me cry again, since everything seemed to be falling apart.

He helped me out of the car, and then we rode the elevator up to his apartment. The place was simple and comfortable and a little sloppy, but it felt like him, so I liked it.

“Do you want to take a shower?” he asked, handing me a bottle of water from the refrigerator.

I nodded as I took a swallow. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

He ignored the thanks and put his hand on my back to lead me to the bathroom. He picked up a few things and found me a clean towel. “I can give you a t-shirt or something to sleep in.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

So finally he’d gotten me what I needed and I turned on the shower and got in. I stayed in there for a while and would have stayed longer except I was so wiped out I could barely stand up.

His t-shirt was so big it hung down over my thighs. I would have liked some bottoms, but he wouldn’t have anything that would stay on me, except maybe boxers and that would be weird. I used some of his toothpaste with my finger and figured that would have to do.

He was in the bedroom and appeared to be making the bed. He looked up at me as I entered, and I tugged the t-shirt farther down over my thighs. His face softened in that way it had.

“You should get to bed,” he said at last. “We can talk in the morning.”

I nodded and climbed in, putting my water on the nightstand. “I’m sorry about everything.”

“We’ll talk in the morning.” He turned off the lamp, darkening the room except the light from the hallway.

I laid my head on the pillow. He left the room, but he left the door opened. I heard him moving around, and then I heard the shower come on. I could hardly blame him for needing one, since he’d been covered with all my grossness.

I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep, so I was still awake when he came back in the room. I could see his silhouette clearly, and it looked like he had on pajama pants and nothing else. “Sorry,” he said, opening a dresser drawer. “I’m just grabbing a shirt.”

“Where are you going to sleep?”

“I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Oh. You can sleep in here with me if you want.”

He didn’t answer, and I knew he was surprised.

“Just to sleep, I mean. I don’t want you to have to sleep on the couch.”

“I don’t mind. I want you to be comfortable.”

“Oh. But I...”

When I didn’t finish for a minute, he prompted, “But you what?” It sounded like he really wanted to know.

I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to ask for it. I didn’t want to want it, since I was sure it wasn’t right.

But I did. And I needed it so badly I had to put it into words. “If it’s all right with you, I’d kind of like...I mean, would you mind holding me. For a little while.”

He let out a little groan and lowered himself into the bed beside me. Then he pulled me into his arms, and I burrowed against him.

“Just tell me if you get uncomfortable,” he murmured against my hair. “And I’ll go sleep on the couch.”

His arms were wrapped around me tightly, and it was exactly what I needed. I released my breath, and I thought it was a sigh but it came out as a moan instead. His chest was bare, and I’d never been near him when his chest was bare before. But it felt nice and firm and warm and not threatening at all.

We didn’t talk for a while, just lay wrapped up in each other.

I shifted against him occasionally, so he must have known I was still awake. Then out of the blue he said in a thick voice, “I’m not going to date any more other women.”

I jerked in surprise at the voice and at the sentiment. “But—”

“I’m not going to do it. I know you think it’s for the best, but it’s not. It can’t be right—not if it hurts both of us so much.”

When I processed the words, I started to shake against him, since I was so confused and so upset, thinking we’d just fall back into the same holding pattern again.

“I tried, Diana. I promise I tried. I went out with eight different women this month, and I wasn’t remotely interested in any of them. They were all perfectly nice, but it made me kind of sick to be going through the motions. It wasn’t fair to them, and it’s not fair to me. I’m not going to do it anymore. The only woman I want to be with is you, and I don’t think that’s going to change.”

“But we can’t be together,” I choked, my cheek pressed against his chest “We already went over it. We can’t be together.”

“We
are
together. We’re already together. Whether or not we have sex, we’re already a couple. This isn’t changing anything. It’s what we already are.”

“But you need a woman who can give you everything. You’re not going to want to live your life without sex.”

“You need to stop worrying about that. We’ll figure things out as we go along. I’ll decide what I want and need, and right now what I want and need is you.”

So I started crying again because I wanted it—I wanted
him
—so much. He seemed to recognize why I was crying because he just held me tighter and didn’t ask what was wrong.

“So we’re okay?” he asked at last. “We can be together, this way at least?”

I nodded against his chest because I just wasn’t as selfless as I wanted to be. “Yeah. We can be together.”

He groaned and tightened his arms around me, and I felt a little better. If he was so immensely relieved and happy about it, then maybe I wasn’t doing the wrong thing.

***

I
woke up choking on a scream as a nightmare bombarded me, foreign voices saying nasty things, a table edge hard against my stomach, rough hands all over my body, moving me, hurting me. Other things hurting me too.

I fought the hands, trying desperately to get away. I was soaked in sweat, and adrenalin pumped hard through my body. I was so terrified I couldn’t breathe.

“Diana,” a voice said. An American voice. “Diana, wake up, baby. Wake up.”

I was vaguely aware that this voice didn’t fit the dream, but the hands were still all over me and I had to get away. One of my fists flew up and blindly found a target.

I heard a grunt at the impact.

“Diana, it’s Gideon. It’s me. It’s a dream. Wake up, baby.”

I finally broke through the dream with a ragged gasp, sitting up straight in the bed and gasping for air.

Gideon was sitting up beside me. I saw the outline of his body in the dark room.

As the adrenalin surge lessened, I started to tremble helplessly. Just like I always did. “Sorry,” I gasped. “Sorry. Did I hit you?”

“Come here, baby,” he murmured, pulling me down under the covers again and pulling me into his arms. “What can I do?”

“Do you mind if we turn the TV on? The noise sometimes helps.”

“Sure.” He reached over to flip on the television and sports came on. “What do you want to watch?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just the noise I want.”

He flipped from sports to the news and then to a channel that played old sitcoms all night and left it on that. Then he wrapped me in his arms again. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I said through the trembling. “Why won’t the nightmares go away?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He was stroking my hair and my back now. “I wish I could make them go away for you. But I’m here. I’ve got you.”

T
he next morning, I woke up fuzzy and disoriented. It took me a full minute to even figure out where I was.

When I realized I was in Gideon’s apartment, I sat up straight in bed, the covers falling down to my hips. He wasn’t in the bed or in the room, and he must have turned the television off at some point the night before. The blinds were closed, so it was still fairly dark, but I could see from the edges around the blinds that it was morning.

I’d been a complete disaster last night—as much of a failure as a person could be—but Gideon still wanted me. I wasn’t sure how to wrap my mind around that fact.

But the morning felt better, righter, than the day before. Because we were together.

I was just processing this incongruous fact when Gideon came back into the room. His hair was in wild disarray, and he still wore nothing but a pair of low-slung pajama pants. When he saw I was awake and sitting up in bed, he smiled. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I’d been darting my eyes between him and the covers because his lack of clothes made me feel awkward but I didn’t want him to know. I told myself to get a grip when he left to get me the coffee.

He came back with two cups, and I took mine gratefully. “Do you mind opening the blinds so it’s not so dark in here?”

I watched as he opened the blinds and the morning light shone into the room, shone on him. I’d always known his body was beautiful, but this was the clearest I’d ever seen it. His broad shoulders curved down gracefully into arms with rippling biceps and a strong back that tapered to a lean waist and hips. I could see the curve of his ass beneath the fabric and the flat planes of his belly from the side.

He looked golden in the morning light—his hair, his face, his body. But I couldn’t look away from the varied, intricate tattoos that laced over his back.

He’d had the tattoos on his forearms removed, so I’d simply forgotten about the fact that he’d been covered with them before.

Evidently he still was.

Just like a couple of the Albanians in that house.

I almost choked on my coffee as I fought through the flash of nausea.

“It looks like a nice day,” he said, still looking out the window as he drank his coffee. “If you feel up to it, maybe we can do something outside. Maybe take a hike?”

I couldn’t stop looking at the ink covering his upper arms and back, fighting through my reaction. When he turned around, I saw he had more on his chest.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, his forehead lowering.

I tried to focus on his face, but my eyes kept dipping down. “Nothing. Sorry. Yeah, a hike would be fun.”

He obviously didn’t believe my denial. He watched me for a moment, as my eyes drifted down to the largest stylized image on his chest. It looked like an animal of some kind. The first man who had raped me had a snake on his neck.

“Shit,” Gideon breathed. “It’s the tattoos.”

“No,” I began, my hand jerking and almost slopping my coffee. “It’s not—”

I couldn’t even finish because he was striding over to the dresser and pulling a t-shirt out of a drawer. He’d started to pull it on when I said again, “No! You don’t have to cover them up.”

“They bother you,” he said, the t-shirt half on. “I’m not going to let anything about me upset you like that.”