Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(74)

Now nothing hurts.

He finishes cleaning it, takes his hands away to get gauze and tape.

“No, that’s okay, don’t dress it. It’s not bleeding anymore.”

He looks up at me. “Neosporin?”

“Okay.”

When he holds on to my thigh again, I close my eyes. I want to move my hips, or I want his hand to move. He swipes the ointment over the scrape but doesn’t take his hand away from my thigh. So I reach down and put my hand over his, guide his hand a few inches higher, then let go.

He rests his head against my stomach. “Jenny?”

“Just touch me. Okay?” I put a hand in his hair and ignore the way my throat feels like I should cry. I don’t want to cry.

I want Evan to touch me in that way he has, like he doesn’t believe he actually has permission but is so glad to be granted it.

He hikes my sweater and T-shirt up to rest his face against my skin. I step closer, and he opens his legs so I can stand between them. I jump a little when he kisses me over my navel, but then his hand soothes over my whole stomach, pushing into my skin, over my hip. He hooks a finger into the waistband of my underwear, and scootches it down over my hips, over my bottom, but no more.

His hands move over all the exposed skin, over and over. My waist, my hips, my stomach, the fronts of my thighs. At first, it’s strange. I’m standing in his office, my sweater hiked up, my underwear bunched down, and nothing’s happening but his hands playing over me.

I sift through his hair as it dries in the heat of his office. Touch the wrinkles in his brow. Follow the whorls in his ears. When I do that, he closes his eyes, so I do it over and over until his cheeks are pink.

On a pass over the hill of my lower belly, he brushes over the thin cotton of my underwear between my legs. Looks at me.

I’m not sure what he sees in my face, but then he starts kissing me right at the edge of where my underwear is rolled down, and his hands, warm, shape my ass again and again until my underwear is easing off, until it’s hardly hanging on and he slides it off with one of his long, slow, touches.

He brushes his fingers over my curls there, and I suddenly feel a blush start, over my neck and into my face, and I can’t help it, I reach and grab onto his hand like I would stop him.

I need him.

I’m not certain if I want him yet, there is so much we haven’t said. More we haven’t seen.

But I need him. I need the Evan who made me see with my eyes closed and knows that I cry. The one who lay down with me in a courtyard and hasn’t asked why. I need the one who fired himself just so he could touch me, knowing perfectly well that I’m actually just fine without him.

I need to tell him one thing first, ask him another.

I sit in a chair right next to him, so I don’t feel so exposed, bottomless, standing in front of him.

“What does f/16 mean?”

He stills. I look at him, and his expression is hard to take in—his eyes are searching mine, his mouth his tight, his eyes shiny.

“I knew before,” I say. “From in the van. You saw the pictures on my desk. You didn’t say.”

He lets out a breath, loud, and looks down. “I’m sorry, I—”

“You were always completely honest with me. I trusted you with things I didn’t trust anyone else with.” I make myself breathe.

“I’m sorry, too,” I say, “I didn’t tell you, as soon as I saw, in the van, but I didn’t even have the words. Then, today, I got bad news from Dr. Allen, about my peripheral loss, and all I wanted was you.” Hearing myself say that, my throat closes, choking, and his fists tighten.

“Not therapy, Evan, but you. The way you always see me as smart and capable. How I can relax around you and just feel the way I’m feeling, but I couldn’t go to you because you didn’t say; you kissed me, the very first time you kissed me, and you knew, but you didn’t say.”

“I was—when I saw those pictures and realized what it meant, God, Jenny. I was so happy. I’ve loved talking to you online, the serendipity of it, the things you said about my pictures, and more and more, I realized Lincoln was a real woman, of course I knew that, but she was starting to live outside of my own mind. I respected her boundaries, of course, but I wanted to know her.”

“What about me?”

“Then there was you. I told you about you. You were real as soon as you walked into my office, so intelligent and angry. More and more, you made Lincoln less real, and that worried me. I had a relationship with her that had started to mean something to me. It’s why I wanted to meet her. Needed to meet Lincoln. I had been working through my feelings with you for longer, trying to be honest with myself, then I met Lincoln online. It was confusing. Absolutely everything I was feeling. Meeting Lincoln was important to understand how I felt about both of you. When I saw the picture on your desk, it was the worst best thing. Some kind of miracle answer to my problem. But impossible, because how could you trust such an unbelievable coincidence?”

“I sent you my picture! I told you my name! And you knew and sent me bits and pieces.”

“I thought—”

“What?” What, exactly, what. I want him to tell me. This incredible convergence of the university, our landlord’s contract with them, a Christmas letter, my love of pictures, out of all that, what?