Forsaken Duty (Red Team #9)(78)

“This makes me nervous,” she whispered.

Owen met her eyes.

“You’re studying me.”

“Addy, what you’re thinking right now, does it give you pleasure?”

“No.”

“Then don’t think about it. Switch it out for what we’re doing.”

“This isn’t about pleasure.”

“It’s not. It’s about relief and healing.”

“I’m going to close my eyes.”

“Okay.”

He sat on the side of the bed. Lifting her hand, he began to draw on her wrist. The lines went around and around her wrist like the restraints that had often bound her. He smoothed his hand over her forearm, on both sides, then drew a spidery web. So many times, Cecil or one of the others had grabbed her there. The thin lines went up and around her elbow. She thought of how often they’d held her arms behind her, bent up in a painful hold, giving them leverage. The lines continued to her upper arms, circling around her arm. He drew lines on her neck, so tender compared to the violent hands that had squeezed her there.

The pen went up to her face. She could feel him draw a ragged circle, like a fist mark in broken glass. It went over her eye, her nose, the other side of her chin. He repeated similar marks on her left arm as he had her right. And then he started on her body, his hand skimming over her skin like a Braille reader.

He drew lines over and around her breasts. He crisscrossed her heart with his pen. Her ribs, too. His hand paused on her lower abdomen. She held her breath, bracing herself for his questions, but they never came. He continued his exploration over her hips and down her legs, circling her ankles as he had her wrists. It was like he’d seen all of her wounds when they were fresh.

She opened her eyes when she no longer felt the pen moving over her skin. He was staring at her, like all the dark inside her had crawled from her to him. She was too raw, too exposed to look away or shield herself, so she just let him in.

“How did you survive?” he asked in a broken whisper.

“I wasn’t brave enough to end it in the beginning. By the time I was, I had my boys and couldn’t.”

He was kneeling between her ankles. She’d told Selena she wasn’t going to tell Owen all that had happened, that his burdens were enough for him to carry. But it was clear to her now that his wabi-sabi exercise had reached inside her and pulled them out anyway. She felt a thousand pounds lighter…and he looked that much heavier.

She knelt in front of him. “It’s my turn.”

He handed her the marker, then lay down where she’d been. Addy wasn’t at all certain she could do what he did, but she was curious to know what his body might tell her. “How do I do this?”

“Quiet your mind. Push everything out of it. When it’s empty, let me in. Draw what you hear.”

“Through my hands…”

“Right. Use them like metal detectors, only they’re not sensing metal but soul wounds.”

She closed her eyes and waited for her mind to go quiet. It took effort. She always had a constant stream of fear running through it.

Once her mind was quiet, she ran her hand over his right hand. Was it only her imagination, or could she truly sense the past injuries there? Soul wounds, he’d said. Were these soul wounds? Or just…injuries? Her eyes met his. He offered no guidance.

She ran her hand up his arm to his shoulder. It was hard to explain what she was sensing. She hesitated to believe it was real. She had to be doing it wrong—she hadn’t drawn a single line.

Her hand eased over the golden hair on his chest. It wasn’t super thick, just enough for a manly fur. When her hand moved over his heart, she gasped. A jagged shard of emotion slammed into her hand on its way to her heart. She looked closer at his chest, looking for signs of a surgery or a scar from a knife or bullet. There was nothing. But the pain there was real.

“Owen, what happened to your heart?”

“You.”

Val had said he was a tin man after she was taken, empty and searching for his heart.

“Do you have it back…your heart?”

His big hand settled over hers on his chest. “Almost.”

“It’s your only soul wound, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

She huffed a choked breath. “Do you suppose, between us, there’s a whole person?”

He sat up. His eyes held hers as he measured his words. “I sincerely hope so.”

She settled between his legs, letting hers drape over his thighs. His cock was long and heavy between them, but she didn’t care. She had to draw the pain out of his heart with that magical ink of his.

She flattened the hairs over his left chest, then emptied her mind again and gave it over to the pen, drawing as she felt moved to. The design looked like a messy explosion, like someone had ripped his heart out, dropped it on a sidewalk, and stomped a heel into it.

Radiating out from his wrecked heart was a line that went up to his neck, paused just below his ear, then swiped up to a line crossing out his eyes. Another went down his chest, over his lean stomach to his groin. Two more reached up to his shoulders. His broken heart made him deaf and blind, burdened his shoulders, and stole all of his joy. The wabi-sabi let her see his story.

His soul injury was so different from hers but no less debilitating.