Not Broken: The Happily Ever After(61)

“Are you okay?”

“I…I don’t know to be honest.” I took a drink of my coffee.

Shawn moved to sit between us, his head rested on Malcolm’s leg, and his feet rested on mine. I smiled at him before turning my attention back to Malcolm.

“Last night...I acted impulsively. The last few days, my world has gone haywire. Trying to deal with everything I’d not wanted to deal with.” I turned my gaze away, choosing to focus on Shawn’s feet.

Malcolm’s hand was on my chin, and he turned my head to look at him. I wished he hadn’t. The pained expression he wore filled me with remorse.

“Do you regret it?”

His question was unexpected. I’d been so off kilter since I’d gotten up. So much going through my head at once that I hadn’t fully processed anything.

Shawn laughed at something that happened on the screen. Malcolm turned away, and grabbed one of the throw pillows to put under Shawn’s head before he got up.

I reached out for his hand. “Where are you going?”

“To take a shower.”

There was sadness in his eyes when he looked at me. This was wrong. It was all so wrong.

I let go of his hand so I could move Shawn’s legs. He rolled off the couch and started dancing with the characters on TV. I took Mal’s hand and pulled him into the kitchen. I sat my semi-full cup on the counter and tried to reign in my conflicting thoughts.

“Malcolm, I—”

He put his hands up to stop me. “You don’t have to explain.”

“Yes, I do. Last night...last night I couldn’t sleep. Everything just kept running through my mind. The more I thought about things, the more upset I got. I started to feel suffocated and needed out of the house.”

Banging coming from the family room got our attention. Shawn was hitting one of Mal’s game controllers on the coffee table.

I ran over to take it from him. “Shawn, no.” He immediately fell to the floor in a fit of tears. I picked him up, trying to comfort him while starting to pick up the scattered items and shove them back into the diaper bag. “I’m sorry. He’s probably getting tired. I should take him home.”

Malcolm came over, and helped me pick up the stuff. “If you want to leave, I’m not going to stop you, but I would like it if you’d stay. At least until we can finish talking, because I would really like to not leave this unresolved.”

My first instinct was to flee, to take this chance at escape and run. Avoiding conflict and anything that made me uncomfortable had become the norm for me. I had to stop burying my head in the sand. Then there was the sadness in Mal’s eyes, the pain in his voice.

“Okay, but I need to get him to nap first. Where did he sleep last night?”

“There’s a playpen in one of the rooms upstairs.”

I left Malcolm cleaning up the mess Shawn made and took him up to the room. After twenty-minutes of fighting, he was finally down for a nap. When I got back downstairs, I found Malcolm sitting on the couch still only wearing those damned shorts.

“Are you hungry? You’ve not eaten anything yet.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t hungry, not in the least. Too many nerves and worries going on to eat. I feared if I tried, I would only end up throwing it back up. He held his hand out for me. My legs were shaky, but I forced them to move. When I got closer, I slipped my hand into his. He closed his fingers around mine. They were a warm reminder of how good he felt when he held me last night.

“Thank you for staying,” he said after I’d taken a seat.

Our fingers intertwined. I focused on that.

I stayed. He wanted to talk, to resolve last night. I wished my stomach wasn’t in knots. I needed to talk. To explain, but I didn’t know what to say.

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“What question?”

“Do you regret what happened last night?”

“When I left my house last night, I didn’t have any idea where I was going. A hotel maybe. I just knew I needed out of there.”

I looked up. The intense focus of his hazel eyes had me squirming under the scrutiny as he patiently waited for me to continue.

“I ended up here. I came to you. I’m ashamed. Well, not really ashamed, more like embarrassed I begged you for sex last night. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know what came over me. I...I just...”

I got up from the couch, overcome with the need to pace. This was reminiscent of my sessions with Dr. Carr; feeling that part of me that wanted to bare my soul, but the bigger part of me fought to keep a tight lid on the demons. I crossed my arms over my chest. I needed the protection, the cover, to compensate for how exposed I was at that moment. Naked. Bare. All defenses stripped away.

“You don’t have anything to be ashamed or embarrassed about. Not with me. Never with me.” He stood and walked over to where I was. “Can I hold you?”

A simple question, but one that hit me hard. A lump formed in my throat. I covered my face with my hands, trying to hold back the tears that burned in my eyes. I nodded. Malcolm pulled me into his arms. His body was warm, familiar, comforting. My head rested against his firm chest. The beating of his heart, a welcomed lullaby, making me feel something I’d not been for a long time.

Safe.

My fingers played with the curly hairs on his chest as I worked up the courage to open up to him. “I...I don’t know how I feel about what happened. I haven’t had time to process, really. I regret a lot of things, Mal. I’m not proud of how I acted, of how last night came to be. It’s a weird thing to regret something, but not regret it at the same time. I don’t really know how else to explain it. I told you, I’m a mess.”