The Other Man(60)

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin to be peaceful.  I am not acclimated to the rules of normal society.

“When you’re that f*cked in the head, deceit becomes a way of life.  Lies become a pattern.

“I don’t lie because I like it.  I’ve never enjoyed the burn at the back of my throat when I open my mouth and deadpan endless falsehoods, big ones, small ones, omissive ones, day after day.

“I lie because the bottom line is: the truth is death for me, no matter how I might crave it.

“But God, I do crave the truth.

“Imagine damaged me with all of that inside of me, abhorring deceit, craving elusive honesty.

“Running into a woman like you.

“There wasn’t a thing about you I couldn’t read.  Even if it was hidden a bit, no matter.  You’re a piece of glass I could hold in my palm.  So what if it clouded a bit, got a bit of sand on it?  All I had to do was turn it this way, brush it off, and poof, shiny and transparent as ever.

“But really, I didn’t even have to do that.  The beauty of you, this gorgeous creature that for some f*cking reason let me have her, over and over, was that if I wanted the truth from you, all I had to do was ask, and you’d tell me.  You play no games. You’re incapable of deceit.

“You’re the truth, Lourdes.  So what if I couldn’t, shouldn’t have you?  I craved you, and so I kept coming back.

“I’m not dead inside.  Not all of me.  Something remains, something that doesn’t only live for vengeance.

“That’s what you taught me.”

He’d left me speechless, breathless, without a leg to stand on.

He did care about me.  I was positive of that now, at least.  So many other questions remained, but that was the one that had bothered me the most.

I was such a girl.

I moved to him, laying my cheek against his chest.

He wrapped his arms around me.

We stayed like that for a long time, pressed together as I wondered what the hell I was supposed to do.  Had this changed anything?  It felt like it had.  But feelings and reality were two different things.

“She said she was your lover,” I finally broke the silence.  I’d tried to keep that in, but I just couldn’t.

He sighed and stroked a hand over my hair.  “She’s a good liar.  It’s what makes her great at her job.  We’re not sleeping together.”

“Since when?”  Another thing I couldn’t keep in.

“Since I was fifteen, and only then to mark her as mine to keep her safe from the other people we were working with.  They were scared of me, and her being mine made her off-limits.”

“So why is she so interested in me?”

“Hell if I know.  If I had to guess, I’d say it’s some leftover jealousy from the past.  But I’ll tell you one thing—she won’t bother you again.”

I took a deep breath, trying to hold in yet another question.  Tried and failed.  “Have you been with . . .  anyone else, since you’ve been with me?”

He stiffened up, but didn’t hesitate.  “No.”  Long pause.  “I won’t be asking you the same question.”  His voice was pained.  “I don’t want to know.”

I was gearing up to answer him, to set him straight when he continued, “Once I was tortured by a particularly sick motherf*cker.  He sliced me to ribbons with a rusty, dull knife.  When I heard about you and your other man, heard he’d spent the night here, it hurt worse than that.  Just so you know.”

I started trembling.  “Heath,” my voice caught on his name.  “He didn’t—we haven’t, err, I didn’t have sex with him.  He spent the night, but he slept on the couch, okay?  I haven’t done more than kiss him.”

“I don’t understand.  So why did he spend the night?”

“Hell if I know.  He wanted to.  But he never even made a move.  We were taking it slow.”

I barely got the last word out before he was kissing me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I woke alone in my bed.

I sat up.

He’d left?

I was instantly angry.

Not angry.  Furious at him, for so many complicated reasons, but one of them, the most important one, was terribly simple.

He’d left.  I’d wanted him to stay, and regardless of why, he had not stayed.  He had left.  It was that uncomplicated and that devastating.

And I had not a clue where we stood.  He’d finally let me sleep after that last round of sex, and I’d passed out cold, but what we’d needed to do was talk.

How could he do that?

Back for only half a night, but he’d done his fair share of damage.

Messing up my head.

Messing up my heart.

Then leaving without a goodbye?

I couldn’t have it.  I couldn’t do this again.  Not for sex or for love.

But what did I think we could’ve settled?

He couldn’t offer me anything.  I’d gathered enough about the current job he was on to understand that much, at least.

Not even an occasional something, which sadly I’d have taken.