Hell on Heels(46)

I’d thought about emailing him, but each time, I deleted the draft before it could send.

There was so much in my head.

My heart was starting to go awry this close to Christmas.

Missing Henry seemed to get worse this time of year. We used to love the holidays as children, but when he got sick, that changed. He began to hate them. It seemed to be a reminder of his shortcomings, and he was never able to get past that. In fact, I think he suffocated in it. Being around us became too hard for him. All he saw were his own failures in our eyes.

It was brutal to watch someone you loved be tortured before your very eyes.

Since then, I’d grown not to hate the holidays, but to wish them gone quickly.

The usual Saturday morning routine was lax in comparison to that of a weekday. I brushed my teeth, lazily applied the basic steps to my face—tinted moisturizer, eyebrow pencil, and a swipe of mascara—and pulled my un-brushed hair into a high ponytail.

Snow had fallen overnight, and it blanketed the city in white through my window. I shrugged on a pair of blue jeans, no holes this time, a heavy wool sweater, and socks that looked like they belonged to a lumberjack, before shuffling into the kitchen.

When I said I didn’t use my kitchen for anything other than reheating, that went for coffee too. I wasn’t even sure I owned a coffee pot. Therefore, I was in desperate need of a trip to the Starbucks down the street before I met Doctor Colby for my weekend session.

She’d requested to continue seeing me once a week, but with the hectic holiday schedule at work, it was getting harder and harder to make it in during the week. So, for the month of December, we’d opted for Saturday morning sessions, and it had been working well thus far for the both of us.

I tucked my jeans into my sorrels and zipped up my parka. My purse was on the breakfast bar and I scooped it up on my way out the door.

Locking the door, I bypassed the elevator and pushed open the door to the stairwell. With the weather this cold, I wasn’t walking to as many meetings, and Emma enjoyed trying out her holiday recipes on the office staff, so my butt could really use the stairs.

I was trying to locate my gloves in the black hole that I called a purse, when I heard his voice. “Hey.”

My head snapped up.

“What are you doing here on a Saturday?” I said, startled.

He kept towards me. “Boss has us on overtime with the cold weather rolling in.”

“Oh,” I mumbled lamely.

The months had gone by without us speaking, and I expected him to pass me and continue on his way, but he didn’t.

He climbed the stairs until he stood on the same landing as me. “How are you?”

I fidgeted awkwardly while I watched him. “I’m fine.”

Dean was wearing his usual, but with a twist. He’d exchanged the plaid shirt for a white thermal and had on a plaid work jacket open in the front. His muscular legs wore black jeans today, and they were shoved into steel-toe boots with the laces half undone.

“That’s good.” He stepped towards me, and I unconsciously backed up a little. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

I winced. “You’ve been avoiding me, too,” I countered.

He shook his head. “No. I’ve been hoping you’d come to me when you were ready.”

“Oh.”

“I see you could use a little push.” He leaned in closely. His lips hovered a mere inch from mine, our bodies closing the space between us, and the wall inside the stairwell.

“I missed you,” he said.

The words were new, but the gravel in his voice was familiar, though it had been years, as was the weight of his hand at the base of my neck and the prickle of anticipation that preceded it.

My body recognized him.

My heart missed him.

My soul needed him.

He still wore the same cologne, the smell not least of which incited a mere few dozen flooding episodes in the years after he left. It closed in around me as a result of our proximity, the ridge of my nostrils flaring with a mixture of panic and excitement, now that it was all I could breathe in.

Lungs shaking, my tongue snuck out to wet my lips, deepening my inhale, and my heart spasmed.

Dean pressed the wall of his hips into my stomach. I should’ve wanted to say something. I should’ve told him to stop. I should’ve told him this wasn't fair. I should’ve told him I wasn’t ready.

His hand moved from the dip of my throat to the curve of my neck, edging our lips closer. So close I could faintly taste the black in his morning coffee.

“I have a blue wallet,” I blurted.

The crack in the air around us subsided, and in its ebb was something else entirely. Something new.

“What?” he asked in disbelief against my lips.

“I have a blue wallet.”

Lifting his head a few inches, his eyes found mine. “Okay?”

“When you left, and Henry—” One of the talons grief had around my heart squeezes and my sentence dropped off shortly after it had begun. “I retreated to the shadows of me after that, Dean.” I felt his body coil with tension against mine, but that was too bad. He needed to hear this, and more so, I needed to say it.

I needed to explain the parts of me that I had managed to heal, and make no apologies for the ruthlessness in which I chose to protect them now.

“I couldn't see colour. I couldn't appreciate colour… For years, I lived in varying shades of black, and then one day, I didn't. Little by little, I revived the coloured parts of me in tangible places where I would remember them.” The back of my head dropped against the wall. This way he could see all of my face when I told him, “The me after you took a long time to appreciate colour…but now I have a blue wallet.”