Page 79 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
He doesn’t seem to hear it.
He only looks at me.
Just before they pull him through the doorway, our eyes lock.
It lasts no longer than a heartbeat, but it stays. Rage. Guilt. Helplessness. The awful fact of him seeing what they did and not being able to stop it.
Then he is gone.
The door slams.
Their footsteps fade down the hallway, taking him with them, and I am left on the floor with blood slipping through my fingers and tears blurring everything that remains of the room.
The glass sparkles around me.
Rose is still.
The place where my cheek burns tells me this memory is not going away, no matter how badly I want it to.
CHAPTER 15
Silas
I’m a goddamn fool.
The thought has worn itself smooth by the time it finishes another lap around my skull. It is no longer outrage. No longer even surprise. Just fact. The kind of fact that settles in your bones and makes every movement after it feel a little more deserved.
The bathroom is empty, which should help.
It doesn’t.
Fluorescent light washes everything out overhead, leaving nowhere for a person to hide from himself. I pace anyway, back and forth across too-clean tile, from the sinks to the paper towel dispenser and back again, my schedule crumpled in one hand until I finally throw it onto the counter hard enough that it skids and curls at the corner.
I don’t care about the schedule.
I care about my hand.
That is the problem.
Gripping the sink, I stare at my hand like it’s a borrowed weapon. Same hand that kept me kneeling between her legs while I kissed every scar on her stomach, that braced on herthigh when she dragged my head closer and sank her fingers into my hair. The memory of her hand clenching, tugging me hard enough to hurt, sent something feral tearing through my chest. I can still feel that grip, the way she twisted curls between her knuckles like she needed proof I was real.
I never even got under her leggings, yet the ghost of her heat still throbs against my palm. I feel the slick seam of the fabric giving under my thumb, the hitch in her breath when I pushed, the involuntary jerk of her hips when that thin barrier became useless. Her gasp, sharp and shocked, lives under my skin, echoing the way she whimpered when my mouth made a home on her scars.
Rinsing my fingers, they still pulse with the taste of her, the imagined drag of her arousal soaking through cloth. Kneeling for her, tasting skin I wasn’t supposed to touch, hearing the wrecked sounds she made while her hand fisted my hair, those moments rewired me.
My jaw tightens so hard it hurts.
Control yourself.
The command comes in my father’s voice. My head drops over the sink. Cold porcelain. White knuckles. Breathing that refuses to even out.
Everything you touch rots.
The memory keeps replaying without permission. Not just what I did. Worse than that. What she did back. The half-second where she didn’t pull away. The sound she made that still has my pulse kicking harder than it should in a university bathroom in broad daylight. The way my body answered instantly...stupidly.
That is what makes me feel sick.
Not wanting her. I’ve already lost that fight.
