“Zosia. I’ve missed this.”
How can he miss it when we never really had it in the first place?
I tried to shove doubt away. I want this. I want him. I just want something to go right between us, for once.
He worked one hot, callused hand beneath the hem of the sweater I wore. I clutched his muscular shoulders. Afraid he won’t like what he finds there—or doesn’t find—terrified it will be like last time. Breathing him in, when I can inhale at all. It’s one dizzying sip of air after another. Lorcan traced my new shape, bumping over my ribs and my spine, working his way up toward my nonexistent breasts—
Thunder crashed overhead. I flinched.
He’s done this before. It’s not me he misses.
I can’t do this.
Uncontrollable panic surged through me, sending my heart rate galloping. The last time we did this Iknew. I’m not special. Just one more in an apparently endless line—
My thoughts tumble uselessly. It’s all mixed up.I’mmixed up. Broken.
That night in Covari Village, I was like a bottle of champagne that had been shaken until its cork popped. There’s emptiness now, but the dregs of everything wrong with me are still inside.
I pushed him away, hard. I couldn’t get enough air, but I managed to say, “Stop.”
Did I whisper? Was it a shout?
Lorcan let go. I took in his kiss-bruised lips, his disheveled hair, one eye barely visible beneath the fall of his unkempt mane. Pupils dilated until the blue was only bright sapphire slivers. The frustration and worry written on his face.
“Too much, too soon.” He nodded slightly, frowning. “It’s okay. We’ll stop.” He stroked my hair. “Zosia. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
It’s not okay.
I’m shaking so hard the lid of the teapot rattled audibly. When I hopped down from the counter, my knees gave out. So wired and jittery I can hardly stand. The world looks too bright, too dark, too much. Wrong. All wrong.
“I’ve got you.” Lorcan tried to brace me upright, the way he’s done so many times when I’m off-balance. “It’s okay.”
It’s not.I thrust him away and run, wobbling, bumping into the dining room chair, scrambling up the stairs to the loft as though Bashir were on my heels, one second away from grabbing me. Skinning my shin on the step. I stumbled to the bed and burrowed into the blankets.
So much for fuck him and get it out of your system.One more failure compounding all the rest. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to have sex with anyone, without having a panic attack.
Probably not. Bashir made sure of that. What he didn’t poison, Lorcan did.
I lay curled in a tight ball, trembling. After a while, Lorcan came and sat next to me on the bed. I don’t know how we’ll share it after this mess. But he was gentle with me, just sitting there quietly, stroking my hair until my trembling subsided and my shallow breathing slowed. I faced the wall as my spirits sank through the floor. Fat tears welled and slid down my nose, wetting the pillow. A different kind of crying. Not so snot-filled, but somehow even lonelier than the last time.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked what felt like hours later, though it probably wasn’t that long. Rain drummed against the window. Other memories surfaced. Better ones. The way we lay here reading side-by-side the last time a storm rolled through.
“No.”
What would I say? That I think I’m broken beyond repair? We’re good together when it’s the two of us with no outside pressure, but it will never work because that is not, and cannot be, my life? I feel unwanted on every conceivable level, and it’s partly his doing?
Inexplicably, I missed Sethi. Things are so simple with him. Except for being unable to acknowledge him.
Lorcan’s hesitation told me this was just as awful for him as it was for me. I doubt he’s ever been in a situation he can’t fight, strategize or charm his way out of. The only equivalent for him I can think of would be when his father died by suicide. There was no way to fix it, though his twelve-year-old self tried to.
That night, I’m the one who clings to Lorcan like a frightened child to a favorite stuffed toy. In the morning, we picked up as though nothing had happened. Yet the tension was back, an invisible stain on what had been a lovely respite.
CHAPTERTEN
The morning before Lorcan’s birthday celebration, we were sitting out back on the patio. I had finished my perfunctory, somewhat freeform Midsummer speech and sent it off to Saskaya for editing. I spent the previous afternoon trying to negotiate lumber prices from the Timberlands, and after securing one-third of what Ifran had requested at twice the price I was prepared to pay, decided to distract myself by looking at the edits to the joint paper with Lorcan. It’s not going well.
I have no vision for what my country needs, apart from: jumpstart the economy, re-establish our postal service, figure out an export product, negotiate trade relations...a to-do list is not a statement of my leadership goals. Anyone could do them. I don’t know where best to direct my energy.
