I can already feel her naked skin under my hands. I know exactly how much she’s twitching to touch me right now. I know her body is straining towards mine as much as my own is pulling me towards hers.
I know what she wants, but more importantly, I know what she needs.
She’s trying to hide it, but she’s hurting. She’s confused. Something has cut her deep. I can see the fight or flight warring inside her, just like it was on the day I found her.
So when I step forward, I don’t do all of the things I want to do. I grab a towel off the counter, and the only place I press my lips is to her forehead as I wrap the fabric around her body.
* * *
“I told Kay.”
We’re lying side by side on the hotel room bed, close enough that you could say we’re touching, but far enough that you could also argue we’re not. Not really. Not in a way that counts.
Roxanne put on a pair of pyjama shorts and her old Killers t-shirt after she left the bathroom. We sat and talked about the tour for a while, laughed about Kay and Matt. Eventually we ended up lying down together, shifting nearer and nearer while pretending like we weren’t.
I knew she had something on her mind, that she just needed the time to get to it, and now she’s ready.
“About...what happened when I was sixteen.”
Her little finger hooks around my thumb. I hold my breath, like just the sound of it could scare her away.
“What did she say?”
“She said it wasn’t my fault.”
I wish she sounded more convinced.
“I sort of told her about Nadia too.”
My hand jerks under hers. She uncurls her finger and pulls away.
“I didn’t go into details. I wouldn’t do that to you. I just...I needed to get it out to somebody. Even Monroe and I hardly ever talk about it, and these past few days, it feels like it’s been on my mind all the time.”
“What did you tell her?”
The question comes out colder than I mean it to.
“Just that—that Nadia meant a lot to you, that the whole family did. I told her that’s why I went to Quebec City. I told her how when I came back...”
She’d been back in Montreal for a month before I even saw her. She made Monroe swear not to tell me, but I walked into Taverne Toulouse on a whim one day, and there was Roxanne Nadeau, sitting and laughing on a barstool just like I’d imagined her ten thousand fucking times.
I wasn’t letting her go. Not again. We tried to be friends. I think we both knew it was bullshit, even then, but I still couldn’t bring myself to leave Nadia. It was wrong. It was fucked up, but I took what I could get.
That’s when the lying started. I kept meaning to tell Nadia that Roxy was back, but I never did. I hated to admit it, but things with Nadia were a bit easier without Roxanne around. Not happy, per se, but functional enough to convince me that I was doing the right thing. I mean, fuck, I’d promised Nadia’s father to his face that I would always take care of her. I couldn’t betray them like that. Staying with Nadiahadto be the right thing.
So I tried to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons, and it ended with shrapnel and pain.
“That was my choice,” I tell Roxanne, “not yours.”
I knew what we were doing, that night I first felt what it was like to have her body arch under mine. I knew what the result would be. I knew I’d have to tell Nadia everything in the morning and watch the only family I’d ever known fall apart.
I did it anyway.
I’d do it again.
“You always act like I wasn’t involved,” Roxanne protests, “like I didn’t know exactly what was going on. If I hadn’t come back to Montreal, if I hadn’t kissed y—”
I sit bolt upright on the bed.
