Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 138541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 554(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 554(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
“Oh.” I smile and move towards him, my hands awkwardly shoved in the pockets of my jeans. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Are you?” He eyes me with his blank expression, the one that says he doesn’t care about anything. I’m so glad I know this to be nothing but a mask, or my confidence would be wavering right now.
“Fine.”
“Hangover?”
“Fortunately no. Umm… I want to talk to you.”
He chews on the inside of his cheek and nods. “Yes, me too.”
“You need to talk to you?” I joke, but it does little to amuse him. “Okay, sorry. I’ll be serious.”
“I’m sorry for everything,” I say at the same time that he says, “I’m trying my best but...”
Blink. “What?” I say at the same time that he says, “Why are you sorry?”
“Let me talk.” He clears his throat and looks up at the sky for a moment. “Do you think this was a mistake?”
“A mistake?”
“Yes.” He turns and closes the boot of his car, leaning on it momentarily. I take this second to admire his arse in those jeans. Fabulous. Last night I got to grab that.
“Us?”
“Yes, you and I.”
“I think we’ve been doing okay.”
“I make you miserable and it’s obvious I can’t give you what you need or want.”
What the hell? “You give me you, and that’s enough.”
His eyes soften momentarily. “You’ll only want more eventually and I don’t think I can give you that. I thought…” He exhales a long, mournful breath. “I’m trying, honestly I am, but I see it in your eyes every time we get intimate, every time we get close.” His hands drag over his face and one of them reaches out to me. I take it and let him pull me closer. “I’m making a mess of everything. You’re only going to leave me when all is said and done. I know that now.”
“Stop it, don’t do this.” I say firmly, taking another step towards him, putting only an inch of distance between us. “We haven’t even tried, not really. I haven’t been understanding enough.”
“What if you never move on from Caleb? What if I never move on from my past?”
“I will move on from Caleb, I swear. If this is about what I said…”
“It’s not.” He shakes his head and leans back against his car. “It’s not about what you said. We’re both too…” He sighs again and finishes his sentence on a whisper. “Broken.”
“What should I do?” I place my hands on his chest. “Just tell me what to do.”
“I’ll never be able to have sex with you the way you want, Gwen!” He shouts suddenly, his hands balled into fists by his hips. “I’ll never be able to do it without a condom with you. I’ll never be able to taste you. I’ll never be able to…”
I cut him off, placing my hands on his cheeks “I know it’ll take time, but we can get past that. You’ll see. We’ll do it together, literally and figuratively.” Again my humour falls flat. “I want to try properly. Me, you and Dillan. I’ll move in. We can start over; we can date. I know what he did to you, I know how badly he must have hurt you…”
“You think it’s because of that?” He asks in disbelief. “That’s not why I won’t enter you, Gwen.”
“Then tell me why. Help me understand.”
“I…” He clamps his mouth shut. “It’s messed up.”
“Nathan,” I sigh, leaning back so I can look into his eyes. “It can’t work if you don’t help me understand.”
He stares at me, pain and determination in his features. “My great grandfather molested my grandfather. Almost as brutal, if not more so, than my grandfather did to me.” I can tell how hard it is for him to say it out loud, almost like the words are anchored in his throat and refuse to rise. “My grandfather abused me... See a pattern? And then there’s my dad. I don’t know if he was abused, but I know that he abused my mum. She didn’t used to be this way. She used to love us, but he turned her into what she is now. Uncaring, unfeeling. She was scared to show us love and I guess it just stuck.”
‘Sometimes the abused become the abuser’ rings through my mind. Now I feel extremely bad for ever letting that thought enter my head, now that I know it’s the thought that’s in his head.
“I can’t… I’ve never felt a woman around me without something separating us. I’ve never pushed my fingers into a woman and made her scream, until you.” He rests his forehead against mine. “I can’t lose control.”
“Why?”
The shutters that locked his emotions behind his eyes slide away and the pain I see there breaks my heart. The insecurity, the vulnerability, the betrayal and anger. All of it shines through and all of it soaks into my very core. “Because I’m scared I’ll become like them.”