Excerpt from Wonderful and Wild
Hailie and Darius have just rushed to her home after learning that her young autistic son has accidentally burned the place down. Now they're standing in the rubble, surveying the damage.
Warmth flickered against Hailie’s skin, as if the flames, murdered the day before by firemen’s hoses, were leaping to life again.
“Maybe we should go back out to the others,” she began weakly.
Darius held out his hand. “Come.” When he felt her near, he turned to her, and cradled her face in both his hands.
“My hands aren’t clean,” he warned her. “Your face’ll be a mess.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You can get washed up soon. There’s no power, but there’s still lots of water.”
“Cold water,” she tried to joke. Oh, but his hands were big, warm, soothing. And oh, but he was close….
“We’ll get this all fixed up in no time. I promise.”
We?
He ignored, or didn’t see, her puzzled frown. “It’s not as bad as it looks. A week or two, a little work and a lick of paint, and even the smell will be gone. I’ll help you. We can have a work crew in here tomorrow.”
Now she had to say something. “‘We’, Darius?”
Now the puzzled frown was his. “What?”
“What do you mean, ‘we’? This is my home. It’s my problem. I can make those calls. I can hire the crew. Why do you think I need help?”
His hands fell away, and the chill on her face as her cheeks protested almost made her wish she hadn’t spoken. “Everybody needs help sometime. You’ve lost half your home, a chunk of your life.” He indicated the walls with a sweep of his arm. “Your art, gone, your clothes, your bed…gone. You can’t do this on your own.”
“You just said it won’t take more than a lick of paint!” she retorted.
“Dammit, Mahalia, I was trying to make you feel better!”
“By patronizing me? By saying ‘we’?”
“What makes you think I was being patronizing? What’s wrong with what I said?”
“And what makes you think that you’ve got the right to say it?”
“Yesterday does,” he bellowed. Then, realizing that he was shouting, he lowered his voice, striving for a neutral tone, and failing, as his voice thickened. “Yesterday does,” he repeated. “We made love. Less than twenty-four hours ago. The fact that so much has taken place between than and now doesn’t change that.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. She wanted to, but experience had taught her that men often said things that sounded good, but which they didn’t necessarily mean. She wasn’t blind: she’d seen him throw her inquiring glances all day, asking without speaking if she remembered what had passed between them the day before, and if it had left its mark on her.
How could it not? She hadn’t been expecting it, hadn’t done anything to deliberately trigger it off, but they’d taken that step from a casual business relationship to an intimate, physical one, and from there, there was no turning back. Sure, they could agree to pretend that it had all been a figment of their imagination. They could decide to declare it a mistake, move on, and ensure that such weakness wouldn’t engulf them again. But it had left its mark on her, a mark that would be impossible to wipe out.
She tried to feel him out. Test the waters. “I thought you said it was supposed to be just one of those things to ease the loneliness. I fill your aching space, and you fill mine. Just two people, holding on, feeling less lone, even if it was just for a little while.”
To his credit, he didn’t try to deny it. “I was lonely, yes, and I sensed you were. It happens to the best of us. But there was more, Mahalia, and it didn’t start last night. I felt it since day one, and if you’d be honest with yourself, and with me, you’d admit that you felt it, too. What we had in bed was good, fantastic. But what we felt out of bed was even better. The way we could share our ideas for your book, and understand each other’s point of view, even when we didn’t agree with it. The way you looked at me from across the table while we were working, as if you were remembering that kiss we shared, on our first night, and wondering if I’d kiss you again. Know what I mean?”
He was asking her to admit her desire for him, which she had convinced herself she’d kept it well hidden. He wanted her to confess a secret hankering for this too-young, completely inappropriate man. To lie would be easy. To play it cool, shove him back at arm’s length where he belonged, would make her feel a whole lot safer. She could even pretend that their love-making had been a purely physical thing, a remedy for what ailed her, an over-the-counter cure for loneliness. But that lie would have been grievous, an insult to the tenderness he’d showed her, and the utter unselfishness with which he’d given of himself.
“I….” she began, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and she could go no further.
“No shame in it,” he told her. “Just say it. I need to hear you.” His eyes nailed her to the spot. “I wanted you. Tell me you wanted me.”
He waited for an age, while the silence of the room grew to a shout, and eventually she slumped forward against his chest, body tired, mind drained, and yet unable to let go long enough to tell him what he wanted to hear. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” His voice was in her hair.
“Because it’ll…hurt.”
“I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“I might hurt myself.”
“I won’t let you.”
Liked it? Read an excerpt from Love Me All The Way
