Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
"Because I'm a coward." My voice is wrecked and I don't fix it. "Because it was easier to let you hurt than to tell you the truth. Because the truth is that I love you and that terrifies me more than anything I've done in thirty-four years."
Her whole body reacts. A flinch that runs through her from her shoulders to her knees, and her hand drops from her mouth and both hands go to her stomach, pressing down, like you'd press a wound, and she bends forward slightly and makes a sound that I will hear for the rest of my life. Not a sob. Smaller. The sound of a girl who just heard the thing she needed to hear and it hit her so hard she can't stand straight.
"Don't," she pleads, and she's crying openly now, both hands pressed to her stomach, bent forward, tears falling on the thin carpet. "Don't say that to me if you're going to take it back. Don't say that and then close another door. I can't—-I can't do the door again, I can't—-"
"I'm not closing any door." I cross the distance. Not striding, not commanding, just moving, because my body won't stay fifteen feet from hers while she's bent over and crying, it won't, it refuses, and I'm in front of her before I've decided to move. My hands reach for her face and they're shaking and she can see them shaking and I don't care. "I'm not closing anything. I'm here. Look at me."
She looks up. Her face is a wreck. Blotchy and wet and her nose is running and her eyelashes are clumped together and she looks twelve again, she looks like the girl Mr. Green described, the girl who looks too young to be working here, and she's crying in a corridor in her spa uniform and my hands are trembling against her jaw and I'm the Almazov who makes problems disappear and I can't make my hands stop shaking.
"I love you." Low. Hoarse. Dragged out of the place I've been keeping it like a splinter being pulled. "I've loved you since you pressed your fingers to the gallery glass and said it's beautiful like the word cost you something."
"Stop," she whispers, but she's leaning into my palms, her wet face pressing into my shaking hands, and her eyes are closed and the tears are running over my fingers and she's not pulling away.
"I've loved you since the corridor. Since the cedarwood. Since your hands found my scars and didn't flinch."
"I can't—-my planner—-" A hiccup. A sound that would be a laugh if it weren't soaked in tears. "My planner doesn't have an entry for this, I don't know what to—-I don't know where to put this—-"
"You don't have to put it anywhere."
"I put everything somewhere, that's what I DO, I file things and I schedule things and you—-" Her hands come up and grab my wrists, both of them, her fingers wrapping around the bones, holding on, and her grip is strong, her four-hundred-euro-an-hour grip, and she's holding my wrists like they're the railing on the upper deck and the ship is tilting. "You broke my filing system. You broke all of it. I don't have CATEGORIES for this—-"
"Good."
"It's not GOOD, it's terrifying, I had a system and it WORKED and then you spoke my name on a massage table and the whole thing crashed and I've been trying to reboot it for two weeks and it won't—-"
"Star."
"—-and I put the cedarwood at the back of the shelf with the label turned away and that was supposed to help and it DIDN'T because I could still smell it and I kept thinking about your scars and whether Curtis was using the right pressure on your lower back because he goes too deep too fast, he doesn't warm the tissue first, and I was lying in my bunk at three AM worried about your SCAR TISSUE while you were—-while I was—-"
She's spiralling. The planner-brain has come back online and it's misfiring in every direction and she's crying and talking about Curtis's pressure technique and the cedarwood label and her filing system and she can't stop, the words are pouring out of her like they always pour out of her when she's feeling too much, in these long breathless cascades that build and build, and I'm standing here with my shaking hands on her wet face and she's holding my wrists and she's worried about my scar tissue.
She was lying in her bunk at three AM worried about my scar tissue.
I'm done. Whatever was left of the wall, whatever composure I was holding, it's gone. My forehead drops to hers and my eyes burn and my throat closes and I'm pressing my face against hers and I can feel her tears and mine mixing on the skin between us and I can't speak. For the first time in this corridor I can't speak, because she was worried about my scars, she was lying in the dark wondering if another therapist was being careful enough with the burns on my lower back, and she's telling me this while crying and I can't—-