Page 22 of Deep Connection

“I’m fine. It looks worse than it is,” I told her. Abigail clicked her tongue at me, and I didn’t have to see her expression to know what that meant. I tried so hard to focus on something else. I didn’t want my face to show off how guilty I was for saying nothing about it. I couldn’t see my own face, but if it looked half as bad as it felt, I could imagine why she had that tremor to her voice. It was hard to focus on much of anything else. She was so upset, and I told her that I was fine, repeatedly. I was trying to get her to worry less, but I don’t think that was going to happen.

“What happened? Who did this to you? Did you get jumped again?”

I grimaced when that was the first place that her mind went to with it. I was now this victim type of person, and it just made me hate living like this even more. Maybe all I was doing was worth it, just so I didn’t have to worry about all of the rest of it. I didn’t want to be a victim. I didn’t want to feel like a victim, especially not in front of the woman I was vibing with. She already thought enough about me, I didn’t want to give her a reason to see me and my incapabilities any more than she did.

“No, it was some stuff the doctor did. I told you I had an appointment.” I sounded very defensive, but she was still touching me, and she was acting like I was the one that was so delicate. I wasn’t going to break, and I didn’t want her acting like I was going to. I pushed her hands away in my frustration. I heard them drop to her side.

“What do you want me to say, Jason? You sent me that weird text and then you look like this.”

“You were supposed to back off and give me some space. I thought I was clear in the message.”

Abigail scoffed and said that she wasn’t going to leave me when I looked like this. “What did they do to you?”

I shrugged and I felt her hands on me again, a finger lightly tracing the skin of my cheek. What did she see that brought about so much alarm? I wanted to make her feel better about it, but I didn’t know exactly what it was she needed to feel better about. “I am fine, Abigail, really.”

She didn’t believe me. I could feel her body moving from where she was shaking her head. I couldn’t blame her either. I felt bad. I told her a bit of what the doctor said he had done, though when she asked for details, I didn’t have any for her. Instead, I repeated back what I was told. I didn’t know if this was all what really happened or not, but I hoped that it was. It was hard for me to focus when she was touching me.

I leaned in to kiss her and she scoffed, pushing me back. “No.”

“Am I ugly now, too ugly for you?”

“No, you just look bad, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

I told her that she couldn’t hurt me, but she didn’t believe me. Since I was in pain, I didn’t believe me either. Everything hurt, even breathing. How was I supposed to say anything else to that? “I will be fine. I didn’t want you to fuss over me and feel sorry for me. I wanted you to remember me like you did the other night. That is a better look I think.”

“Well, I am here for all of it, Jason. Do you want something to eat? You look hungry.”

I didn’t know how I looked hungry, but I was. I hadn’t thought about food much, my mind occupied with many other things instead. There was a part of me that wanted to pretend like I didn’t need help, but I did. I needed Abigail and if she was going to cook for me, I was going to go with it. There wasn’t much else that I needed.

She made me dinner and I told her about the new hope I had in Dr. Griffin. Abigail said she hoped as well, and I knew that she was rooting for me. She was the type of woman that wasn’t going to hope ill for me. She wanted things to go right, as much as I did, and that made me feel so much better to know that she was on my side.

When it got later, we talked about our time in the military. It was crazy, but it was also one of the best times of our lives. I wanted Abigail to know that I appreciated her, but the words failed me. I wasn’t used to someone like her, someone that cared. It was going to take time to get used to, but I wanted to. It was certainly something that I could get used to.

“Why did you want to keep me away, Jason?”

He sighed and told me that he wasn’t sure. “I just didn’t want you to see me like this. We haven’t been together that long, so I didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

I told him that I wasn’t overwhelmed very easily, but I knew that he had gone through a lot. Military men were always just moving fast under the surface. I was sure that he had seen things that most hadn’t. I knew that I’d seen too much myself, but that was what was good about it. I knew what he was talking about. I knew that there wasn’t going to be anything that he could say that I hadn’t seen or heard about before. I wanted him to know that he could count on me as someone to talk to, but I wasn’t the type to talk. I liked to keep things to myself, no matter how hard it was.

“Seriously, you don’t have to hide things from me, Jason. You can be whoever you are.”

He nodded that he understood, but I didn’t expect anything to change. I tried my best to get him to open up about more and it wasn’t coming out. Jason wanted to keep it all close to his chest. How could I blame him when I was the exact same way?

We spent the night holding each other and watching a movie. Since he was hurting pretty bad, we didn’t have sex, though he would have tried if I would have let him. I didn’t think it would be good, so I made us do something else, and I bet what we were going to do instead would have been better.

I fell asleep in his arms and realized as I was drifting off to sleep that I was likely going to get hurt. I had already fallen for Jason and there was nothing I could do about it. I wanted him badly, and before too long, I was trying my best to focus on something else. He could tell I think too, because he started to wake up when I was moving around in his arms.

“What are you doing, Abigail?”

I stopped, embarrassed and hoping that he had no idea why I was up or why I wouldn’t go to sleep. It was barely enough that I knew. I would be mortified if he knew as well.

Since he was smarter than I wanted, he knew right off, like he could smell it or something. “Do you miss us together? It has been forever, hasn’t it?”

It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours, so I thought that he was being silly, but I said that it had been too long. I craved him, I loved him, and he could never know. He would think I was crazy and maybe I was. I shouldn’t feel all of this for Jason. I shouldn’t feel anything really, but I was head over heels in love, and the realization was a scary one. What was I going to do now?

19

Jason

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