Page 80 of Maybe You

“The rest is a bit fuzzy in places. Fires are… Fires are incredibly fast once they get going. I never knew just how fast before I saw it with my own eyes. And then my clothes caught fire, and since I was in my crappy school uniform when I fell asleep, it didn’t burn, it melted.”

His thumb is making circles on the inside of my wrist now.

“How did you survive?” he asks.

My eyes stay locked on the thumb like he’s hypnotizing me.

“I jumped out the window.”

The thumb stills for a moment before he continues sliding it over my skin.

“What floor?”

“Third. It was that or burn to death. One prospect was more appealing than the other,” I say lightly. I’ve had years to come to terms with what happened, so the multiple cycles of grief and horror have battered the memory into something manageable. I can talk about it with the detachment of a news reporter by now. “I didn’t even break anything. Somehow. Just twisted my ankle pretty brutally. And then I basically crawled away from the building.” I shrug one shoulder. “After that there’s a huge chunk missing. I was in a coma for a week, so I don’t have any firsthand accounts of what happened during that time.”

“That’s…” He spends a while seemingly looking for words to describe the that before he settles on “Fucking hell.”

He’s not asking, but somehow I just keep talking.

“I was in intensive care for two months. They kept telling my mom and my sister and her boyfriend to prepare for the worst. That I might not make it. And there are moments there when you start to wish you wouldn’t.”

His gaze is locked on mine, and I want to stop, but my mouth just keeps moving.

“It’s a bit like torture. For a good cause. But still torture to the point where you’re not so sure if the ends are worth the means. The damaged skin is cut away, and doctors create skin grafts from unburned skin. They slice open the limbs because of all the swelling. It’s the kind of pain where painkillers don’t really feel like they’re working at all. You have to move around, otherwise your joints will seize up and the scars that’ll form will cement you into a solid block. Healing hurts, and it itches like a motherfucker, and you aren’t allowed to scratch, and every time somebody you love steps into the room, they start to cry, and it starts to feel like you’re in hell. This is the rest of your life and nothing will ever get better, and you’d rather die.”

I stare at the ceiling with an unseeing gaze for a moment before I turn my head and find Sutton’s eyes again.

“But then you do start to get better. So slowly you don’t even register at first, but you heal. And you come out on the other side, profoundly grateful that you’re still alive.”

We’re both silent after that, but he keeps touching me, and the area that touch covers gets larger as the minutes tick by. I have a weird relationship with being touched. With extensive burns, at first, all touch is torture. Then there comes a point where you’re so touch starved you’d give anything for a hug, but your immune system is compromised because of the loss of skin, so no one has hugged you for ages, and if they did you’d be screaming in pain anyway. And then even when you’re better, people are wary of touching you. You force yourself to get used to it, and then you’re the one who becomes wary of touch because you’ve put in the effort and gone through withdrawal, so why put yourself in that position again at all?

But now Sutton’s hands are all over me, and somehow I find myself leaning into the touches. In some carefully choreographed dance neither of us acknowledges, we end up lying side by side, bodies lined up, one of his arms underneath my neck with the other hand absently tracing patterns on my chest.

I’m tense at first, because this feels scary in a whole new way. Somehow this feels much riskier than sex does. Sex is easy to compartmentalize. This? This feels dangerously intimate.

This feels dangerously good.

Neither of us is here for that. I have just enough common sense left to recognize and remember that. This is not what we’re about, and it would be smart as fuck if I didn’t put myself in a position where those lines start to blur. I don’t want any extra complications. This thing between me and Sutton, this arrangement, has to stay in its designated slot.

I roll myself off the bed.

He blinks and a startled look crosses his face before he wipes it off.

“I have to get going.” I sort through the clothes that litter the floor everywhere. I already feel more in control, and the weird moment from earlier feels like a fluke.

Sutton gets up as well and stalks toward me.

He’s so close, and then he’s touching me again, which is a bit counterproductive for those boundaries I’m supposed to be keeping firmly in my sights. He’s standing right behind me, his hands on my hips, and he starts to kiss the nape of my neck.

I should move.

But I stay put.

And I suppress a smile when he grabs my ass while I try to pull on my pants. I try to take my shirt and can’t find it anymore.

Eventually I have to laugh.

“What are you doing?” I ask when he’s in the middle of rubbing his semi against me and getting my dick interested in the process pretty effectively.

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