Page 54 of Crow

“I might not be your real wife or your real anything. We’re barely more than strangers. I know that, but it feels like more. Whatever you have to say, I’m not going to go running. I can’t give you a good reason to trust me, but I won’t hurt you.” My thumbs dig harder into the meat of his palms. “If nothing else, I’d like to be a friend.”

Something in my face or my voice, or the crazy forces that drew us together in the first place, must reverberate with him. His eyes were blown out, but now they change, focusing on me and growing softer.

“I’ve never been diagnosed. I don’t know what technical term I should use. In my head, and sometimes more than that, in this body… there are two of us. I’m Crow. My real name is Adam. He’s Raven, or Owen.”

What? Of all the things I was expecting him to say, or maybe there were no expectations because I couldn’t even imagine what was so bad… it wasn’t this.

“I’m the dominant. I’m the one who is here most of the time, but when he’s not the one driving this body, he’s in my head. Some people hear their thoughts in sentences, and it’s like that. Constantly. There has never been a time when I’m not stillthere, observing, deep from within my own body, but last night, I can’t remember a thing. When you kissed me, Raven took over.”

Oh my god. Oh my fucking god.

“We’ve never been in agreement over one single thing before, until you. He wants you. I want you. We want you to be our woman in whatever way you’d like, which is probably no way, now that you know. I can’t keep lying to you, even if that means I lose you. I need you to know the truth.”

I don’t know what to say. What words could possibly do any of this justice? Crow’s obvious pain—and Raven’s pain—cries out, tortured, like a screaming wind rattling around me. The tendrils of his sorrow and the ache of his past reach deep inside, undoing something in me.

He’s strong, tattooed, anyone would easily say scary. There’s likely more blood on his hands than what is literally there right now, but his dark eyes carry a new fragility. A raw vulnerability. He expects a wide rip to be torn in the universe that we were creating. It’s been so very easy from the start, even though it should have been the most difficult thing either of us has ever done.

I’ve taken too long to say anything. I don’t know what my face is doing, but Crow takes it as rejection.

“Okay,” he says, his voice unusually. He turns, ready to just… walk off.

Like we’re finished.

I’m so far from done with him.

“Wait!” He doesn’t.

I have to chase him, race in front of him, and throw my arms out against his shoulders. My palms sink into warm cotton, buffeted by the granite breadth of him beneath.

“You know what I see right now? A man covered in the blood of a homeless animal that he poured his heart out to save. An intelligent, funny, tender, misunderstood, lonely person who needs to be loved as badly as anyone else. You didn’t lie to me. This isn’t something that you just blurt out. I don’t know how to help you, but I think you’re tearing yourself apart. I don’t know what to do, but I can try and help you figure it out. I don’t mean doctors or clinics if you don’t want. I mean books and reading and going over endless question and answers, tirelessly, if we have to.”

“Why are you not afraid or appalled?”

“I’m surprised, but I also learned about all sorts of different medical conditions. I’ve never met anyone yet, and certainly I’m no doctor, but I know this is very real.”

Anger and pain flit across his face. “A very real disorder.”

“Technically that might be what people call it, but I don’t think there’s anythingwrongwith you. Not in the way that word could make a person feel like they’re condemned or broken.”

He holds his bloody palms up, breaking my hold on him, but his just stay there, in the air. “I’m tired, Tarynn. I’m exhausted. I feel broken.”

I don’t care that we’ve only known each other for a short time or that this would be too much intimacy for people who have already spent a lifetime together. I throw myself at him, wrapping my arms as far as they’ll go. I tuck my face into the crook of his shoulder.

“Crow.Raven. It’s okay. You’re both going to get through this. You’ll survive this, like you’ve survived everything else. It’s okay to need a break. Let me be here for you the same way you were there for me. No questions asked. Balls to the wall. Err- I don’t have balls, but if I did, that’s right where I’d be sticking them.”

A low rumble of a laugh rattles through him and finally, his hands land on my back. “If your parents have any responsibility for shaping you into this person you are right now, I guess that I can’t hate them.”

Vegas is so wild that no one stops us or gives us a second glance even though we stay locked together for a good while.

When we break away, Crow leads us to a busier street and gets us a cab. The elderly man is a surprise. He’s polite, though, and doesn’t charge us extra because we’re dirty and bloody.

We have to walk through the hotel like that, and we do get a few funny looks. Opening up the door to my room feels like a safe place. The silence envelops us. We both stand there, soaking it in, until Crow moves. He heads into the bathroom and starts scrubbing at his hands and arms. He shucks his blood stained t-shirt.

I creep in, my heart in my throat, but he doesn’t tell me to leave. I think about getting the shower going, but I think he needs more than that. It seems as though he’s gone a lifetime without being touched and that’s what I want to do for him now.Holdhim.

I start filling the huge jet tub instead.

While Crow is still washing up, I slip out of the ripped up jeans, toe off my boots, and shimmy off the thin long-sleevedshirt with the motorcycle on the front. It’s another reminder that plans have changed, and we need a new solution.

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