Page 66 of Deeply Examined

Scratchy, stubbled jaw. Full lips. Sharp nose. His cheeks wet with tears.

“Jess?” He sounds dazed.

I lower my face to his, whispering, “I’m here. I’m here. You’re okay. The power went out. That’s all. You’re safe.” My cheek presses to his cheek, then my lips to his lips. I kiss him in the void of light, touch our only working sensation.

At first, his response is sluggish, but then he kisses me back, gasping consuming kisses, like he can’t breathe unless he’s breathing the same air as I am. I slide down his body until the length of me is molded to him. The pain of my torn-up feet and hands is long forgotten.

“Jess, Jessica, Jess,” he chants my name as his hands come to life. They thread into my hair so he can angle me to deepen our kiss. His tongue slips into my mouth as I open to him. His hands roam down to the straps of my nightgown. Without breaking his mouth from mine, he peels it off my shoulders so my breasts are freed.

West rolls and lays me flat on my back. He hovers over me, braced on one arm, while his other hand travels over my jaw, down my collarbone, and onto my breast. I arch into his palm, filled with longing. Spooked by what just happened, I need the physical reassurance of his touch. West trails kisses down my neck and over each peaked nipple. I cry out as he bites down gently.

“Are you real or am I dreaming?” he whispers into my skin.

My hands are in his hair. I tug his head until his mouth comes back up to meet mine. “Real,” I whisper back, right before we kiss.

Hands shuffle until we’re both naked. West moves between my legs and then pauses. His voice is steadier when he says in a hushed tone, “I don’t have a condom…is that…is it okay?”

I want to remind him that he’s the one who prescribed the birth control pill I slip onto my tongue every morning, that he’s the one who ordered the labs that show I’m clean, but this isn’t the time, so instead I reach down and guide him to my entrance. When he slips into me, it’s a new kind of high. The sensation of his skin on mine, of how it shifts and glides as he moves is so intensely arousing that I almost come right then.

It’s more than the physical, though. It’s a deepening of our emotional connection. How we’re peeling back parts of ourselves, revealing all the things that were hidden before. All the hurt and pain and grief. It’s there between us, and I want to help, to take care of him the way he takes care of his patients, of me.

“Adam,” I whisper, my breath catching as he hits a sensitive spot that feelssogood. “I don’t know what happened just now, and you don’t have to explain until you’re ready, but I need to tell you something.”

At the sound of his first name, he slows down, stops, still hard inside me. In the blackness of his room, I can’t see his expression, which may be a good thing. I’m not sure I’d have the courage to go on otherwise.

“Adam, I know you don’t like the sound of your name. I—”

Hatred and grief curls toxicity into his words as he hisses, “Sheused to say it all the time. I love you,Adam. I hate you,Adam. You ruined my life,Adam. You ungrateful piece of shit,Adam—” He cuts off abruptly and draws in a shuddering breath.

Tears spring to my eyes and tumble down my cheeks. I can’t fathom it, to be abused like that by your own parent. My house growing up was filled with love, but I’m realizing that his was a horror show beyond anything I’d imagined before. My heart shatters for him.

I cup his cheek, stroking it with my thumb. The way he leans into that caress with a sigh reminds me of when we first met back in my apartment. Of the first disastrous time I kissed him.

I gather my thoughts, wanting to make sure I get this right. “I hope I can help rewrite that part of your story. Maybe sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes I can call you Adam. I can tell you how you’re good—”

“No. No, I’m not.” He corrects me with so much conviction that it makes me cry harder. I hate her, the woman who broke him like this.

His mother.

“Yes. Yes, you are. You’re good and so kind and caring and—” I gulp, choking back my tears so he won’t notice I’m crying. I don’t want to make this about me. It needs to be about him, about us. “And I love you, Adam. You’re everything to me.”

A stunned silence, the quiet filled with only the steady drumbeat of our hearts, pressed together.

Then his lips are on mine and he’s thrusting deep, making love to me like his life depends on it. The lights come on, blinding in their harshness. There’s blood from my cuts everywhere. Smeared across his face and staining his white sheets. We’re fucking in it, in my blood, but I barely notice. All I can see is how he stares at me, his gaze adoring, worshipping.

“I love you, Jess. My pretty girl. I’ve loved you forever, and I’m going to keep on loving you until my bones break and my heart stops. That’s the only thing that will ever separate us because I’m never ever leaving you, and you can’t leave me either.”

My orgasm rips through me as the last of his words fade, but I heard every one of them. “Never.” I say the words I know he desperately needs to hear. “I’ll never leave you.”

“Promise me,” he demands as he comes shuddering inside me, and, for the first time, I feel his warmth fill me up and gush down my thighs. “Promise you’ll never go.”

Meaning it with every fiber of my being, I tell Adam, “I promise.”

Chapter sixteen

Adam

We’re at Jessica’s school, the one I used to hate. I can’t help but laugh at the irony of it. Now I leave work early and rush here, of all places. Of course, I’m not coming for the school or even for the students.

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