Page 24 of You Can Make Me
The crushing guilt was almost harder to deal with than my physical limitations.
Once inside the bathroom, I brushed my teeth thoroughly, taking care around the scarred area of my upper lip. I hadn’t looked at myself in a mirror since leaving the hospital, which helped make it all seem like a bad dream but didn’t let me forget that I looked hideous. The beard had started at the hospital, and it had helped camouflage the scar, but my lip still looked wrong, and when I spoke, it got in the way sometimes. My smile was distorted. Eating had been awful for a while, but everything worked now.
I needed to be thankful for small things, I guessed, and quit fretting about how I looked.
Easier said than done.
I sat on the toilet seat to pull off my sweatpants and shirt. Denny had put a shower chair in the roomy stall, which was great when I needed to take a break. He’d also swapped out the overhead spout for a combo one with a handheld device. So thoughtful.
I wrapped a towel around my waist and sat on the chair in the shower. I glanced down at my now nearly concave chest, red scars on my arms, and atrophied thighs just as Denny came in.
He shut the door and turned…and stared.
Denny had never been sparing with compliments, nor had he ever hidden his appreciation for my appearance during the time we were seeing each other. But the look he gave me right then was filled with such longing and lust, such devotion and heat, that it stunned me.
For the entire time we’d been here, he’d been so careful with me, but his feelings had been there, simmering right beneath the surface of every interaction—and I’d ignored them. Disregarded the fact that he’d not only given up his career to be my nursemaid, but he’d put aside his own desires to be here for me.
How was it possible that he could still look at me like this after all I’d put him through?
Instead of wishing I could disappear, with a deep breath, I held my head up and let him look his fill. I expected to feel like my skin was crawling…but this time, it broke out in the good kind of goose bumps.
Something had changed the moment he held me in his arms in the hot spring. It was if a switch was turned back on, and I recognized our connection once more. As if my libido had awakened to the possibilities of what could be if I just quit resisting what I desperately wanted.
The challenge would be to step outside of my hatred for what my body looked like now, and go with my heart’s desire.
He blinked several times, and it reminded me of how he’d looked at me that first night, at Gene’s party, like my very existence made him rethink everything he thought he’d known about humanity. About himself in particular.
I ducked my head slightly and smiled. Man, that night had been something else. And despite everything…he still looked at me that way. There was no pity or horror in his gaze.
“Have you ever had a beard?” I asked.
He approached me, a lopsided smile on his face. “Yeah, after I got out of the Marines. I think all of us buck the grooming standards when we’re done. Didn’t last long, though, because I entered the police academy six months later.”
He clicked on the trimmers and put a gentle hand on my chin, tipping my head back. God, this position reminded me of the first night we’d spent together in Las Vegas. Me sitting on the back of the couch in my hotel room, Denny invading my space, but forbidding me to touch him while he figured out how to touch another man intimately for the first time.
“Did you know you wanted to be a cop when you got out of the service?”
He shook his head and went to work, trimming the out-of-control growth on my face with precise strokes.
“Nah. I tried a few other things first. I got recruited by some defense contractors, but I hated the attitude of the guys in charge who had no idea what it was like to serve in combat, and being around the Vietnam vets in those companies was just fucking awful. Those guys were like the walking dead. I saw some shit, no doubt, but I got out before it sucked the life out of me.”
“Were you ever in combat? I wondered, but we never talked about it.”
“Panama.”
“No shit? When? I don’t remember learning about that.”
He huffed out a breath. “Why would you? It wasn’t one of our greatest moments. Eighty-nine to ninety. Right after I finished boot. Didn’t last too long, but yeah. Long enough for me to hope that was the last of it. Then they sent us to Somalia. Operation Restore Hope. Then Rwanda to help with evacuations. My last deployment was to Bosnia.”
I blanched, and he tsked me.
“Don’t move or I’ll fuck this up.” He spoke softly, and his touch…so careful, so gentle. Not how I ever would have imagined being handled by a Marine.
I put my hands on his waist, careful not to bump him. I needed to test the waters. Could I handle the intimacy? With him so close, touching me, could I forget what he was looking at? I’d always been an affectionate person. Touch was my love language. I realized then just how starved I was for it.
“That must have been heartbreaking. Peacekeeping missions?”
He nodded, a crease appearing between his heavy brows that usually added a stern effect to his expression, except when I could tell he was covering up a hurt so deep he likely didn’t know how to acknowledge it.
