Page 18 of Empty Heat
I stood. “I’m going to go look at the sea out back. Where you showed me yesterday. I just need to stand there and feel the breeze on my face for a few minutes.”
“Of course. I’ll come with you.”
“No. Alone. I need to just go for a minute or so. I’ll come back and we can talk more. I want to talk more. But right now, I want to feel it all. Something inside me just wants that.”
“You are welcome to walk the grounds anywhere you like. Except for beyond the locked gates at the private pools.” He smiled.
I nodded. “Thank you.”
I hurried past him and out the back door. By the time I got outside into the humid, tropical warmth where the emeralds and rubies and ambers of the jungle completely rewrote my definitions of beauty, molten tears rolled down my cheeks.
This was hard for me. So hard. I couldn’t be fixed, not physically, and I knew that. It would have been so much easier if I could have had surgery to fix the problem.
Now my training had to be mental and physical, intimate and invasive, and not end with a single treatment.
It was terrifying to face this. Laying myself bare. I knew it was all medical to these people, these sex surrogates, but to me it was anything but that. It was my very heart put on view for all to analyze.
6
Lev –You Can’t Hear the Whistle
Iheard the back door of the cabin open and close. I had clippers in my hand and stood in front of a hedge along the side yard of the cabin. I wasn’t actually pruning but pretending to prune. A deception I was not happy about.
From my vantage, I saw Callum bounce down the back porch steps and move across the lawn toward the trees and the vista point we’d all gone to yesterday.
He was alone.
I stashed my gloves and shears and slowly made my way across the lawn. I wasn’t sneaking up on him. I wanted to be seen. Clearly, something was up if Rhodes was not following.
I moved quickly behind him, letting my footfalls crunch on the blue gravel by the hedge.
Callum turned. “Lev?”
“Hey. I’ll leave you alone if you prefer, but I just want to make sure everything is fine.”
Callum quickly ran the back of his hand across his eyes and I realized his lashes were damp, the skin around his eyes showing some pink.
“Callum?” I came up alongside him. “I don’t mean to intrude.”
“You’re not.” He forced a smile.
I didn’t like the look of him, so I stopped moving. “The sea is beautiful today,” I said.
“Yeah. Good.” He looked me up and down, pretending he wasn’t upset. “How do you do all that work outdoors in the leaves and dirt but keep your kimono so clean?”
“Talent?” I let out a short chuckle.
“I wanted to just feel the breeze off the sea.”
“I understand. I’ll leave you alone.”
“No. I—” He stopped, glancing back at the house. “I hope Rhodes isn’t mad.”
“Of course not. He knows, just like I do, that sometimes patients need their alone times.”
“I don’t mind if you walk with me,” Callum said. “You’re—you’ve been kind.”
“Just being myself. I have enjoyed our discussions and appreciate being invited to breakfast.”
