Page 40 of Swerve
He doesn’t give himself or her time to think about it. He unsnaps her seat belt and reaches for her, pulling her up against him and locking his arms around her. She holds herself stiff, as if giving in to the comfort will label her incapable of dealing with what she’s facing.
“It’s okay,” he says, resting his hand at the center of her back.
She holds out for another fifteen seconds or so, but when she breaks, it is instant, and she folds herself against him, burying her face against his shirt. The sobs are back, and he understands that she has absolutely no control over them. That all the pain she’s been keeping behind the dam between her heart and reality has broken. He absorbs the pain, holding her as tight as she’ll let him.
Birdsong drifts in through his lowered window, along with traffic sounds and the muted laughter of children somewhere nearby. He’s reminded of how easily the world goes on, despite the pain and those times when people have no choice but to stop and release it.
Her grief is a tangible force inside the Jeep, and he feels the knot in his throat thicken. As her sobs soften, he becomes aware of the woman in his arms. The clean scent of her hair, the feel of her cheek against his chest. His body stirs, and he shoots himself with a mental cussword. He’s the one who stiffens now, and she takes it as a signal to pull away, comfort session over.
She wipes her hands across her face and then reluctantly lets her gaze meet his. “You’re kind,” she says.
He turns in his seat, facing forward. “No, I’m not,” he says. “Believe me.”
“That’s what you want the world to think.”
“Hard to take off the psychiatrist hat, I guess,” he says.
“I don’t need to be a psychiatrist to figure that out.”
“Look. That was inappropriate. I shouldn’t have—”
“Thank you,” she says. “It felt good to let another human being feel what I’m feeling.”
He looks at her then, sees the earnestness in her blue eyes, and tells himself not to make a big deal out of this. So he’s human. Maybe he’d forgotten.
They sit in silence for a string of awkward moments. Awkward for him, anyway. He tries to put this outing back in professional territory. “We should get going,” he says, turning the key and starting the Jeep.
“Why are you on leave?” she asks.
The question surprises him, and apparently, he doesn’t do a very good job of hiding it.
“Did you have a choice?” she adds.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I didn’t.”
She stares at him, waiting for him to go on.
“I agreed to go home with the wrong wife of the wrong senator,” he says, scrutinizing her face so that he doesn’t miss the shock that flashes in her eyes.
“Oh,” she says, looking away as if she realizes she’s bitten off more than she knows what to do with. “Well, that’s—”
“Not what you expected,” he finishes.
“No. It isn’t.”
“What did you expect?”
She looks back at him, shrugs. “Defying an order from your superior? Late to work one too many times?”
He smiles a little at the sarcasm in her voice. It doesn’t fit her. “They probably would have been better choices.”
“Yeah. Why would you—” She breaks off there, holding a hand in the air. “Sorry. None of my business.”
“She offered,” he answers. “I like sex and beautiful women.”
Her face suffuses with color. “You’re very direct, aren’t you?”
“What purpose would it serve to be otherwise?”
