Page 143 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
Beautiful.
She’s so fucking beautiful.
The entire room is the color of rain—the windows to the storm, the gray wood paneling the walls and planking the floor, all of it pale and argent—and it makes her silvery too. She’s made out of pearls today: her hair, her skin, even her perfect, rosy lips are the shade and sheen of unspoiled nacre.
My pearl.
God, I’ve been stupid.
For more than a week I’ve been denied her, and if I needed any more proof that I’d fallen in love, I certainly had it after ten sleepless nights and just as many miserable days—unable to work, eat, or even think without her sunny smiles and breathless kisses. My bed, my arms, my days, they all bore the burning imprint of her absence. I felt like she’d gone to the Cotswolds with one of my lungs, or maybe my liver, or maybe all my nerves and nerve endings since I couldn’t seem to feel a damn thing without her. Since I felt half dead.
I am walking toward her now, my strides turning into a run, and then she’s in my arms, all warm, ripe curves and berry-sweet scent.
She’s letting me hold her.
She’s pressing her face into my neck, she’s letting me kiss her hair, and I’m shaking, I’m shaking like the leaves in the storm outside, as if it’s all I can do to hang on. And I realize I’m talking too, talking like I never do, in a nervous, quavery chatter.
“I just arrived and I saw your car and the things for the party and Abby said you’d disappeared and I was searching for you everywhere, and I was about to go outside, but I thought I’d look up here—”
I break off as she pulls back and I see the smudges under her eyes, like she hasn’t been sleeping either. Her mouth—though painted perfectly in something pale pink and scrumptious—is pressed together in some kind of struggle. And her eyes, those honey eyes normally so clear and open, are shuttered.
I’m shaking harder now, but even fear and guilt can’t stop my Domme instincts; I reach up and brush a thumb along the apple of her cheek, right where the skin goes thin and delicate under her eye. She’s wearing some makeup, but not enough to hide this.
“You haven’t been sleeping.”
“I missed you,” she says simply. My heart lifts at this, floats right into my throat, because maybe this means she’ll forgive me for missing the exhibition, maybe she’ll forgive me for being such a bastard about love.
But her eyes don’t open up for me, and strain still pulls at that plush, pink mouth.
Guardedly, I ask, “Is that all?”
She steps away from my touch and my hand hangs there in the air for a moment before I can make myself drop it back to my side. “I started a new kind of therapy this week with Dr. Joy,” she says. “Exposure therapy, a type of CBT. It’s, um. Intense.”
I’m relieved that the answer isn’t because I’ve been pondering how to break up with you, but this is a fresh cut on my heart.
New therapy? Something intense enough to give her trouble sleeping? I should know about this, I should have been there to help her. Are things really that fucked between us? That she didn’t feel like she could tell me about this and ask me for support?
“Delph, you should have told me. Even if we’re apart, I’m always here to help you with anything like that.”
She hugs herself again, chafing her arms. She’s in a tight, off-the-shoulder white top and a swishy lavender skirt with a pretty silk bow in the back. She looks like she’s ready to be fucked over a tea table.
“It’s hard,” she says after a moment, “because no one can help me. Isn’t that just silly? Laughably uneconomical? I’m surrounded with people who want to help me with anything I ask them to, but this is the one thing no one can do on my behalf. No one else can untangle the knots in my mind, no one else can forge new neural links in my brain. It will always and forever be my cross to bear.”
I hate this. I hate anything that I can’t point to and immediately solve, and I just want to fix it for her, I wish I could heal whatever wound this is myself. “I can still be there for you,” I point out. “If you’re having trouble sleeping, I can hold you, and if being inside your own mind is too hard to bear alone, then I’ll bear it with you. I’ll stay next to you, I’ll keep you safe from everything else.”
She takes her lip into her mouth—white edges cutting into soft pink flesh—and a familiar bolt of lust sizzles behind my clit. But I ignore it, still feeling uncertain and now very worried about my Delphine.
“Is this from . . . is it about what happened?”
It’s funny, how we’re all so euphemistic about it, when Delphine can be so matter-of-fact and blunt. “The rape?” she clarifies. “Yes, it is about that, except it’s—it sounds so silly to say out loud, but here it goes, I suppose. I was wearing a lipstick that night. It was called Cherry Tree.” Her voice goes a little wobbly when she says the words Cherry Tree out loud, but she keeps going. “It was smeared on the mouth of one of my rapists after he kissed me, and the memory of it . . .” Her voice does falter here, and she blinks back tears.
“It’s like it’s happening all over again. I can be in a car or watching a movie or in a restaurant, I can be in bright daylight and surrounded by people, but it’s like my body doesn’t know that, it’s like I’m still not safe, like I’m—”
I can’t listen to this without touching her. I can’t. I slide my hands over the dip in her waist and pull her close, like I can prove to her adrenal system that she’s safe if only I hold her tight enough.
“It started with the lipstick itself. I couldn’t wear it again. I ended up throwing it away. But then I found myself not wearing anything by that brand anymore, and then I started avoiding the lipstick section in stores in case I’d see the brand’s logo. Then I started avoiding the stores altogether. And then the word cherry itself began to bother me, and then the fruit, and then even pictures of the fruit. And it’s so silly, you know? So strange and so stupid when I say it out loud, and so I couldn’t bear to tell anybody. Not my parents, not Auden. Not even Dr. Joy until just last week.”
I remember her red-eyed and forcing smiles in the shower. “That day, the day of your photoshoot—it wasn’t a makeup allergy, was it?”
