“Okay,” he said finally, giving her a reluctant nod. “We can go back to sleep.”
“Ha.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “Aren’t you supposed to heal best while sleeping? I don’t think getting up every two hours constitutes sleeping!”
“Sorry, baby.” His smile was infuriating as he reached for the light switch. “At least we don’t have to get up in the morning.”
“You’re worse than any nurse,” Lindsey muttered, yanking the sheet up over her shoulder and turning away from him. The weekend, she realized-no school for her, no work for him. But what about Monday? What then? Would everyone know what had happened? Her reputation had been in shreds for years, she didn’t care a bit about that.
Whatever she had done before, had been her choice, she reasoned. But this time…
“You cold?” Zach pulled the comforter up to join the sheet at her neckline when she shivered.
“No.” She winced at the pain of his touch on her tender back. “Yes. I don’t know.” He lowered his head to touch hers in the darkness, kissing the top of her ear. “I wish…”
“Don’t say it.” She didn’t think she could stand another ounce of kindness or pity.
Zach sighed, his breath warm on her neck. “I don’t think I have the words, anyway.”
“Good.”
He feathered kisses over the back of her neck, pushing her long hair out of his way. “Sleep…”
“I was,” she sighed as he settled in behind her, pressing his chest to her back, forgetting, she knew, but she couldn’t help her gasp of pain at the sudden pressure.
“Ah damn!” He moved back a little, his big hand resting on her hip. “Oh damnit, Lindsey. Damn them!”
His sudden change, the vehement anger in his tone, startled her. The Zach she knew didn’t get angry, not really. The hand moving over her hip shook, and she knew it was trembling with rage.
“I could kill them.” He whispered it under the cover of the darkness, as if he’d been afraid to speak the words aloud before, in the light, with all its possibilities. “With my bare hands.”
She believed him. “It was my own fault.”
“No.” His grip tightened, and his hand would have made a fist if he hadn’t been squeezing her hip. “I don’t care what you said about the little games you play-
It was like he couldn’t make any more words. She gave a strangled little laugh that sounded more like a sob to her own ears than anything else. “Didn’t I?”
“No,” he murmured, pulling the sheet aside, exposing her back to the air. “Oh my god, no, sweetheart, no…” His lips moved over her back, kissing the wounds there. The deeper ones he had carefully bandaged before they’d gone to bed, but there were too many to cover completely, and it was the shallow ones he kissed now, over and over. It reminded her of those few memories she had of her father, of falling down and him putting on the Band-Aid, kissing it and making it all better. “Please don’t believe it. Not for a minute. You didn’t ask for this. It’s not your fault.” She didn’t believe it-couldn’t-and she cringed away, rolling to her belly and clutching the pillow. He didn’t stop touching her, his fingers grazing lightly, cautious, as if he were petting a shy animal, his lips murmuring words against her back, and he kept on whispering those awful, painful words.
“I know you’re hurting.” His breath was too warm, too human, too comforting. It made her want to cry and she fought it-hard. “God, baby, I could tell from the first minute I saw you. It shouldn’t be possible for a girl your size to be carrying around so much pain.”
“No,” she choked, begging him to stop, knowing he wouldn’t. This was worse, his tenderness, his kind words, worse than the rape, worse than anything.
“I just want to love you.” His forehead pressed against her lower back, and the sting she felt there was the salt of his tears. That realization broke her-Zach, crying, in pain-and all she wanted to do was curl into a ball and die.
“I don’t deserve you.” She sobbed against the pillow, the dam breaking, her body shaking with it. “I don’t deserve this.”
“Oh, baby.” Zach moved in beside her, taking her, fighting, into his arms. She tried to resist, shaking her head, pushing back, but he was too strong for her. “Please,”
he murmured into her hair as she began to give, letting him hold her. “Let me love you. Just let me love you.”
“I can’t.” Her strangled cry muffled itself against his chest, and he rocked her, back and forth, into a bed covers cocoon in the dark. “You don’t understand.”
