I step inside and close the gold-trimmed door behind me. With my hands behind my back, I place them against the glass and lean into my arms. The coolness of the surface as I lean against it briefly shocks me. But I don’t care. Unwavering I maintain eye contact; fighting every urge I have to appraise his God-like body, his broad shoulders, his defined chest, the narrowing and the deep V of his hips. Cognizant of the degree of vulnerability he is braving, if we were to give into anything sexual, I would feel as though I was taking advantage of the circumstance. But then again, we have barely touched each other in such a way in almost three weeks.
Pushing myself away from the glass, I take another slow step toward him, feeling the light mist of the water as it bounces off his skin. He watches me carefully, shrewdly as I take another step. We’re toe-to-toe. I lift my head back and look into his intense and perplexed eyes as I silently seek answers. Lifting my right hand with great caution, I set it on the side of his face, my left hand I place over his heart.
He gasps, and I see his eyes fall victim to moisture.
“I love you, Hayden. You feel joy, I feel joy. You feel sad, I feel sad. You feel pain, and fear…I feel it, too. We experience it together, we deal with it together, and we move on from it together.”
After a moment, Hayden eclipses the hand which sits over his heart with his own, and grasps me with his opposite hand, pulling me under the refreshing torrent with him. Both his arms encompass my waist, while I reach up on my tip-toes to cling around his neck.
“I am so sorry, beautiful,” he snivels into my neck, before pulling away.
Retracting his arms from my waist, he frames them on either side of my face. Holding me still, he joins his mouth with mine, kissing me with tenderness, adoration, and a passion that we have missed for a short while. We are breathless when he pulls away, but he doesn’t attempt to free my face of his framing hands. He presses his forehead against mine, his thumb gliding over my swelling mouth as he continues to hold me. “I love you,” he whispers, the salty tears of his nightmare, melding with the water.
It’s 3:00 a.m. by the time we climb back into bed. My fingertips are shriveled like an old woman’s fingers as a result of holding each other under the torrent for God only knows how long.
I reach over and turn off the bedside lamp. The glow of the moon infiltrates the room, allowing the shadow of Hayden’s window blinds to be cast upon the opposite wall.
I cosy down and raise the comforter up to my chin before turning onto my right-side to face him. He lies on his back studying the ceiling. I hear him inhale and open his mouth as if to say something, but no words follow.
I don’t know what to do, or how to act. I don’t want to accidently provoke him into snapping at me again. So I remain silent, and cautiously rest my left arm over his middle.
Drawing his focus away from the shadowed ceiling, he turns his head and watches me.
“We had better try and get some sleep, honey,” I murmur, rhythmically tracing my fingertips up and down the center valley of his stomach and chest. He nods his head sleepily. “I love you,” I finish, depositing a kiss on his broad shoulder.
“Sam…” he wavers, but I offer the same patient expression that he displays toward me in my times of apprehension. He licks his lips and swallows hard. “Can you…” he sighs an upset, defeated sigh, and lifts his right arm to flop over his eyes.
“Can I what, Hayden?”
“Can you hold me, please? Just until I drift,” he asks his embarrassment palpable. His voice is so broken.
Oh, my poor, Hayden. I hate feeling this helpless, how can I get him through this?
“Of, course I will. Come here.” I roll onto my back, and raise my right arm in the air. Hayden inches to me and snuggles down under my arm, resting the side of his face against my breast and positions his right arm across my stomach.
Kissing the top of his head, I then lean my cheek against his dampened hair. My fingertips swirl in a circular motion over his back, gradually soothing him. And within twenty minutes, his breathing is soft and even. As my man lies in my arms, peacefully sleeping, it brings me contentment knowing that it’s with my arms around him, holding him to me as he drifts into unconsciousness, which brings him the peace that he needs.
The awful, irritating beeping of the alarm clock wakes me at 6:00 a.m. It’s one of those alarms that drills into your frontal lobe, and sounds like a manic applause when you have been exposed to the first two or three beeps. Hayden usually turns it off by the second beep, but the annoying sound still reverberates after the third.
I throw myself over to the vacant space of Hayden’s side, searching blindly for the off switch, but give up and hit it instead. It shuts up immediately.
Rubbing my hands over my face, I flop back onto the bed and groan in a very unladylike fashion. Oh, the days when I would sleep in till 8:00 a.m. It seems all but a lifetime ago. Unenthusiastically pushing myself from the mattress, I throw one of Hayden’s T-shirts on, and stroll dozily down the hall to find Hayden.
The strong scent of full-bodied, early morning coffee wafts through the hall, making my feel like I’ve rolled out of bed and stepped straight into a coffee shop…my favorite scent in the world––well, apart from Hayden that is.
I poke my head around the kitchen doorway to my left. Hayden is sat on one of the stools at the black and silver granite kitchen island, hunched over staring into his cup. He looks so worn-out, fatigued and not his usual self by any means.
His thick, dark locks flop over his brow as he practically buries his face into his black coffee.
Ambling across the black tiled flooring, I head for the pot on the counter just behind Hayden and pour myself a large cup. With my morning caffeine fix in the grasp of my left hand, I snake my right arm around his neck. Cocking my head, I whisper in his ear, “Good morning,” and kiss him on the cheek.
He remains silent, but the feel of his body stiffening when my lips touch his skin is more than enough to tell me what I need to know…even if I don’t understand it.
Not wanting to antagonize him anymore than he is already bearing, I uncoil my arm from around him, and step around the corner of the island. I prop my elbows on the cold surface and arch my back, leaning into my forearms.
“Did you manage to get any sleep?”
“Fuck did, I,” he snaps, making no attempt to pull his head up from the spiraling steam that swirls from the cup to his nostrils.
I straighten my posture, and with every ounce of compassion that flows through my body, place my hand over his. “Hayden––” he pulls away from my touch, withdrawing from me again, and it is a shard of ice spearing right through my heart.
Shaking his head, he pushes away from the chrome-legged stool, and gulps back the remainder of his coffee before washing up the empty cup and placing it on the drainer. He walks around the island the opposite way from where I am stood, dragging his feet. And to avoid looking at me, he keeps his head down.
“Hayden, please. We need to talk about this.” I follow up behind him and grasp his shoulder in an attempt to pull him around to face me, or at least stop him in his tracks.
“Please, Samantha…just leave me alone,” he drones, shaking off my grip then with a weighted sigh, pads down the hall to the bedroom to get ready for work.
I head back to the kitchen wounded. I feel him slipping from me, withdrawing back into the gloomy abyss that he struggled for so long to rid himself of. The passion that we once had now seems like a distant dream…dream…that’s what got us into this mess. Why the fuck won’t he just tell me, it’s not as though he is hiding anything else from me. They are just dreams.
I’m lost, left unknowing what to do, how to handle this episode that is putting so much strain on our relationship. I cannot lose him, I will not lose him. Even with her counseling degree, Jessie wouldn’t be able to give a decent insight into how to manage this, for she has no idea of the trauma he has been subjected to.
Feeling defeated and pleading for answers, I throw my face into my hands as I rest against the cold surface of the island once more.
Please, give me strength…or even better…patience.
I breathe heavily and finally raise my head. I allow my hands to run through my hair before locking my fingers at the nape of my neck.
I notice Hayden’s cell resting undisturbed on the counter top by the dishwasher. I sink my teeth into my lip, and quickly turn to face the doorway to make sure Hayden is not returning just yet. The cell taunts me, using my curiosity and desperation as an incentive to the possible, bad idea that is formulating in my anxious, impulsive, sleep deprived head.
I saunter over to the counter and grasp the phone. I stand glaring at it, willing it to help with my decision. I have already invaded Hayden’s privacy once, and it totally backfired, could I do it again? Am I going to get burned again if I do this? Can I continue to watch the man I love suffer night after night, and not know how to alleviate his pain? Do I want to take the risk and have this tear us apart because I couldn’t talk to anybody, seek advice off somebody who has bound to have witnessed this from him before? No, there is no contest; I will do whatever I have to do to protect, and rescue my lover––to bring him back into my arms.
Pressing against the touchscreen, I pull up his contacts, and quickly search for the number that could hold the advice that I need.
We sit in silence on the journey to work. I watch the world pass us by as I stare broodingly out of the passenger side window. The pressing noise of Hayden sighing draws my attention to him. With his left arm propped up on the window frame, his fingertips softly brushing at his bottom lip, and holding the wheel casually with his right, he displays the same confused, anxious expression he had the night he found me at Bimbo’s. And I’m unable to budge this sinking feeling in my gut that tells me that somewhere along the line, I am somehow the cause of his despondency.
The fisted guilt that I feel in my chest and gut is crushing.
Hayden pulls up in the underground parking lot, and turns off the engine. We hang our heads in unison, and stare down at our thighs. The thick fog of silence resumes hanging over us, mocking us.
Feeling shy and awkward, I begin to smooth my hands up and down my thighs. The black pinstriped material of my pant-suit begins to burn at my palms, sending peculiar tingles through my nerve endings.
I turn to face Hayden. His hair as perfect and floppy as always, his brow furrowed, his eyes vacant. His hands rest on top of his dark, navy suit pants, and he knits his fingers together in his lap; the lap that I just want to crawl into and have him tell me that what he is feeling is not at my hands, that the guilt I am detecting within my head and my heart is unwarranted…that he still loves me.
“Hayden…”
Listless, he cranes his head to face me. He looks as though he has aged five years within the last two and a half weeks with the darkening circles around his eyes, and the whites surrounding the captivating, intense, deep brown of his irises, turning a worrying tinge of red.
I lick my lips, and glance back down at my fingers, watching as I spin the amethyst around my middle finger.
“What are we exactly?” I ask feeling awkward, but in a last hope to get him to understand me. I peer up at him after my question is verbalized and my embarrassment fades.
He shakes his head, the crease over his brow deepening and more defined as he scowls at me. “I don’t understand what you are asking, Samantha.”
“Well…am I an employee? Your friend? Your girlfriend?” my voice and my features become more serious and expressive as I continue. “Your partner…?” I trail off, “your lover?”
“Oh, beautiful, you know you are all of those things to me.”
“Then why do I feel as though you detest me? I can’t touch you because you recede from me, I can’t talk to you because you scold me.”
He hangs his head, the leather cracks beneath his weight as he shifts in his seat and begins to fidget with profound nervousness. I fill my lungs and close my eyes, preparing to feel the quashed feeling once again as I attempt to prove my point.
I reach up and place my right hand on the side of Hayden’s face, and as expected, he stiffens. His alarmed expression at my hand on his body kills me.
“You see…” I grant a wistful, tightlipped curl of my mouth, and then shake my head sadly. “You can’t even bear me touching you. Please, Hayden. If I am truly all of those things to you, and you can’t talk to me…then who can you talk to?”
My hand is left cold and bereft as he pulls his face away.
“I just want to help you and understand you, Hayden.” I implore, before I cave to the weight upon my neck and shoulders, and let my head flop forward.
“How can I make you understand…when I don’t even understand it myself?” he answers in a stoical whisper. I tilt my head up to gaze at him as he continues picking at his manicured, thumbnail.
Grasping his chin, I coax him to look at me. “We may not be able to understand it, but at least I would be able to somehow reassure you in the way that you need. I’m blind here, Hayden, you’re keeping me in the dark as you haul through it by yourself. But you are not alone, Hayden. You have me, and I hate watching you retreat back into––” I halt my words. Shit how do I say this…find an inoffensive word, Samantha, “a person that I don’t recognize.” I roll my eyes.
I feel his jaw instantly tense and watch, pinned as his eyes turn several shades darker.
Shit, now I have
really fucking offended him. Fuck
.
He shakes his head, and I gingerly lower my hand away from his chin.
“I cannot believe you just said that,” he hisses through clenched-teeth.
“No, Hayden. You’ve taken that out of context, I didn’t mean––”
“I don’t care what you meant, Samantha. Yes, I’m fucking damaged goods, but for some reason, you were the only person who could pull me through it, and now…” he’s seething; he shakes his head and touches his upper lip with the tip of his tongue. “Just get out of the car; we’ve got work to do.”