What We Choose novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Scars

Colter didn't answer right away.

He looked at my hand on his chest, then at my face.

"Tonight," he said. "Are you asking me, or telling me?"

"Telling you."

"Then I'm going to cook first. You haven't eaten since the drains."

"You and your logistics."

"Me and my logistics." He kissed my forehead, at the hairline, where the fuzz was coming in soft. "Go lie down. I'll wake you."

I didn't lie down.

I took the longest shower I'd been allowed in a week, with my arms below my shoulders the way the surgeon said.

The water ran straight down my chest with nothing in the way.

It felt strange.

It felt like standing in rain on a flat roof.

I didn't look down. Not yet.

I put on his flannel shirt, buttoned to the top, and nothing else.

We ate pasta at the kitchen table under the teapots.

He made a lot of it and watched me eat most of it.

"You're staring," I said.

"I'm checking your color."

"What color am I?"

"Better."

Afterward he started on the dishes, and I sat at the table and watched his back.

The flannel pulled tight across his shoulders.

He dried each plate all the way before he put it away.

"Colter."

"Mm."

"Leave the dishes."

He turned off the water.

He dried his hands on the towel slowly, and hung it on the oven door, and turned around.

"I've thought about this all week," I said. "So here's how it goes."

He leaned on the counter and folded his arms.

"Okay."

"The lamp stays on. You don't ask me if I'm sure. You don't look away, not once." I stood up. "And I say when."

"You say when," he said.

I walked into the bedroom ahead of him.

The lamp was already on. His mother's quilt was folded down. The radiator was ticking.

I stood in front of the bed and started on the buttons of his shirt.

He stopped in the doorway.

One button. Two. My hands were shaking, and I let them.

At the fourth button I stopped and looked at him.

He hadn't moved. He hadn't looked away.

"Watch," I said.

He didn't move from the doorway.

I went back to the buttons.

Fifth.

Sixth.

The last one came free and I let the shirt fall open.

I didn't take it off.

Not yet.

I stood there with the flannel hanging from my shoulders and my chest bare in the lamplight.

Two long red lines.

Glue shining at the edges.

Nothing else.

"Look at me," I said.

"I am."

His voice was low and rough and it went straight down my spine.

I pushed the shirt off my shoulders and let it drop to the floor.

The air hit my skin everywhere.

I didn't cross my arms.

I didn't turn.

I made myself stand there while his eyes moved over me, slow, from my face to my throat to the port under my collarbone to the flat of my chest and the scars and the ribs showing through.

He looked at all of it.

He looked at me like I was the only thing in the room.

"You can stop saying chalk line now," I said.

"I've got better words."

"Use them."

He came toward me.

Not fast.

Deliberate, like he was walking through water.

He stopped a foot away and I could feel the heat coming off him.

"Your chest is fucking beautiful," he said.

I swallowed.

"Two scars and no tits. That's your idea of beautiful."

"That's my idea of you."

He reached up and touched my chin, tilting my face up.

"I wanted you bald," he said. "I want you flat. I want you exactly like this, Dessa. I got hard the second you opened that shirt."

I could see it.

The thick shape of him pressing against his jeans.

Because of me.

Because of this body I'd been afraid to show him.

"Touch me," I said.

"Where?"

"Everywhere."

He started with my face.

Both hands, his thumbs tracing my cheekbones, then down the sides of my neck.

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