Chapter 9: Careful, Not Gentle

It took us twenty minutes to climb one flight of stairs.

I stopped on every third step to breathe.

Donovan stayed one step below me with his hand on my back and never once said hurry.

At the top I turned around, and he was right there, a step down, so that our eyes were level.

"I'm not carrying you," he said. "I'd like to. You'd hate it."

"I would."

"Then walk to my door."

I walked.

His bedroom was dark and cold from the sea air, with one lamp on and a bed that was much too big.

He took the black pack from my shoulder and set it on the pillow beside the lamp, and he checked the line twice.

"It stays plugged in," he said. "Nothing comes off that you need."

"I know."

"No lies, Deirdre." His hand lifted to my jaw. "If anything pulls, you tell me."

"If anything pulls, I'll tell you."

He kissed me.

It was slow for a moment, and then it was not.

His mouth opened mine and I tasted salt and whisky.

I took hold of his shirt with both hands because my knees were going.

He caught the back of my head and kissed me harder, and I made a noise I'd never heard myself make.

My hospital robe came open and he stopped.

I felt him look.

There was the dressing on my chest and the tube at my side.

My ribs showed, and my hip bones, and twelve days of bruises.

"I look like a patient," I said.

"Deirdre."

"There's a tube coming out of me."

He took my hand and put it flat against the front of his trousers.

He was hard and hot through the cloth, and he pushed into my palm.

"I've been like that since you stood in my kitchen in a hospital gown," he said, in a rough voice.

His hips pushed into my hand.

"Does that sound like a man who's looking at a patient?"

I curled my fingers.

He shut his eyes.

"No," I said.

"Then take my shirt off."

I got it open one button at a time, and he let me.

The ink went down from his left shoulder in black branches over his chest and ribs and his whole arm to the wrist.

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