She turned her body toward him. He was already on his side, his broken hand resting on his hip. His chest was bare, and she saw the top of a towel wrapped around his waist. She could see his ribs. He’d lost so much weight. He’d showered as well. Washed as much of the filth and smoke and horror from his skin as he could.
And yet she knew, like her, it still remained embedded inside. She’d never feel clean again. She’d never feel free.
Their eyes met, and she saw the same desperation in his that must be in her own. The vital need to feel alive. To grasp control. To prove that they hadn’t been irreparably broken. To freely consent to another person’s touch. She came up on her knees, dropping her towel as he rolled to his back. Then they were clutching at each other, both making animalistic sounds that might be sobs or grunts or pleas for help. Maybe all that and so much more. Unspeakable things that must be expelled. He ran his hand over her breast, and she wrapped her palm around his penis, which was already hard. She moved it downward, cupping his balls, and he hissed, pressing against her hand.
She had the vague sense that choosing Evan, choosing anyone, truth be told, would erase the memories of those others. And so when the sob burst free, the words that rushed from her mouth were “I can’t forget. I want to.”
He sat up, turning her so he was on top. She didn’t mind, but she kept herself propped on her elbows so they were both in control. Her eyes were open, because it was essential she see what they both chose to do with each other. For each other.
“Forget with me. Make new memories. We’ll only think of this. This is all we’ll let ourselves remember.”
“Yes,” she breathed as he entered her. “Yes.” She wasn’t wet, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t about pleasure. It was about much more than that. It was about survival, a form she hadn’t even known existed. She was trying to save her soul, and she looked in his eyes and knew he was too.
He began moving, plunging into her. He wasn’t gentle, but she didn’t want gentle. She wanted hard and pounding. She wanted it scored into her flesh. She wanted it to smash and beat out the smells and the sounds and the feelings she’d experienced against her will. “Harder,” she breathed. He complied. He didn’t have to tell her he needed this too. They couldn’t have explained it to anyone else in all the world so that it sounded right or good, or even sane. But they had been there, and they were here now, and they knew.
They knew.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, and then she did fall back, landing on the pillow. He followed her down, still thrusting, and she chanted in his ear, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” The word was healing. It was medicine. It was the beginning of knitting some terrible gash closed, tiny stitch by tiny stitch.
It wouldn’t close the wound, but in that moment, it felt like a start. One so desperately needed.
When he came, he came with a growl and a sob mixed up into one. She tightened her legs around him, and she held him there, breathing in the scent of his skin. She realized she was crying, hot tears that leaked from her eyes and dripped into her ears.
Their breath evened, muscles loosening as she lowered her legs to the bed and he pulled himself away from her. There were no words, no eye contact as they sat up. Evan brought the discarded towel around his waist, and Noelle covered herself with the one she’d slept in.
“Three hours,” he murmured, looking at the bedside clock. “We slept three hours.”
“I feel like I could sleep for eternity,” she said as he stood.
He glanced back at her, a small sad smile playing on his lips. He didn’t say anything, but she knew what he was thinking. We avoided that. You will sleep for eternity someday, but not yet.
Not yet.
She stood, too, smoothing her hair.
Evan held up his bandaged hand. “Do you think you might . . .” He nodded to the bathroom, and it took her a moment to understand, but then she did.
“Of course,” she said.
Evan turned on the shower, and they both dropped their towels. She supposed it was odd that they weren’t embarrassed by their nudity, but in some ways, she felt that she’d spent the last however long with him, completely stripped bare. What was naked flesh when a person had seen your soul?
They’d had sex, and yet it almost hadn’t been sexual, in a way she was too cloudy headed and close up to make sense of. Maybe later she’d be able to articulate the meaning of it, but now she neither wanted nor needed to.
They stepped beneath the hot spray, and Noelle used the bar of soap to wash his body. She poured a generous amount of shampoo into her hands and scrubbed his hair and the beard that had grown on his face, and then she repeated the process.