Finding Alice (Alice Clark Series) (7 page)

“Okay. I’ll be here, if that’s okay?” He asked.

“Yeah, that’s okay.” I headed to the bathroom and turned the water on. I peeled my thermal and beater off, replacing them with a clean tank. I grabbed a washcloth and start scrubbing the makeup off. Almost finished, I noticed through a cracked door Cole entered my room and was approaching my jewelry box filled with feathers. “Do you normally go through people’s belongings?” I asked from the bathroom, feeling exposed with my bruises out in the open, even behind the mostly closed door.

“Sorry. I was just curious, I guess.” He opened the bathroom door just as I got the last of the makeup off on my neck. I tried to catch it before it pushed open; he was too fast for me. “Alice, oh my God! You are completely covered!” I watched in shame as the horror consumed his face.

“Yeah, I sort of know that.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Like hell. It’s amazing what you can handle when you don’t have a choice.”
Yes the rest of me is like this as well
. I watched him study them as they were now starting to turn different colors. He gently ran his fingers over my arm. As he did, the soreness lifted for a short moment. I exhaled in relief. As I did, he stopped and looked at me perplexed. “This might sound crazy, but I swear…every time you touch my skin, the pain lifts for a moment.”

He started to speak but nothing came out and his forehead wrinkled. I never noticed a single line on his face until then. He placed his hand underneath my cheek; I rested my chin on his palm, turning into his hand helplessly. I took a deep, slow breath and let the ocean consume me and wash away the pain. He pulled his hand away and began to study me again. I felt his eyes trace where each bruise begin and ended, even though it looked as if it was only one bruise blanketing me.

“Let’s say I was actually taking your pain away, which is crazy. Is it only where I touch or does the pain stop everywhere?” he asked.

“Mostly just where you touch. It sort of reaches out like a web, if that makes sense.” We must both have been completely insane. I started to breathe shallower again. I placed my hands over my lungs in hopes it would will them back to normal.
I’m exhausted.

“Lay down then. I can go crash on the couch, if you don’t mind?” I nodded and he quickly turned away and walked toward the door. With every step he took, the pain came flooding back a little more intense than it had started. He stopped at the door and turned back to me almost as if he knew it.

“Stay?” I said it like a statement but it was more a question, more so questioning myself. Regardless, I wanted him there and for so many other reasons than his presence being healing. I bit my lip and was pretty sure I looked embarrassed. He smiled the kind of smile that warmed my bones and shut the door. I pulled the blankets back and sat on my bed.

“You wear jeans to bed?”

“Sometimes,” I said.
No I don’t but I’m covered in bruises.

“I don’t care. Be comfortable so you can actually get some sleep.”
I draw the line at wearing jeans to bed.

I let a quiet chuckle slip and smiled as I headed back to my bathroom. I carefully slid out of my jeans, attempting to not put too much pressure on the bruises but to no avail. The Band-Aid idea would have worked best here. I slipped on some comfy pajama shorts and took one last look in the mirror, regretting it seconds later. I exited to the bedroom to find Cole in my bed under my blanket, his pants on the floor next to it. “This is not how I thought this night was going to end up,” I blurted out. He laughed.

Me either
, I heard him say in my head. Hearing his voice in my head was like listening to my favorite song. I climbed into bed; he lifted his arm and I snuggled under it. I was surprised at how soft his toned body was, soft and wonderful. He rested his arm on my side, causing me to flinch at first, but it didn’t take long for the pain to dull. I looked up into his amazing eyes and knew he saw me past all the scars and all the bruises. We laid there silently for a long while. “When are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“It’s just so unbelievable, but I guess at this point, anything is possible. I was at work and it seemed like a pretty normal night. I covered a Tuesday shift for Max. I did my usual clean-up and I locked up and took the trash out. As I walked to throw the garbage in the dumpster, I just felt like I was being watched. I threw the last bag in and heard a voice right next to me. It reminded me of that time in class.” I shuttered at the memory. I looked up at him for some sort of response. He only nodded and waited for me to continue, brushing my hair from my face. “This voice was eerie and menacing. I started to pick up the pace toward my car. Once I got to the car, I felt his grasp on my arm.” I leaned to show the giant hand mark left from that first contact. “He grabbed me and turned me toward him right into his fist.” As I said that, I felt Cole’s embrace tighten protectively. “I have no idea what he wanted or who he or it even was. His hood was pulled down past his chin; I never got a look at his face. At some point, I think the adrenaline kicked in and I fought back. I think I got a few good shots in.”

“So what happened to your car?

“I kicked him into it,” I laughed.

“Nice. We can talk about this later if you want. You need to get some rest. I’m sure you haven’t slept well in days.” I thought about arguing but he was right. In all honesty, all I wanted was to curl up in his arms and drift off to sleep. With one hand, he spun my back to him and pulled me tightly into his chest. He took his leg and wrapped it around mine. I had never felt so safe in my entire life. I looked at the closed window and smiled at the ocean breeze rushing across me. I closed my eyes and let him wash all my pain away. Nothing could have been more perfect, more unbelievable.

I reached out and ran my hand along the edge of the bed. My eyes felt weighted shut; my body felt as if I was stumbling down a dark hallway, lost. I felt myself beginning to wake up while rubbing my eyes, demanding they open. The pain I felt so few hours before came crashing back and my eyes opened with a force. I looked around to find myself alone. I held back the urge to cry and cautiously pulled myself to a seated position. It seemed that I hurt more so now than just days ago when this happened to me. I took a deep breath while I ran my hand through my hair. I heard a creak in the hallway and froze. The smell of robust coffee and hazelnut filled my nostrils and the pain lessened slightly. The door swung open and I had no control over the smirk plastered across my face. “Good morning,” Cole said.

“Morning.” He nodded to the two gray stone coffee mugs steaming in his hands. I looked at the coffee and then took a side glance, noticing his pants were still next to the bed.
Boxers.
I sighed and he smiled, almost blushing.

“I would have made breakfast but all you have is coffee and creamer,” he said.

“Breakfast of champions.” He laughed and nodded in agreement. We sat on the edge of my bed half dressed, sipping coffee together in silence as if that was our life…as if that was our daily ritual. It felt like home to me. I knew nothing about him but some part of me felt as if I’d know him an eternity. I felt his hand lightly touch mine and I bathed in his cure. I no longer cared how or why what we did happened; it just did; and that sounded pretty perfect to me at that moment. I wrapped my fingers through his, feeling the fire crawl up my arm until it reached a soothing and electric pulsing. I wondered if he felt it too. I turned and looked at him to find him staring right through my eyes. I tried to speak but nothing came out. I let go of his hand but the intensity I felt from him didn’t subside. I tried to stand and noticed he already was as he took my empty coffee mug and set both down on my desk.

He glanced at the jewelry box almost as if he knew what was inside of it. He sat back down next to me, closer than before, and took my hand again. I tried to speak; again, nothing. I felt completely frazzled but somehow strangely calm and relaxed as I stared into his amber eyes searching for words. He took his other hand and placed it gently against my face. I closed my eyes and he pulled me closer. For the first time, I felt our hearts racing each other. I opened my eyes, inches from his face as I inhaled and held my breath. The room stood still as I had seen many times before; the only sound I heard was our hearts echoing in my ears. I studied him, memorizing every part of him so I could keep that moment with me always. I closed my eyes and exhaled, releasing the ocean wave’s cool scent I had just sucked into my lungs.

I felt the room catch up to me as his lips touched mine. His kiss consumed every inch of my being. It was intensely gentle with just the right amount of raw, rough passion. I could live in that moment for the rest of my life. We fell back onto the bed and a cloud of dark feathers flew into the air above us, hovering. His arms tangled around me as I ran my hands down his back. I don’t think I could have felt any closer to him than I did in that moment.

My bruises had faded to nothing more than a painful memory, one that no longer seemed to matter to me when he was near. Sometimes I wondered where Cole used to call home. The last few weeks he had slept at my house, in my bed. Just the thought of me cuddling up to him each night was filled with more happiness and love than I ever could have imagined. I had gone my entire life, until now, alone. Then we started sharing so many moments, it was almost painful when he was gone. It was as if a piece of me was broken away until he returned.

Over the last few weeks, we had lived in this tiny bubble as if protected from the outside world for this temporary time frame. We no longer had to be in the same room to feel each other’s presence. If I focused hard enough, I could hear his heart beating when he pulled into the driveway; feel his breath on my skin when he was gone; hear his voice, no matter how much space was between us, clear as if he was right there whispering directly into my ear.

After the first kiss, it was like our souls began to intertwine; and when it became more than that, our souls fully intertwined and it felt as if we each took a piece of each other. I had never felt so connected to him, to anyone, as I did now. When he was gone, I always felt such a longing for his return. When he was there with me, we lay silently with his arms wrapped strongly around me in the still of the night; nothing could be greater than that. With all the good we had a chance to grasp, we both knew in the back of our minds that something was coming. I felt his concern like a fog, seeping into my lungs and weighing me down. Still, being with each other made us believe that somehow, we could survive whatever darkness was coming for us, together.

We sat there at my rickety table working on our final papers for class, playing footsie like children. Sometimes I would switch and work on my final for my Art Medium class while he pretended to work on his paper, as if I couldn’t feel his eyes all over me.

We lived off of coffee for the most part, though he seemed to be partial to breakfast. He would say,
“Not eating breakfast is like wearing jeans to bed: wrong on so many levels.”
When I woke up, my nostrils would flare with confusion over the new scents mixing in with the aroma of coffee beans and his own delicious smell. I’d found a new appreciation for breakfast and companionship. Just that morning, I’d had eggs Benedict for the first time and I had to say it came in a close second to his lips. All those times I felt I truly was meant to be alone, that it was safer for not only myself but for others, still taunted at me; but it was no more than a faint whisper of warning. I glanced over at him; he was lost in his train of thought, burying his pencil almost through his paper. I knew he felt my gaze the same as I did his. There was a laptop directly in front of him but he always said he liked the way it feels to write free-hand.

“How is that coming along?” he finally asked.

“I don’t even know. She has such high expectations from my previous work, but that was before…”

“Before us?” I nodded, followed by a sigh of frustration. His forehead wrinkled and I knew he was thinking carefully about his next statement. “Too bad you can’t chop that wall down in your spare room. Maybe she would accept photographs?”

“What are you talking about?” No sooner than the words left my lips did a flash of my drunken day of recovery scraping charcoal across my wall whiz through my mind. “Oh, I haven’t even been in there since that day. I completely forgot. Wait, you went in there?”

“No. You asked, or should I say, told me not to. I only saw an unusual paint job through the crack of the door. Why don’t we check it out?” He grabbed my hand, bringing it up to his mouth for a gentle kiss that looked more like asking for forgiveness; or at least that’s what I thought asking for forgiveness would look like. By the time I went to say no, he already had his hand on the doorknob, opening it to a room that once felt empty but bright. My eyes widened as I gasped in shock at the giant mural coating my wall. “I thought you didn’t see his face?” his voice trembled as he asked.