Page 29 of Say You'll Never Let Go

She squints at the assumption that there was room for anything else. “That’s all I’ve done.”

“Why’d you go out into the woods? Coulda stayed at that community, or here, or anywhere else.”

“I already told you I wasn’t getting any peace here, not with someone knocking on my door every day, but…it’s weird. You’ll think it’s weird.”

“I won’t.”

“I felt closer to you out there. You were always so at home in the wild.” She’s purposely avoided digging too deep into the whys and hows of her time in the woods. Sounds pitiful when she speaks it aloud, and she huffs in self-deprecating amusement. “Like I said, it’s weird.”

“You hated camping. That week we spent in the Blue Ridge one summer. All you did was bitch and moan about the bugs and having to pee behind a bush.”

She smiles fondly at the mention of the one time he convinced her to spend seven days living out of a tent by the river. “I remember. I hated it, but you loved it. It’s grown on me, plus, it’s not like I couldn’t leave whenever I wanted. The bike was my escape plan.”

His eyes go wide. “You got a bike?”

She nods. “Took it from a lot uptown years ago.”

“I’d like to see it someday,” he continues softly.

“Whenever you want. It’s waiting at Paradise Falls until we go get it.”

He only nods, and the conversation lulls, prompting her to consider something she’d been pondering since last night. There’s no better time than the present to bring it up. If they can’t at least talk about these things, there’s only an uphill battle ahead.

“So, I have an idea,” she begins. “And that’s all it is, just an idea. You can say no and tell me it’s stupid.”

He raises a brow, curious.

“I think you should….I mean, I’d like you to….try to touch me.” She winces. “That sounded less strange in my head.”

His reaction is silent and stoic, neither scoffing in disbelief nor eager to try, so she keeps going. Used to be a time he would smirk and make some x-rated comment that would have her blushing. She longs for that reply that never comes.

“I read a book once about trauma because, big shock, I did and still have plenty of that. Read about desensitization and steps for overcoming fears that might have sprung up due to traumatic situations. I thought I could get rid of some of my many phobias.”

She’s drawing attention to something he wants to cover with denial and worries that she’s gone too far, but it’s too late to stop now.

“Anyway, it doesn’t have to be now, and it doesn’t have to be anything big. You tell me what you need, what might make it easier, and I’ll do it. We establish a baseline and just keep building on that. Or you can tell me it’s silly and I won’t bring it up again. That’s okay too. I have no idea what I’m doing, to be clear, so let’s not assume I have any real training in this area.”

He doesn’t reply at first. Only glances at her in that half attempt that doesn’t require extended eye contact, and she begins to doubt everything that’s come out of her own mouth.

They’d never been very tactile before. Took a long time until hugging became normal and even then, they weren’t the type to go out of their way to make contact. The desire to feel him has always been there, but she’d been a pro at squashing it for a myriad of reasons. Now it’s all she can think about.

His touch moving softly across her lower back when he explored her tattoo still follows the curves in a phantom pattern. She hadn’t expected he would do that and thenhe did,and she could hardly breathe. All her focus was on staying perfectly stillwhile he mapped her out, hoping he wouldn’t stop and trying to formulate a plan to encourage the next touch.

There are no boundaries when it comes to Wade as far as she’s concerned. If he needed her naked, she’d have tossed her shirt across the room and bared herself to him for the taking.

“Why?” he says, finally.

“Because I want to hug you again and I think,hope, that you want that, too. This seems like a logical way to get there,” she replies honestly.

This may be the first time since they met that they’re talking about a problem in plain English rather than running circles around it. She only wishes it didn’t take his abduction for them to get here.

“Did you fix any phobias? Make a dent?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It only means I didn’t keep at it. I tried, but I got overwhelmed.”

“How do we do this?”

“However you want. There are no rules. Maybe…from behind? That seemed to help last time and I know this is starting to sound like the outtakes of a bad porn, but I promise I have virtuous intentions here.”