Page 26 of The Intimacy of Skin

He and I shared a look of confusion before it dawned on me. “No!” I yelled, gripping the blankets tighter against myself. “He didn’t hurt me. The shit on my face—he actually patched me up.”

“Then who did, huh?” She put a hand on her hip.

I scrubbed a hand over my face in frustration, too wound up to remember the pain that would come once I did it. I grimaced, explaining faster than I could hide it. “He—I—Ugh, fuck, it’s a long story, okay? I’ll tell you later. Price didn’t hurt me, Willow. I mean it.”

The protective friend that she was, she stared at Price once more. “You’re his boss. ”

In any other situation, I would have laughed at the look on Price’s face. He looked utterly flabbergasted—a word I never thought I’d say again after leaving bumfuck nowhere.

He looked at me, looked at Willow, then looked at the wall with his mouth wide open and gaping. Finally, he took a deep breath and shrugged. “Technically?” I could feel his sigh through the bed as he sank further into it. “I know how it looks.”

“I’m glad someone does. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” She put a hand over her heart. “Crew, I know what you get into. I’ve watched you self-destruct for what feels like a million damn years. I never—and I mean never—imagined you’d go and shack up with one of your bosses!”

“Willow,” I tried. It was pointless. She was on a rampage.

“I have accepted you, turned my cheek, and defended you over and over. I have tried so hard. I thought once we left…” She quieted down, her voice cracking. I wished she were yelling again. Her anger, I could take.

This?

This felt worse than any hell I had put myself through.

Willow’s disappointment only cut deeper the more she spoke.

“I thought we just had to hightail it outta the south. I dealt with it. You coming home after takin’ a beatin’ so bad, I—” She cut herself off, shaking her head with sorrow.

“Crew, I can’t do it no more. And Price, I thought you were a better man.

Puttin’ your hands on him like that?” Her accent bled through the anger, transporting us back to a time and place I thought we’d put behind us.

“Well, you know what us southerners say when we really wanna scorn somebody?”

Price didn’t react right away. He shook his head slowly, barely looking up at Willow’s frame .

Willow scoffed in his direction. “Oh, honey, bless your heart. Now get the fuck outta my house!”

Not for the first time, she turned on her heel, showing me her back, and stomped down the hallway. I watched her go, my chest pounding with each heartbeat. She didn’t understand.

Why couldn’t she understand?

The silence was too much. Pressure built inside my room until I wasn’t sure my weak, human body would be able to withstand it.

I could hear Price breathing. It sounded hurt. It sounded heartbreaking. I turned my head to face him, begging and pleading with my face. “I’ll talk to her.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t. She has no idea what we did. She has no right to waltz in here and assume, though I guess that’s really my fault.” Shame. It was a familiar thing. A painful thing. It engulfed me like second nature.

Price looked at me, a broken half-smile trying, failing, to grace his features. “I’d better get out of her house.” He took my hand into his, the heat doing nothing to melt the ice around me now. “You have my number. Will you use it to let me know how things go?”

“Yeah, I will. I promise.”

With that, he pulled his hand away from me.

And the voice only got louder, showing me the reason I never lost control. Why I never gave in.

Price had ruined me, and I wasn’t sure if he was worth the consequences yet.

But the anger I felt rumbling deep in my bones, screaming at me from within, told me I had to find out.

I had to talk to Willow. I had to talk to someone other than the voice in my head because the only answer I got there was to slice.

And slice.

And never stop until I was empty from the inside out.

“You asshole!” I stomped my way into Willow’s room much like she’d done to me. I was fully clothed now, anger guiding me. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed with an air of audacity she didn’t deserve to have .

I growled in frustration, stopping at the end of her bed.

“You don’t get it! The one fucking time I don’t beg someone to hurt me, and you treat him like that?

No.” I shook my head furiously, pointing an accusing finger in her direction.

“Price treated me like I was a goddamn—I don’t know. A wilting flower!”

“A wilting flower?”

“Ugh, you know what I mean! Something romantic. He touched me like my petals would fall off if he so much as breathed on me the wrong way.” Memories and phantom kisses swirled in my mind.

“He kissed me, Willow. Well, I kissed him first. Not the point. Anyway, he kissed me, and he didn’t hit me. Not even once. In fact, he refused to!”

She looked at me in shock, her eyes widening.

“Yeah.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I asked him to fuck me. He said he wouldn’t hurt me, and just like last time, he went slow as shit and it felt fucking amazing even though I was freaking out and?—”

“Wait”—she put her hands up, waving them around—“last time? This isn’t the first time?”

I paused, acknowledging the slipup. We looked at each other in silence, tension building with each second that passed. I tried to avoid her gaze, looking left and right, shifting on my feet in a delusional hope that if I didn’t answer, she wouldn’t push.

Of course, that wasn’t how things worked. Willow narrowed her eyes at me before pointing in front of her. “Sit and explain before I beat your ass, dude.”

Being best friends for as long as we had been was both a blessing and a curse. We grew up together, making us as close as siblings. Unfortunately, Willow was a mean sister.

Sighing, I accepted defeat and got comfortable on the mattress in front of her. I refused to look up, though, keeping my attention on the blanket beneath us. “We’ve… messed around one other time.”

“When?”

I winced, mumbling as low as possible. “A couple of days before he approached us at The Arch.”

“Ex-fucking-cuse me?” Willow gasped, her pitch rising to a screech. “You knew him and you didn’t say anything? Crew Mitchell Hayes, you bet your ass I’d be tellin’ your mama on you if I could! ”

“I know!” I groaned loudly, throwing my face into my palms. “We were never supposed to see each other again. I had no idea he worked there. When he came over, I just about shit my pants. And then he sweet-talked you, offered me a job, and I was suddenly in a very shitty situation.”

Willow’s jaw hung open. She closed it, shifting her position on the bed. “Okay, so, was he a one-night stand or a paying customer?”

From there, I word vomited almost everything about the first night I met Price. How he refused to treat me poorly, how I ran away in a panic, how he paid me more than enough money to cover the bills I had due.

I was vague enough that I didn’t reveal any true secrets yet detailed enough to satisfy her curiosity. Willow listened intently, not interrupting me until I was finished.

“So he offered you four hundred bucks, and you almost refused ’cus you only like it rough. But his sexual energy was too tempting, so y’all fucked around.”

I glared at her.

She held a hand up. “I know it isn’t that simple. Nothing with you ever is. But I get it. He’s hot. I’d have fallen for his sexual prowess as well. I still have so many questions.”

“I know. I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand why he approached us like that.”

“He obviously likes you enough to want you around longer.”

I shrugged. “I guess so? He’s confusing and goes against everything I stand for, but he’s a good guy. So far. I meant it when I said he refused to hurt me.”

Willow flopped onto her side, looking up at me.

“You gotta see it from my point of view too, Crew. Not only am I pissed and hurt that you kept this from me, but imagine what I’ve seen.

I know you only sleep with the roughest, toughest, asshole men.

You have a type, and you don’t deviate from it.

So imagine my surprise when I walk in, see you covered in bruises, and in bed with your boss, of all people. ”

The sadness in her voice almost broke me.

“I thought he hurt you because you’ve never let someone not hurt you.

Price felt like my last chance at seeing you blossom, or grow, or some stupid, hopeful shit like that.

When I walked in, I felt heartbroken. I’ve been desperately trying to get you away from this life, and there he was, a man I’d pushed you towards, hurting you. ”

Hearing her side of things, it made sense. Her reaction was out of concern, which I already knew, but didn’t fully understand. “I’m sorry.” I lay next to her, our bodies facing one another.

She shook her head slowly, reaching out to lightly touch my bruised cheek. “I stopped being able to see a future for us. When we were kids, I imagined New York would be a clean break. Now, when I think about our future, I see myself kneeling at your gravestone.”

“Willow.” My voice broke. It felt like I’d been punched in the gut again. It hurt to pull a breath in, making odd wheezing sounds come from my throat.

“Shh, let me finish. You don’t understand. When you come home late at night, bruised and bloody, it chips away at me. And on the nights you don’t come home at all, I wait by my phone for the inevitable call that you’re dead or seriously hurt.”

I let her pull me into her body, curling my face against her chest. I listened to her speak through small hiccups, knowing tears were falling down her cheeks.

“The path you’re on, Crew? It’s going to rip you away from me.

Whether it’s the men that kill you, or yourself.

I accepted that if this job with Price didn’t work out, I’d lose you.

Not eventually, not in the future, but soon.

Do you understand what it’s like to grieve someone who hasn’t died yet?

’Cus I’ve been grieving you for fucking years and that breaks my heart more than anything.

“So, yeah. When I saw Price, I thought that was it. I was fucking furious. And so damn hurt because I knew my attempts at saving you had officially failed. To me, it wasn’t walking in on my best friend and his new boyfriend, it was me walking in on my best friend’s last call to life.”

I couldn’t tell who was crying harder anymore. I couldn’t open my eyes, letting everything pour out after hearing Willow explain. I could sit here and claim I had no idea how much pain she was in, but that’d be a lie.

Deep down, I had always known. She was right. The path I was on was going to kill me.

That was the point of it, actually .

As a human, I was selfish enough to disregard Willow’s heart in the matter. For years, I had fought with her about it. As the prostitute who took pain with greed, I didn’t care. As Crew Hayes, the man who loved his best friend more than anything in the entire world, I was broken.

I wasn’t used to giving a shit. It hurt to admit that I did. “I’m so sorry, Willow. I’m so fucking sorry.” I sniffed, pulling back to look up at her face. “He isn’t my boyfriend. He’s my fucking catalyst. He’s the inevitable, not my death, and that scares the ever-loving shit out of me.”

Willow frowned at me with her lips wet with tears and snot. She looked so beautiful, even at her ugliest. “I wish you would talk to me. I wish I could understand. I wish I knew why it scared you so bad.”

I opened my mouth, wanting to spill it all. I wanted to disband all the thoughts running through my mind.

But Thompson cut me off with a mental stabbing to my brain. With a heaving sob, I sank into Willow’s embrace further. “I can’t tell you. I’m so sorry, but I can’t tell you, Willow.”

She rubbed my back soothingly. “I know, honey. I know.”

“I wish Mom was here.” She’d hug me like Willow was doing. Maybe even sing me one of her songs. The deep, burning need to hug her one more time tore me to shreds, leaving nothing in its wake.

“I wish she was here too.”

With that, I cried.

And cried.

I had cried more in the last twenty-four hours than I had in ten years.

Like all things in life, my crippling breakdown slowly ended. My chest ached, my eyes burned, and I could hardly breathe through my nose. The room was silent save for a few sniffles coming from me or Willow.

Until finally, Willow gave me a horrifying order I knew I was powerless against obeying.

“See Price again. Not at work. Ask him to dinner. Maybe he doesn’t have to just be your inevitable.

Maybe he can be your new path.” She pressed her lips against the side of my head, right by a scar I’d earned from previous disobedience.

“Give yourself a future, Crew. I’m tired of preparing your funeral arrangements when you’re only twenty-three. ”

A searing pain wrapped itself around my heart. I felt the beats pick up, thumping just beneath my ribcage. The blood in my veins pulsed, spreading the warmth through my body as I realized what it was. I hadn’t felt it since my first day at Tiger Claw Camp. Fuck.

It was hope.