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As she wishes him luck in the hospital, full of the desperate, stumbling hope that he always fills her with, she knows in the pit of her stomach that she might never see him again.
That one almost-something interrupted, one forehead touch in an elevator, might be all they ever get.
The icy feeling clings to her for weeks, dogs her clacking heels and stabs sharp into her belly when she’s alone in her bed not-sleeping.
She wonders how he is, what he is doing. But it doesn’t matter. It won’t change anything. It can’t. She meant what she said to him the last time she saw him. Maybe she should feel bad about that, maybe it’s wrong. But she had been right in the end anyway. She knows somehow that when it comes to him, she will always be right.
She feels for him in a way that goes beyond reason, but not in the way he thinks. She would throw her life away for him, he’s right — but only because her love for him is what keeps her soul from bleeding away into black.
When she does sleep, she dreams of him. Dreams of him dreaming, thrashing as she sits helplessly at his side. He cries and yells and she shouts his name until she’s hoarse and aching, but he never wakes up. He can’t hear her.
He won’t see her.
She thinks part of her hates him. The longing and loneliness for him curdle into bitterness, brings hot tears to her eyes when she least expects it. But reading his name, seeing his face in her head, turns it to shame and then tenderness and then back to longing again in an endless cycle that she thinks is beneath her. She’s better than this.
So she gulps hot coffee and works without cease and refuses to think about the land over the rainbow, where they could belong to each other instead of the dark.
***
She’s not expecting it when he taps on her bedroom window one night. For a moment, she is filled with dread. He wouldn’t come here unless there was no other option. So either he needs to see her as badly as she needs to see him or something so terrible has happened that her whole world might end. She knows it is the latter, but she pretends she doesn’t, and when she pushes up the glass to allow him inside, she won’t let him explain. Even if he wanted to, which she knows he doesn’t.
Instead she swallows hard, closes her eyes, and kisses him, pouring all the confusion and tenderness and fear from her body into his mouth. And for a moment he lets her, he pulls her into him like a black hole, but then he stops. He moves away.
He is always moving away from her. He is always the one who gets to choose.
“What is it?” she asks, and she hates the way her voice sounds, all breathy and uncertain. And she realizes that for the first time, she really doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t want to leap into action, to fix what’s wrong, to wish him luck as he disappears from her life again. She wants to keep him, to handcuff him to the bed like in the hospital if necessary. To steal time. To make him see her.
She notices his eyes have traveled to the hem of the T-shirt she is wearing, where it grazes the tops of her bare thighs. Is that what will make him see her? Because God knows she wants him, more than she has ever wanted anyone in her life. She drops her hands to her sides, clutches the fabric in her fingers and starts to lift.
“Karen,” he says thickly, reaching out to still her arms.
She responds by shaking off his grasp and taking his hands in her own. She brings them to her hips and slides them up, up under the cotton, over her bare skin. She presses a feather-light kiss to the blooming bruise on his jaw and she can’t believe she is going to beg him, but —
“Please,” she whispers. And he can deny her many things, but apparently he will not deny her this. Not tonight.
That must mean their world is ending, but for now she doesn’t care. Because his hands are continuing their slow upward slide on their own as she reaches up to grip his shoulders. His mouth touches hers again as his hands close over her breasts. He is rough where she is soft and his thumbs brushing over the hardened peaks of her nipples brings a rush of heat between her thighs. She can’t resist sliding her tongue into his mouth, warm and sweet.
His hands find their way to her back as he clutches her against him. But as soon as she makes contact with his chest, he hisses with pain.
“Let me see,” she says, pushing his jacket from his shoulders and pulling his shirt untucked. Once his chest is bare to her, she winces. Another huge bruise darkening his skin. She stretches her hand wide, hovering just above the injury, but even with her thumb and pinkie as far apart as possible, she cannot span it completely. She bends down to kiss this one too, her lips barely grazing him.
And then she drops to her knees.
“Karen,” he says again, disapprovingly, but she has his fly open before the syllables leave his lips. He is already swollen for her, and the second that she frees him, he is in her mouth. And she had no idea how much she needed this, how much she wanted to give this to him, but she is shaking with it as she licks and kisses and takes him deep into her throat, rejoicing at the soft sounds she is coaxing out of him.
But all too soon, he has his hands around her arms and he is hoisting her up. He doesn’t push her exactly, but somehow she is lying across the bed. She is afraid he will leave and she tries to scramble back up, but he holds her to the mattress with one hand as he begins to lift her shirt with the other. She relaxes, melts into his touch.
He rests his stubbly cheek against her abdomen and rubs gently back and forth, sending prickles of electricity through her whole body. He rains kisses on her, presses his nose into the valley between her breasts and just breathes. She moves her fingers into his thick hair, stroking as he begins to caress her nipples with his lips and tongue, to suck lightly on her collarbone.
And just when she thinks she will die if he doesn’t touch her where she needs it most, he slides his fingers into her panties. He glides through the slick heat waiting for him, teases her a bit before one thick finger pushes inside. Her hips buck and she makes a strangled moan. God, how she wants him.
He pulls away, pulls the fabric down her legs, and then he is knuckle-deep inside her again as his tongue flicks over her clit. It takes only a few more seconds of his attention before she is seeing stars, her orgasm coming harder and more quickly than she thought possible.
When she opens her eyes, he is watching her face. His own is naked and vulnerable, and she is flooded with love that she doesn’t dare give voice to. “Please,” she says again, reaching for him.
And she doesn’t have to wait much longer before he is sheathed inside her and she is finally, finally closer to him than death.
***
"Will you stay?" she asks later.
He looks at her solemnly, reaching up to trace her eyebrow, her cheekbone, her lips.
"You're always with me," he says, which is not the answer she wants but which takes her breath away all the same. She closes her eyes, knowing there is still no over the rainbow for them, but that there will always be a place for him under her skin, close to her heart. And that means something.