Never Loved by Charlotte Stein

Author:Charlotte Stein [Stein, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-07-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

This time when I wake up, he is right by my side. More than by my side, in truth. He has sprawled out across the bed in a big boneless mass, every inch of him looking so comfortable and so content that I can hardly stand to alert him to the time. He said he had to be up by six-thirty, but somehow I seem to be letting the numbers on my watch slide by.

Just so he can be this peaceful for longer.

Just so he can rest.

And yeah, okay, maybe I also want to have a look at him unimpeded and uninterrupted. But really, can you blame me? Every time I see him he somehow looks better than he did before. Plus, in sleep, this effect seems to be magnified. I never noticed before how lovely his mouth is, how sweetly the upper lip curls in the middle toward his nose. And so soft, too—like the insides of a petal.

Makes me want to kiss him, but I manage to refrain.

I have to¸ if I want to keep exploring. Any sudden moves might wake him, before I get to the really interesting stuff. The racing stripes that actually curve all the way down to the nape of his neck and almost meet up with his thick band of hair in the middle. The tattoos all down his arms, rolling in places and slicing in others. And of course the tattoo on his back.

God, how I love that tattoo on his back. There are just so many layers to it—like the fact that this is probably why they call him Redwood. They mean the tree. They mean him, so tall and broad. They probably don’t even know about all the words that make the branches.

But I do. I read them one by one, straining my eyes in the dim light, yet hardly caring. The only thing that matters is deciphering them, or maybe memorizing some of each so I can look them up later. If I opened my heart there’d be no space for air, one of them says, and I tell it to myself over and over again until it sticks. Same for the lines about hopes and dreams lying on the ground and loving like you’ve never been hurt before.

They seem so beautiful and sad I simply have to—and especially when I think of how much they must mean to him. It could be his heart that has no space for air, because all kinds of emotions have filled it to the brim. It may be that his hopes and dreams are on the ground.

Maybe he is the one who would kill it with his bare hands if he was free.

Though I have no clue what it could possibly be. Something that haunts him, I think, like that bottle on the shelf above the sink. Like this old house in the middle of the woods, half fairy tale and half nightmare. Once there was a man who surrounded himself with old ghosts and could never quite escape, I think.

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