The Elephant in the Room by Emily Sutcliffe

Author:Emily Sutcliffe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publish on Demand Global LLC

Chapter Eight

She stared at the ceiling. Finn lay beside her, his head on her shoulder, his finger tracing the outline of her hand laid flat across her belly. The bristle of his hair tickled her chin and she could feel his smell of soap and sweat on her skin. He was warm against her, his breath stroking her chest, and she shuttered her eyes and sighed.

Finn drew his fingers across a long, narrow scar cut into Roxanne’s abdomen and pondered out loud.

“What’s this from?” he asked, his voice threading the stillness.

Roxanne shook her head. She had wondered after it herself.

“I don’t know,” she murmured.

“It looks like a medical scar.”

“Haven’t you any scars you can’t remember?”

Finn lifted his head and leaned his chin on the ledge of her shoulder, her face filling his eyes as he threaded their hands together across her stomach.

“No,” he said. “They’re not many. I remember them.”

Roxanne smiled and opened her eyes, tilting her head down at him.

“Were you a sheltered child?” she asked, her voice faintly teasing.

She brushed her fingers across a small scar above his eyebrow.

“What is this one from?”

“Bar fight,” Finn told her, his brow furrowed in feigned earnestness.

She laughed, laying her palm against the side of his face and holding it there. Finn smiled and sighed with rough defeat.

“I was running from a dog,” he relented. “I tried climbing over a fence and landed face first into a gardening spade.”

Roxanne narrowed her eyes in amused sympathy.

“You could have lost your eye,” she said, her voice soothing as though he still felt the pain of it.

“I nearly did,” he mumbled. “And it was my dog, too.”

He rose on an elbow and leaned his head against his hand to look down on her.

“Could you love me if I only had one eye?” he asked.

“If you only had one of everything,” she said, “I could still love you.”

Finn bent and kissed her.

“Could you love me if I knew who I was?” Roxanne asked as he drew back.

He smiled and nodded as he traced the curve of her bottom lip with his thumb.

“Yes,” he said. “I will.”

“Even if I’m married or something?”

“I’d fight your husband for you.”

Her face shadowed and she averted her eyes.

“I’m afraid to find out,” she admitted.

“Do you truly want to?” Finn asked.

“Don’t you want me to?”

“If you do.”

Roxanne reached up and brushed her mouth across his, tracing the parched outline of her lips on his.

“If you help me,” she said. “I can’t do this on my own.”

“You won’t,” he told her without waver.

Finn smiled.

“That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” he said. “Asking for help. It is free, you know.”

“Nothing’s free,” Roxanne murmured.

He cradled his arm over her chest and she kissed the inside of his elbow, lightly pressing her mouth over the scars that blackened his skin like tiny bruises.

“I could be a serial killer on the lam,” she whispered, “on the run from the law.”

“Cool,” Finn said. “I’ve always wanted to know someone famous.”

She laughed softly and brushed her palm back and forth across his forearm until he felt his skin grow hot beneath the pulse of her hand.

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