In the dim glow from the instrument panel I saw him smile, little more than a twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“I’m okay,” he said. He’d discarded his jacket and rolled back the cuffs of his shirt, revealing the lines of muscle definition in his forearms.
He drove without apparent effort, shoulders relaxed. I’d once driven through the night with Sean from Stuttgart to Berlin and back, at hair-raising speeds of over a hundred and sixty miles an hour for most of the journey. Going a steady sixty-five on an arrow-straight freeway should have been child’s play by comparison, but there was so little stimulation that the hardest part was staying awake.
“Not getting tired?” I persisted. “Let me know as soon as you are and I’ll take over for a while, let you get some shuteye.”
“I’m fine,” he said. He glanced across at me. “You maybe ought to grab some sleep yourself, though, so you can spell me later.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, lifting a wry shoulder. “Still too wired, I suppose.”
“Well, you could always talk to me, Charlie. Keep me awake that way.”
Something in the silky way he said it had my heart rate accelerating. “What about?”
He must have heard the way it slightly changed my voice, because he laughed softly. “Not that,” he said dryly. “Although, if you really want to talk dirty to me while your parents are dozing lightly in the backseat then feel free, by all means.”
“No, I don’t,” I said, aiming for stern but badly let down by the hitch in my breath. “And it was a reasonable question. It’s only your dirty mind that puts any other slant on it.”
“Guilty,” he said cheerfully. A pause. “Actually, I wanted to talk about us. About last night.”
My pulse had begun to slow, but at that it took off again like someone had fed in a squirt of nitrous oxide. I felt the liquid burn under my skin, firing a primitive flight response that translated into such a fierce blush I was glad of the surrounding darkness.
“Wow,” I said, surprisingly sedate. “I thought it was supposed to be the woman who always initiated conversations like that.”
“Don’t hedge, Charlie,” he said, and though his voice was mild, I heard the underlying serrated edge to it. “I promised I wouldn’t hurt you and … I did.”
“No,” I denied quickly. “It—”
“I hurt you,” he repeated, more harshly. “And I’m sorry for it. More than you’ll ever know.” The last part was muttered under his breath, hardly audible.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, and saw the frustrated twitch that crossed his features.
“Well, it damn well should,” he said quietly. “In one breath I tell you that I’m not the same as the bastards who raped you, and then, in the next, I’m practically doing the same thing myself. I let my temper get away from me.” His fingers flexed round the steering wheel and I had a flash recall of them braceleting my wrists with the same unforgiving grip. If his hollow tone was anything to go by, he remembered it, too. “It’s not something I’m proud of.”
“Do you honestly believe what you did—what we did—was rape?” I said, cracking the last word like a whip, even though I kept my voice down to a fierce whisper. “Nowhere near. It was wild, yes. A little rough, maybe. But if you think that qualifies, you’re a bloody fool!”
“I disagree,” he said icily.
I tried to let go of my anger. “Okay, have it your own way—yes, you raped me,” I snapped, still keeping the volume as low as I could manage, feeling the slightest tremble of the car as he controlled his reaction. “I didn’t enjoy it for a second and I faked my orgasms—all of them. Happy now? Hair shirt uncomfortable enough for you?”
For a second Sean’s face had frozen, then all the tension went out of him and he made a spluttering sound that might have been suppressed laughter, but could just as easily have been anguish.
“Oh my God, Charlie,” he said at last, almost a groan, shaking his head. “I’ve always tried so hard not to remind you—”
“You don’t,” I said, cutting him short. “And do you think I don’t know that, anyway? Do you honestly think I would stay with someone who deliberately set out to intimidate me? To hurt me?” I huffed out a breath. “You must have a pretty low opinion of my own sense of self-worth, Sean.” A wisp of an earlier conversation drifted through my mind. “And you’re not the only one,” I muttered.
It took Sean all of a second to latch on to that. “Your father?”
“He made his feelings clear over breakfast,” I said lightly. “Told me how pitiful he found me—that I must be a whack-job to have enjoyed any of it.”
“Your father actually used the expression ‘whack-job,’ did he?” Sean murmured. “Don’t you just hate it when he comes out with all that technical medical jargon?”
I shrugged, more an annoyed roll of my shoulders. “So I’m paraphrasing,” I allowed. “‘Pitiful’ is definitely one of his, though.” I debated silently for a moment about how much of the rest to tell him, then said, “When I told him I wasn’t likely to turn into a battered wife, he nearly had a heart attack.”
“At the ‘battered’ part or the ‘wife’ part?”
“Either—or both. Take your pick.”
A mile passed in silence. The periphery of the Camry’s headlights picked out some unidentified large bird of prey lying as crumpled roadkill on the shoulder of the highway, the feathers of one stiffened wing ruffling slightly in the wash from the passing cars like it was waving for help.
“Does the prospect have any appeal for you?” Sean asked then. “Marriage?” There was nothing in his voice, no clue to which way he hoped I’d answer.
“I’m assuming that wasn’t some kind of proposal,” I said, with the same care I’d use to approach a suspect device. “I think, at the moment, I like things the way they are. What’s that old saying? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Besides, I’m not sure I’m good wife material—battered or otherwise.” I only caught Sean’s shoulders shift by some infinitesimal amount because I was looking, and looking hard. “Why?”
Sean pulled out to overtake a truck that seemed to be going only a few miles an hour slower than we were, despite hauling a double trailer-load of tree trunks behind it. The driver was tired enough to wander slightly into our lane as we drew alongside. Sean accelerated out from under him, then let the cruise control pick up again.
“Because it’s not a question that’s occurred to me before,” he said. “And this is the kind of journey where no doubt we’ll get to say all kinds of things that haven’t occurred to us before.” He took a breath, cocked his head as if considering. “I don’t think I’m good husband material, either. And, if genetics are anything to go by, I’d make a lousy father,” he added, his voice hardening just a touch.
“Well, like I said—if it ain’t broke …”
“That’s not to say it will never need fixing, at some point in the future,” Sean said then, his voice calm, almost remote. “It’s just, right now, I think this is probably all I have to give you … to give anyone. But, if—or when, but more likely if—I ever get to the stage where I feel inclined to propose, it would be to you, Charlie.”
Inside my head I heard a soft hissing sound, like a lover’s gasp or spray on summer lawns, followed by a smooth vortex of tightly spiraling, conflicted thoughts.
Too much.
Not enough.
As good as you’re going to get.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, listening to the rhythm of the tires over a section of mended road surface. And I found myself smiling. “My parents would utterly freak out.”