Harm looks away from me, and I try to command the tears not to fall.  I knew that he would probably react like this, but I was the one who insisted on forcing this issue.  Damn it, Sarah, I berate myself.  When are you ever going to learn?  The last thing any man wants to find out about the woman he’s having sex with is this.  How could you be so stupid?

I feel his fingers moving over mine tenderly.  I look down at our clasped hands and realize that I’m holding his other hand in a vise-like grip, so tight that my knuckles are turning white.  Oh, God.  The hand that I’m squeezing the life out of also happens to be the one with the cast.  Seeing the pain etched in his eyes as I look up, I drop his hand as if burned and start to pull away.  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.  Is that faint, faraway voice really mine?  “I just...”

“Hey, Mac,” he says, his words a whispered caress as he gently takes my hand back in his.  His good hand this time – he’s flexing the fingers of his right hand, probably trying to restore some sense of feeling.  “It’s....”

As he trails off, I wonder what he was about to say.  Was he about to try to tell me that it’s okay?  He knows better.  It will be a long time before any of this is okay.

I look up at him, tears stinging my eyes as I attempt to smile.  Even if it isn’t, maybe I can make him believe that it’s okay.  He tugs on my hand, pulling me against his side.  I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes.  Maybe if I try hard enough, I can pretend for just a little while.

I hear something that sounds like pages rustling.  The notebook – I’d almost managed to forget about it.  “I’m sorry,” I say again.  A law degree and years spent in the courtroom, and that’s the only thing I can think of to say.  Wonderful.

“Shhh,” he says, dropping a kiss on top of my head.  “You have nothing to apologize for, either your behavior or what you wrote in here.”

My eyes snap open as I lift my head just enough to give him an incredulous stare.  “But - but some of the things I said in there...” I protest, sputtering.

I can see the gears clicking in his mind as he considers his reply.  I guess it’s better to be cautious at this point.  We’ve already gotten into so much trouble the last two days by opening our mouths before really thinking about the words that were coming out.  Neither of us wants a repeat of the arguments of last night.  Honestly, I don’t know if we can survive many more incidents like last night.  We can’t keep hurting ourselves and each other, but I’d feel better about that knowledge if I knew how to stop it.  The fact that hindsight is twenty-twenty doesn’t seem to be working in this case.  Now, it’s more like ‘lather, rinse, repeat.’  “If taken in the wrong context,” he begins slowly, his eyes steady on mine, “I can see how some of the things you talk about in here might be…misconstrued.”

“But,” I counter, grabbing the notebook off his lap and flipping until I find the section that I want.  I jab my finger at the page.  “You can’t tell me that doesn’t bother you.  Most men would consider that an insult to their…manhood.”

He hesitates again before conceding, “I guess in most cases that might be true.  And…probably…under different circumstances…I’d like to think that I take care of seeing to the needs of my partner...”

I laugh, trying to turn it into a joke, but it rings hollow to my ears.  “See, I knew your flyboy ego would be bruised,” I say.  The words sound joking, but my tone isn’t.  “I mean, that’s okay if you feel that way.  I guess if the situation were reversed, although I suppose it would be harder for a man to, um…I would feel that same...”

He places a finger over my lips to shush me.  “Can I finish?” he asks, his tone confident.  “Okay.  Mac, look at everything that happened yesterday.”  Was it only yesterday?  Was it just four days ago that we unleashed this storm enveloping our lives?  I feel like I’ve aged twenty years just in the last few days.  “We had the court hearing, and then you had your appointment and add on top of that everything that happened over the weekend.  It’s no wonder that you were feeling a little off.   Or is there something else to it?  Mac, did Mic ever say something to...I don’t know...”

“No,” I say quickly.  Maybe too quickly, given the questioning glance he shoots me.  “It wasn’t Mic. Um..."  I hesitate a moment, biting on my lip, and then sighing.  I pull myself away from him, sitting up cross-legged, my eyes fixed on some distant point as my fingers play with a loose thread on the bed’s quilt.  “A month or two after we got married, Chris came in late one night.  He had been drinking, although he wasn’t really drunk.  It was more of an adrenaline high.  I was into it – he didn’t do anything I didn’t want him to do, but...”

“Mac, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he says.  I know that this is probably one of the last things he wants to hear about, but he needs to know...why some things are the way they are.

“No, I want to explain,” I persist.  He lifts my chin, brushing away the wetness on my cheeks with his thumb.  I manage to draw in a shaky breath and continue.  “It was wild and very rough and just what I wanted at that time of my life.  I didn’t really know what it meant to make love with someone, to have that connection that went beyond the physical.  After Chris was done, I made the mistake of telling him that I wasn’t, um, finished.  I’d been drinking myself, so maybe that dulled my reactions.” 

I pause, my mind drifting back to that day.  It’s funny sometimes – I can barely remember my high school graduation, but I can recall with perfect clarity how much I thought I’d disappointed my husband.  I can still feel his accusing gaze, burning through me.  That’s not my problem, he had said.  Maybe you should have worked at it a little bit harder.

Harm’s fingers, gently stroking my hair, bring me back to the present, and I find myself leaning into his embrace again.  Please, God, I pray fervently, I’ve never asked for much from you, but please let this work out with us.  I don’t know what I’d do if I lost him, too.  Gathering my courage, I continue the story.  “He suggested that there was something wrong with me and that was why...”

“He obviously knew nothing about pleasing a woman,” he says firmly.  Even after only four days as his lover, I can’t imagine Harm ever being so callous, even on his worst day.  Harm may have a few negative qualities, but I don’t think you could count being a selfish lover among them.  Perhaps his flyboy ego would take a major blow if he didn’t feel he’d done everything in his power to satisfy his partner.

“Well, Chris wasn’t you,” I reply.  What I wouldn’t give to have met Harm when I was still so young and impressionable.  Then Chris and John and Dalton and especially Mic never would’ve happened.  Who would have thought that with my track record Mic would turn out to be the worst of the bunch?  The face shown to the world isn’t necessarily indicative of what lurks beneath the surface.  “Anyway, the next night Chris and I went out to a bar.  We were dancing and things started getting a little hot and heavy.  I suggested that we go home, and he in turn ‘suggested’ that maybe I could take something to help me, um, respond a little better, you know, to prevent a repeat of the night before.  I didn’t think I could take again the cold look I’d seen in his eyes…so God help me, I agreed.”

I don’t say any more than that.  There are some things that I can’t tell even Harm, not yet.  I don’t think he can really understand the person I was back then, how I could do some of the things that I’d done.  It’s almost like I was two different people.  The old Sarah Mackenzie died and a new person was born in her place in the wind-swept sands of the Arizona desert.  She isn’t part of my life anymore.  She shouldn’t have any part of my life now.  I’ve got to be stronger than she is, to keep her buried deep down inside where she belongs.

“Okay,” he says, his tone accepting.  I stare at him, incredulous.

“I just told you that I experimented with drugs,” I exclaim, “and all you have to say is ‘okay’?  Or has it not registered yet that I’m not talking about the legal consumption of a prescribed drug?”

“No, I got that part,” he replies slowly, as if carefully considering his words.  “I already knew you were an underage drinker, so I guess I’m not really all that surprised to find out that you had tried drugs, too.  Anyway, it sounds a lot like Chris played on your vulnerabilities.  He blamed you for not being satisfied in bed and, probably knowing that you would do anything at that point in your life to cling to the closest thing you had to stability, he figured you’d do anything to hang onto that.”

“Yeah, I was so desperate to...” I begin, breaking off as I make the devastating connection in my mind, a connection I’d dared not contemplate until now.  Oh, dear God.  Please help me.  I can’t go through that again.  Not with Harm.  Not when it means so much.  “Don’t you get it?  I was so scared that he would leave me that I was willing to do anything and now...”

“I’m not leaving you,” he protests firmly, tightening his embrace.

“Can you promise me that?” I ask shakily.  Before he can think about an answer which might mollify me  - or worse, end up being a promise that he can’t keep, I push on.  “Please, don’t answer that.  I don’t know if I can deal with the answer right now.”

“Even if...” he begins, before I silence him with a violent shake of my head.

“Not yet,” I insist, covering his lips with my fingers to quiet him.  As much as I need the reassurances that I know he wants to offer, I know I can’t take it if he’s wrong and it somehow all falls apart.  We’re still too new, too fragile.  “I don’t know what I’d do if you couldn’t keep that promise.”

After a moment, he nods.  His fingers still lazily stroking my hair, he says, in a carefully neutral tone, “Mac, I’m not Chris.  And I can promise...” I start to shake my head again, but he cuts me off gently.  “Please, let me finish.  I promise I will never treat you like that.  I want you to be able to tell me when you need something or when you don’t.  I want to know when I can hold you or when you just want to be left alone.”

My eyes meet his, and I find a conviction in his gaze that is warming in its comforting familiarity.  I close my eyes and rest my head against his shoulder.  He believes every word he’s saying, and I can’t help grasping onto that.  I want to believe like he does, to feel that certainty even amidst everything that’s happened.  Can he believe enough for the both of us?

“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be feeling,” I admit softly.  “I’d just opened up with the doctor and I felt raw and…I needed you to make me forget; only I ended up making it worse.  I didn’t forget a damn thing and it’s been tearing me apart that I was so stupid…I feel like I used you...”

“You mean,” he says, “the way I did Sunday morning when I knew I was going to be meeting Mic in a few hours and I needed you more than I’d ever needed anything or anyone in my life.  If things had gone the other way...”

“Don’t say that,” I plead.  I shiver at the thought of what might have been that dark and dank morning.  “It could never have turned out that way.”  I want to protest that Superman always comes out on top, but I know deep down that even superheroes aren’t immortal.  Even Superman can lose.  “It...Mic never could have come out on top.”  I finish weakly, swallowing hard.

He takes my hand in his again, squeezing it reassuringly.  “The point is,” he continues quietly, “I had all this adrenaline pounding in my veins and I needed a release for all that energy, and when you woke up and walked over to me, all mussed and sleepy-eyed, I had to have you, had to bury myself in you.”

“But you found your release,” I reply, biting back my frustration.  All we seem to be doing is talking around in circles.  “Whereas all I did was end up feeling frustrated.  I did want you, but...”  I trail off, not sure that I can find the right words to help him understand that it’s not the same thing at all.

“Mac, it’s okay.” 

“But...”

He places a finger over my lips.  “Mac,” he says firmly, “why don’t we put this aside for the night?”  I try to protest, but he shakes his head.  “It’s been a long couple of days.  We could both use some rest.  Maybe after a good night’s sleep, you’ll have a different perspective on things.”

I don’t think so, but I’m so scared right now.  So many of our conversations the last few days have started out innocuous but have degenerated.  I can’t do that again.  I sigh.  Maybe he’s right.  I don’t really know, but I don’t know what else to do. 

“I guess so,” I say, sounding unsure to my ears.  I study him, noting the exhaustion and pain etched in the lines around his eyes.  “When was the last time you took something for your wrist?  You’ll probably sleep better.”

I start to get up from the bed, but he tugs me back down.  “I don’t really need anything,” he insists.

“It’s just ibuprofen,” I say, pulling from his arms and sliding off the bed.  “Come on, it’ll make me feel better.”

He manages a smile, but it comes off as forced.  “Okay,” he finally says.  “I’ll take the pills.”

I’m halfway out the door when his voice calls me back.  “Mac?” 

I turn to face him, uncertain.  “I will be okay…eventually.”

I try to smile, but can’t manage more than a grimace before I duck my head and continue into the hallway.  I want to believe him.  But can we survive waiting for eventually to come?

To be continued....