Raise Up, Heart - Leta Blake Page 0,1

be some lapses in memory due to the trauma to your body and brain sustained after the accident.

The scarf is soft, silken, and it runs through your fingers like Emily’s hair. You know that she’ll like it, and you skim it through your hand again.

Soft, short, fistful.

You shake your head, confused, and rub at your eyes. The scarf flutters to the floor, and you bend to pick it up, placing it back on the table, leaving without purchasing it.

You go home and sit on the sofa, clutching a pillow to your chest. You think about the chess game, the scarf, the shock of some odd memory that you can feel still against your palm but can’t recall from any part of your life. You sit so still and so quiet that you count the thud of your pulse in your neck and notice the gentle shaking of your torso as Damon’s heart beats in your chest.

Emily comes home, all smiles and open arms. You steal a kiss from her lovely lips and whisper to her, “I’m so grateful to be here with you.”

It’s a beautiful world, despite the pain. You know how precious each moment is now that you’ve been given this second chance at life.

So, at night, before bed, you take the time to smell Emily’s perfume when the bottle catches your eye on the bathroom counter. Then you carefully fold the toothpaste tube from the bottom, though you never have before, because it feels right. And as the moon rises outside the window, you climb into bed with the woman of your dreams.

Emily is riding you, heaving up and down while you’re lost in her wet goodness. Her breasts are sweet, supple globes in your hands, and you lean up to kiss her neck.

Stubble, sharp, scratchy, hot on your lips.

You jerk back, and blink at Emily, taking in her face twisted in a moment of bliss. Your stomach goes into knots.

Emily doesn’t notice, and you close your eyes, because this is always so sweet now, such a joy to let your body feel this beautiful bliss—

Tight, hot, gripping, and a guttural male groan.

—“Oh, God,” you cry, covering your face with your hands, trying to block whatever memory has ripped into your mind.

“Oh, God, Alex!” Emily echoes, speeding up her movements. “Oh, it’s so good, baby. So good,” she croons, and you have to fight to keep from shoving her off and away.

You focus on your cock sliding wetly in and out and send a desperate prayer up to the heavens because you are suddenly terrified that you simply won’t be able to pull this off.

That she’ll sense…that she’ll know….

Her body clenches at you and you jerk under her, hoping that she doesn’t notice that the condom is empty, hoping that when she pulls off, she thinks you’ve come, too.

You slide away fast, kissing her mouth, kissing her hair, saying, “I need to clean up. I’m tired.” Then you want to bite your own tongue because now she’s going to worry that you’ve strained Damon’s heart. “It’s okay. I just…I need to get some rest. It was good, Emily,” you say. “You’re so good, so beautiful in every way.”

You throw the condom away, and your cock wilts in your hand. You run the water. Splash it on your face, and stare at yourself in the mirror. The red scar down the center of your chest is violent and still new. You run your finger over the seam, thinking of being cracked open, the bloody, red and white mess of it all. You shudder when you think of them ripping open Damon’s body to harvest his heart for you.

“Alex?” Emily asks from the doorway. Her nightgown is white and sheer, her gentle outline visible beneath it, and you want to go to her, to wrap your arms around her. You want to tell her all the odd things you’ve felt lately, all the memories you can’t explain. But you don’t. Because her grief for her friend—your cousin—and her fear for you is still too fresh. And this is all too confusing.

And, perhaps, if you’re lucky, it will simply go away.

If you’re lucky.

It escalates when you see Cole Hart at the hospital. You’re there for a check-up. You’re still on leave until you’re more fully healed, and though you’ve felt up to returning to your job as a nurse practitioner in a family practice for a week or more now, Emily won’t hear of it.

Cole is there for some sort of