Breathe You In (9 page)

Still he said nothing; instead, he curled his
fingers beneath his t-shirt and began to peel it off.

I studied his belly, slender with a dark trail
of hair rising from the waistband of his jeans. A little higher and his navel
was revealed, the hair here sparser and fanned to the sides. Another few
inches, and set in the very center of his torso was the base of a smooth pink
scar. It continued, as Ruben lifted his t-shirt up and off, right over his
sternum, to just beneath the hollow of his throat.

He tossed the t-shirt aside and looked down at
his chest. It was sprinkled with hairs, but none on the scar; that was flat and
pale and a couple of finger-widths wide.

I stared, too, knowing that beneath that scar
was Matt’s beating heart. Through that wound Matt’s heart had been carefully
passed, filling the space of an old, defunct heart that was no longer up to the
job. Surgeons had carefully joined arteries and veins, made one working,
functioning body out of scraps. It was Ruben who’d got possession of the sum
total.

I moved onto my knees, sitting the same way
Ruben was, and pressed my palm over his chest.

He sucked in a breath and placed his hand over
mine.

“You were on the transplant list,” I whispered.
“You have a new heart.”

“Yes.”

“You were dying.”

He nodded. “Yes, I was.”

His skin was warm, and his hairs tickled my
fingertips. The
thud-thud-thud
of
Matt’s heart vibrated through my palm. “A new heart was the only thing that
could save you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. I didn’t really need the lungs, but they
say it’s easier to move them as a package, something to do with all the blood
vessels.”

I nodded. I’d heard that too. “What does it feel
like? To have a part of someone else inside you?”

“Gratitude is the strongest emotion, the fact
that a grieving family made such an amazingly difficult decision on the worst
day of their lives to benefit a stranger. The gratitude is scarily consuming at
times.” He paused. “One day, soon I hope, I’ll say thank you in a letter or
perhaps face-to-face, my coordinator says that can happen when I’m ready. But words
just seem so inadequate, not enough to express my appreciation. I wish there
was something I could do for them in return. I need to work on those thoughts a
bit more before I can put pen to paper.”

I bit my bottom lip. Put all my concentration
into balancing. I needed to hear the rest of this. “Go on. What else do you
feel?”

“There’s relief, I’m not dying anymore, but
there’s still fear, my body is constantly trying to reject what’s good for it,
and then there’s the absolute determination to just be normal and move on.” He
shrugged. “Move into my new way of being anyway. Can’t be quite the dare-devil,
adrenaline junkie I once was. Well, not for a few more years at least.” He gave
a half smile.

“Well you have to look after it.” I nodded at
his chest. “That heart.”

“Yes, I intend to, but Katie, I understand if
you don’t want to…” He looked away.

“What?”

He turned back to me, shook his head. “I’m as
out of the whole dating game as you are. I’ve just found myself a quiet job in
a quiet place and I’m just happy to be alive. I haven’t been looking for
romance or love, just trying to put the pieces back together. You might not
want to be around someone like me.”

As he’d spoken his sweet, cola-laced breath had washed
over my face. I breathed it in. This was air that had been inhaled and exhaled
through Matt’s lungs.

Matt’s
lungs.

I breathed deeper, breathing him in, allowing
that air to fill my chest, circulate my body—air from lungs that I had
gasped and panted with in a hundred beautiful memories.

A full body tingle attacked me. My eyes stung,
but I fought for control. Maintained it, just. “You’re alive,” I whispered, not
wanting to move my hand from his chest. Feeling Matt’s heart beating was like
coming home. How many nights had I gone to sleep listening to that rhythmic
sound?

“I’m alive.” He paused, softened his voice. “And
so are you.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“So?” He used his other hand to tilt my chin,
bring my attention to his face.

“What?” I whispered.

He paused, worried at his bottom lip with his
teeth. “Can you cope with a broken man?”

“You’re not broken, you’re fixed.” I bit back a
sob that was threatening to erupt. “You have a wonderful new heart that feels
perfect and strong, like it will beat forever. You’re not broken anymore,
Ruben. You’re fixed. They made you better.”

He frowned. His eyes were moist too. “I hated
being broken.”

“Me too.” I let a tear overspill, unconcerned by
its track down my cheek.

Without a doubt the decision I’d made when I’d sat
in Intensive Care holding Matt’s lifeless hand and with the organ retrieval
team waiting for my answer had been the right one. It had been painful,
torturous, and as Ruben had just said the worst day of my life, but it had been
the only thing that had made sense.

He caught the tear with the pad of his thumb.
“Don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just happy for you. You’ve been
through hell. And I know what a horrible place that is.”

“Right now it feels like I’m in Heaven.” He
smiled. “I can almost hear harps.”

A slightly hysterical little giggle burst from
me, and then I did what I’d been wanting to do all evening. I slipped my
fingers into his soft hair, cradled his skull, and pressed my lips to his.

“Katie,” he whispered when I pulled back from
our soft kiss.

“I’m sorry.” I could taste him, just a little.
It hadn’t been a big, open-mouthed snog, merely a touch. But still, it had spoken
a thousand words, and it was the first time I’d kissed anyone other than Matt
in nearly a decade.

“No, please don’t apologize.” He placed his
hands on my shoulders, his thumbs grazing my collarbones through my t-shirt. “I
liked it, but…are you sure?”

“I’m trying to put my life back together, too,
Ruben. Matt will always be with me, no one can replace him.” I paused, juddered
in a breath and put my hand on Ruben’s chest again. “Our time together was cut
short, but the memories I have, they’re good memories.” I tried to find the
right words; my emotions were tangled, my thoughts jumbled, but basically I
just wanted to be with Ruben, it felt right. In a very basic, limbic part of my
brain Ruben was someone I needed. “But I want to make new memories, happy ones,
fun ones. I can’t be a sad widow who everyone feels sorry for anymore. It’s not
what Matt would have wanted for me, I know that.”

“If he loved you he would have wanted you to
find happiness again.” He stroked his thumbs to the dip at the base of my
throat, shifting my silky scarf. It was a small, delicate caress that sent a
shiver of something scarily like desire tickling over my skin.

“He did love me,” I said, “with all of his
heart.” And did that heart still love me? The one I could feel beating right
now? Is that where love was stored, in the fibers of the cardiac muscle? And if
so, did that mean Matt’s love had been transferred into Ruben when Matt’s heart
was transplanted? Did Ruben love me already, because of the reassignment of an
organ?

“Katie?” He frowned a little.

“For the first time it feels right to hear that
said.”

“What?”

“That he would have wanted me to be happy. Oh,
it’s been said to me by lots of well-meaning friends over the last year, since
the anniversary of his death, and I’ve just nodded and agreed, put on my usual
fake smile.” I shook my head. “But now, here, yes, he would have wanted me to
be looking for happiness again and I want to find it. Not because it’s what I’m
supposed to be doing, but because it’s what I want. I need to feel alive again,
because, like you said, I am alive.”

Ruben smiled, the edges of his mouth tilting a
fraction and the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening. “Me too. God, me
too.” He kissed me, a gentle connection, his tongue dipping into my mouth the
tiniest amount.

I slid both my hands over his shoulders. He wrapped
his arms around my body, and our chests touched. My breasts, through my top,
squeezed up against his firm pectoral muscles.

His kiss was tender and sweet, his lips a new
shape for me to learn. I touched the tip of my tongue to his, drew in the
slightly salty, masculine flavor of him and knew it was something I wanted more
of.

He pulled me closer still. I shifted, and next
thing I knew he was resting me backwards. I unfolded my legs, stretched out and
knocked away the pot of carrot sticks.

The feel of Ruben over me, kissing me, was
exciting, frightening, wonderful and painful all at the same time.

He kissed across my cheek, to my ear. His
breaths were loud, his weight carefully held on his elbows.

I ran my hands down his smooth back, tracing the
dips and rises of his spine and the planes of his shoulder blades, all the time
staring up at the cloudless sky and the bows of the birches, their tiny leaves
shivering in the breeze.

“You smell like flowers,” he whispered into the
shell of my ear.

“I do?”

“Yes, so pretty.” He lifted his head and looked
down at me. “Kissing you here, now, it’s my top new memory.”

I smiled; the smile grew and grew until it
balled my cheeks and another giggle escaped. “I think it’s mine too.”

He kissed me again. I shut my eyes, lost myself
in the moment. That small shiver of desire was back. The need for more,
skin-on-skin and getting closer was growing. Ruben had that certain something
that worked for me. His smell, taste and the way he made me feel like
everything would be all right, it was something I could get hooked on.

I ran my hands over the waistband of his jeans,
stroked his
arse
cheeks through the denim. Damn, what
a cute bum, taut and the perfect handful.

He dropped his weight a little more, our chests
pressed harder together and his groin pushed into my right hip. The kiss
deepened, and a fizz of lust sparked through me. It couldn’t be ignored. My
nipples were tight, there was a tug in my lower abdomen, the start of a need—a
need I hadn’t thought of for so long.

I lifted my left leg, curled it over the back of
his and squeezed up against him. It was then I felt a long, hard bulge.

“Ruben,” I gasped into his mouth as a fist of
something raw and primitive gripped me. Could we? Here?

“Damn, I’m sorry, I…” He lifted up, completely
off me.

“What’s the matter?”

He lay at my side, head propped on his hand. He
wore a pained expression. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

“It’s okay,” I said, touching his cheek and
squashing that first flame of lust that had a hold of me—a lust that
since becoming a widow had been absent in my life.

“No, I’m sorry, that’s too much for you. Too
fast. I’m so sorry.”

“Ruben,
shh
, I was
enjoying it too.” I stroked his face, enjoying the slightly scratchy feel of
his
stubbled
jawline. “You’re a hot bloke. Why
wouldn’t I?”

He huffed. “That’s kind of you to say.”

“Kind?”

“Yeah, kind, you know, with this.” He looked at
his scar. “And I used to be a bit more muscled, you know?”

“Really? You think that makes a difference to
me? Your scar, how you used to be?”

“I don’t know, you’re a beautiful woman, Katie.”
He reached for a lock of my hair, twirled it in his fingers, studying how it
coiled and hung there. “You could have any man you want.”

“I don’t want any man, I want someone who can
make me smile but understand if I don’t want to. I need someone who’s been to
the same dark places as me and gets what it’s like to be starting over. For me,
that acceptance is sexy and…” I hesitated then decided to just go for it;
impulsive always had been my middle name. “And so are you, Ruben. Really sexy.”

His gaze caught mine. “Damn, I got lucky when
you walked into the museum that day.”

A small kernel of guilt popped inside of me. I’d
orchestrated our meeting, yet he thought it was coincidence.

He adjusted his position, grimaced slightly as
he moved his hips.

“Are you okay?” I asked, pushing guilt into the
locked box it belonged. I’d had enough negative emotions to last me forever.
Guilt could bugger off and leave me alone.

“Yeah, fine. Well, I will be in a few minutes.”
He gave a wry grin. “Can’t exactly do anything about it here, can we?”

I dropped my hand from his cheek to his chest,
circled his taut, dark nipple. I was ready for some good feelings. “Maybe.”

His smile fell. “Can we
er
…take
it slow. This, us?”

“Absolutely.” I stilled my movements.

He frowned at my lock of hair hugging his finger,
let it unwind then rested it on my shoulder. “It’s not that I don’t like you,
that I’m not…” He paused. “Well, you know I’m turned on by you, you’ve just
felt the evidence of that, but…”