Free SCARS by Amy Leigh McCorkle Page A

hard to allow my heart to open. It had rusted shut over the last ten years. I wanted to stay there just as we were. I knew we couldn’t. The water would eventually run cold and we would have to get of the rain so to speak.
                  Ellen might fume that I brought him into our house and that I had left her little to no warning that something like this might happen. I could tell her she did it to me all the time. But my mind could only absorb everything about James at the moment.
                  His skin. His scent. The strength of his arms. The hardness of his body. And when he looked into my eyes I saw that lost soul looking back at me as if he’d found his home. I was looking at him much the same way.
                  There was a world of hurt between us. That didn’t seem to matter. Because at that moment it didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was that we were there. Nothing and no one between us. Just us.
                  He had effectively blown the rust off those frozen shut doors and bulldozed his way in when I’d stumbled upon him at the beginning of the week on that bridge prepared to die.
                  I knew that soul.
                  I was that soul.
                  Every morning it had been a life or death decision. Take the pills, don’t take the protocol. Being HIV positive was not this trendy lifestyle a certain classless group of politicians made it out to be. It was hell. It was branding and it was damn near impossible not to get lost in your diagnosis.
                  But there, in the delirium of one another’s embrace, I dared to dream of forever with a man I could love for eternity.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Eleven
                  “You know, eventually the water is going to get cold.”
                  His words rang hollow. He was as seduced as I was. This was our own little piece of heaven for the moment and we wanted to keep it that way.
                  Then the door slammed and I heard the piercing sound that was disapproval and anger. Ellen.
                  “ Rayna! ”
                  James chuckled. “Has your mother gotten home?
                  A knot of dread filled the pit of my stomach and my skin grew clammy. “Time to face the music.”
                  “Wait a minute. Are you ashamed of what we did? Because I’m sure as hell not.”
                  “Ellen and I have an agreement. No strangers in the house until the other person has had a chance to meet them. She’s gonna be pissed.”
                  There was a hammering at the door.
                  “I know what you’re doing in there!”
                  “Now I know you’re mom’s here.”
                  “No. Mom wouldn’t care enough to be angry.”
                  “Whenever you’re done defiling our bathroom you could at least extend me the courtesy of introducing me to the new man in your life.”
                  Our foreheads touched. “So are you that? Are you the new man in my life?”
                  “For you I am reborn.”
                  He kissed me tenderly and we stood there a little bit longer. But as soon as the water began to cool he turned the water off.
                  We stepped out of the shower. It was time to introduce ourselves to the world.
    ***
                  “I should be pissed. And I am. But I’m looking at the two of you and I can’t really summon up too much rage.”
                  “I know I’m not the one you probably saw Rayna with. I’m the first to agree with you there. I don’t deserve her. But we found each other. She won’t run away. I find I’m in too deep now to let her go. I