Two Punks In Love

Miracle

Kat

Trace showers for longer than I have ever known him to. Well, unless he's not showering, but making love to me in the shower.

My stomach flips at a memory flash of the last time we had shower sex. I feel...wrong... every time I think of Trace that way. I thought my guilt was bad in Bali, after I had only kissed Colin. Now, I am as disgusted with myself as Trace is.

Last night alone in bed, I came to the realization that I am not a hundred percent better. My depression is better, but I still haven't been thinking right. Emotionally healthy people to do not have sex with one man when they know they are in love with another. Who was I really trying to punish? Trace? Or myself? For all the Trashlynn hate I nurture in my soul? Or maybe for marrying Colin in the first place? Or am I trying to punish Ashlynn, in some weird way? Because I know my estrangement with Trace probably has her wracked with guilt...

I don't know. I could hardly sleep for trying to work it all out. It's something I'm probably going to spend a long time working out.

I only know a few of things for sure. One is I have made a series of serious mistakes. Secondly, for the first time, I understand how much easier it was for Trace to lie to me about Ashlynn all those years ago, and how hard it was for him to face the final truths he has faced in the last few months. Thirdly, I pinpointed what bothered me about Trace and Ashlynn the most. Not that he married her in a mixed emotion state of attraction and guilt and concern. Not that he didn't love me when I was fifteen and thought I was in love with him. Not that even that he has a bond with my sister. Of course he does. He wouldn't be the man I love if he didn't. He has a bond with everyone he loves. A loyaltly bond. He's the most loyal person I know.

No. I have insecurities maybe, about the bond he has with my sister, but those are my issues. The issue I have the hardest time forgiving Trace for is the lies of omission he made to me during those first few weeks of dating me.

That is the one thing I have never forgiven, the one thing that has stirred the sticky pot of all the resentments inside me. In that way that you sometimes become the thing you hate, because you focus on what you hate more than what you love, I retaliated by doing the same thing— keeping my friendship with Colin a secret all these years.

That's where I started to go wrong. If Trace had known about Colin—if he had been a visible element—even the smallest visible element in our landscape, the way Ashlynn is—I don't think I could have ever gone down this road with Colin. But he was secret, and that made him separate, and in some strange way that made me a separate person when I was with him. Some part of my soul was walled off in that secret with him. That little fortress we made was the place in which I made all these horrible mistakes.

So no more lies. No more not telling. Ever. Trace expressed his desire for transparency last night, and I agree. For us to heal, we have to be an open book to one another.

He slings his bedroom door open and stalks out in nothing but a towel, ignoring me, heading straight for the shopping bags.

All thoughts evaporate.

Oh.My.God.

Farm Laborer looks amazing on him.

He's been working shirtless, because he's more tan than I have ever seen him. A new incredible strength blossoms across his already defined chest. His collarbones have muscles now, deliciously arcing from a crevice between his pecs outward to his biceps, where the swells of every muscle group curve and taper deliciously down to his forearms. Those swell with an alarming new strength, too. All down his statuesque arms, he's beginning to get those subtle veins that pop out when one is truly defined.