Touched By A Marine (Book 1)

Chapter Six: Guilty Conscience

The soft hum of the engine had finally reached my ears as I awoke and found myself looking up at the roof of the car. I was lying across the backseat with my feet touching the handles of the door as I sighed quietly and rubbed the tiredness away from my eyes. My body felt numb, empty like nobody was living inside of me. It had gotten to the point where I was so numbed from what happened earlier, that I could almost feel my bones. I turned on my side hoping to feel something living but the only thing that was, was my heart and how it beated against my ribcage. The passing streetlamps flashed over top of us as they led the way into town. The tiny little seaside resort was well known as the Hamptons top five most favorite places to go to while on vacation.

My body popped and cracked as I moved my limbs into a sitting position and sat in the middle of the backseat having a perfect view of the street in front of me as well as seeing the wide eyed expression of Noah when he finally looked at me in the review mirror. “What’s wrong?” I asked him. Switching his hands while driving, he took his right hand and tapped his cheek with his index finger and then pointed at me. Still having no idea what he was talking about, I leaned slightly forward since my face was covered in darkness and then low and behold I finally understood why Noah had the shocked expression on his face. My face that had once been cleaned and then covered in sweat after having sex with Dennis tonight was now completely covered in blood.

The passing headlights of an oncoming car shined on my face giving me a good view of how awful I looked. I choked back a tearful sob as I reached up and touched the dried smear of Dennis’s blood that now coated my beautiful skin. A tear managed to escape as I watched it slide down, mixing with his blood, turning into a bloody teardrop before it soaked into my jeans. Then came another and another until I couldn’t stop crying. But the more tears that fell, the more blood that ended being washed away. I reached up and touched my cheeks again as I pulled them back and saw with my own two eyes that what was on my face was definitely Dennis’s blood and not fake. I leaned further back into the seat as I wrapped my arms around myself praying that I would blackout again and not remember a memory of it.

Racked with guilt and sick to my stomach, I barely remember Noah pulling into a seaside gas station that had a twenty-four service pump and a lonely employee working the graveyard shift. The smell of dead fish coming from the ocean just a few miles behind us didn’t help with the fact that I was surely going to lose what was left in my stomach. My muscles then slowly began to cramp up as they twisted and turned sending a small mouthful of bile up into throat as I quickly opened the door and stuck my head out while coughing and gasping at the same time. I felt a thin layer of sweat break out against my forehead as I stepped out of the car and braced myself up against the trunk. Noah was already at the pump as he inserted his credit card and pushed the button for unleaded.

With the gas nozzle in his hand, he made his way over to the gas tank which was right next to me and unscrewed the gas cap before pulling the trigger and setting it into place. The pain from my stomach became so intense that I nearly blacked out and almost fell to the ground if Noah hadn’t reached out in time to grab me and hold me up right. He pulled me into his chest as his arms wrapped around me, holding me tight as he let me collapse under him and regain what little strength I had left. The heat radiating off his body felt good and relaxing as we stood pressed together in silence for a few minutes while listening to the pump as it chimed with each dollar amount that had passed. Click went the trigger as the gas pump stopped working and printed out a receipt.

“Well, the car is filled up with gas and ready to go. Why don’t you head on inside and see if you can’t wash the blood off your face.” Noah said.