She had watched him for weeks, months. He was beautiful - perfectly
imperfect, infuriatingly inconsistent, delightfully impetuous, dangerously
possessive. His anger burned like a slow cooker boiling into incandescent rage,
and though he claimed to love no one he was fiercely protective, absorbingly
passionate. He at once cared not at all and cared entirely, drove a filthy old
car and wore Dior, forgot to shave and smelled like cedars cut at dawn. His
calloused hands held a lifetime of knowledge, moving over what he touched with
expert familiarity. When he walked into a room he was trusted by men who didn’t
know his name, and enchanted women whom he wouldn’t remember; the latter was a
confused enchantment, as his charm was far from smooth. He carried with him the
marks of everything said done to by him, but he carried them like trophies not
scars.
What, she wondered, do you make of such a man? What does he
let you make of him? Does he know what he is, what he feels, what she reads on
his face and in his look? Blunt and rude and blind and deaf, just and sweet
and shrewd and quick, all of this and more in a second and still she was
watching. She couldn’t look away.
