Chapter Thirty-Five #3
I don’t know how long I keep displaying my wrath, but at some point, I run out of steam and slump against his chest. I burrow my nose in his pecs and breathe him in, my lungs filling with his musky, outdoorsy smell, my tired body and battered heart resting in the cradle of his flexing arms. I realize we aren’t on the sidewalk anymore but in the alley.
I can see the brick wall he’s leaning against as he rocks me back and forth.
Despite everything, my heart thinks it’s poetic. It started in an alley when he grabbed me, so it should end in one too. Swallowing, I look up and our eyes tangle. “I hate you.”
His chest shudders. “I know.”
I look at the scratches on his face, especially a big one on his jaw. “I drew blood.”
“I deserve more.”
I clutch his T-shirt. “You’re never going to leave, are you?”
He squeezes his arms around my waist and his voice sounds almost sad, as if he’s delivering bad news. “No.”
“Do you…” I twist his T-shirt, my heart racing in my chest. “Do you really love me?”
His eyes become liquid and shiny, and he squeezes me to his body again. “Yeah.”
“You don’t know what love is,” I tell him.
Something like pain crosses his face and his breath hitches. “No.”
I dig my knuckles into his chest and go up on my tiptoes. “So then how come you’re the only one who knows how to love me?”
He watches me for a beat, his eyes going back and forth between mine. When he understands what he’s looking at in my eyes, on my face, he brings his hand up to my face and shakes his head. “Oh, darlin’, no. Don’t you do it. Don’t you forgive—”
“So you’ve been cutting yourself?” I speak over him.
He’s cupping my jaw with the same hand and he swallows. “Pain helps me focus.”
My heart drops to my stomach. “How often?”
His thumb rubs my cheek. “Only when I can’t control the urge to see you.
To bury my good intentions and bust down doors to go to you.
To watch you sleep. To cut through a crowd and hunt you down to touch you.
” Then, after a pause and with his thumb still caressing my skin: “Bein’ good don’t come easy to me, darlin’, but I’m tryin’ and I’ll be damned if I’ll fail. ”
It takes me a few seconds to catch my breath, but when I do, I strain my legs to stand even taller. “You’re going to stop.”
He frowns. “What?”
“Cutting yourself,” I order. “And you’re going to go see someone about your PTSD.” Before he can protest, I say, “I’m not going to argue with you about it. You’ve done it your way and now it’s going to be my way.”
He watches me a beat before giving out a very short nod, and I breathe out a sigh of relief. But it’s not over yet because I have a couple more things to straighten out. “You’re going back to your ranch tomorrow.”
That gives him a pause and his frown comes back. “I thought we just—”
“There are shelters there too, right?” I keep going. “In Black Rock.” He goes taut but I continue, “You said I could work there too, if I wanted. You wouldn’t tie me to your bed or anything.”
His features are firm when he says, “Reverie, no.”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t forgive me. I don’t deserve to be forgiven. I—”
“It’s not up to you, is it,” I tell him, tightening my hold on his T-shirt.
“Like it wasn’t up to you that I fell in love with you.
It wasn’t up to you when I decided to be brave and tell you.
I did what I did on my own. I knew I was taking a risk and yes, it backfired but again, it’s not up to you to tell me how to handle that. ”
“But I—”
“You’re always bossing me around, telling me to do things.
You’re putting me in places I don’t want to be.
But again, it’s not up to you. You can’t tell me how to feel or what to do.
I can decide for myself. I can decide whether I want to be with you or not.
Whether I want to forgive you or not. All you can do”—I breathe deep—“is apologize.”
We’ve had this discussion before, back when he brought me to the ranch and decided to end things between us because he thought that was what was good for me.
I can see the memory of it flickering through his eyes.
But I didn’t let him decide for me back then, and I’m not going to let him do that now.
Still, though, he leans forward and argues, “But I can’t promise that I’ll never hurt you again.”
“I’m not asking you to promise me that.”
“I can’t promise I won’t make you cry.”
“I’m not asking for that either.”
He pauses a second to breathe through his nose, then brings his other hand up to my cheeks too. He cradles my face and drops his forehead over mine. “So what’re you askin’ for?”
I grab his wrists and crane my neck to whisper close to his mouth, “That you’ll always love me in your way, the way I need. The way only you know how.”
“Always.”
“And you’ll never forget to live.”
“Never.”
I close my eyes then as tears fall down my cheeks. Happy tears. Relieved tears. Tears for all that he’s made me go through and all that he’s gone through for me. And then there are tears for all that came before. All that happened eight years ago.
“Do you know,” I begin, whispering against his mouth as he wipes my tears, “how brave you are? How beautiful and strong and I… I’m so…
I know you call me brave. I know you call me beautiful but I couldn’t have done what you did.
I couldn’t have… My chest hurts when I think about it, when I think about Rosie.
I dream about her too. I see her at night and I think she looks like you.
And every day, I carry that picture in my heart.
Because I figure she needs all the hearts in the world where she can live, she can thrive.
And because that’s all I can do for you and it makes me feel so useless sometimes.
So useless that I can’t… I can’t even imagine the pain correctly.
I can’t even wrap my head around it to give you what you need.
And you… You did it. You gave it up. For Rosie. For—”
“For you.”
“What?”
His eyes are wet. I can see water sitting on the rims and it breaks my heart further that he won’t let them fall, his tears.
That he will drink them down and absorb them inside instead of letting them out because he still thinks he deserves to live through hell for his failures.
Then and there, I make a promise to change that.
If I’ve given him life, then I can also teach him to live it in peace.
He taught me to live mine, so this is only fair.
“I gave it up for you.”
“M-me?”
He swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple jerking.
“When I found out you were gone. That they…” He has to breathe in and out again.
“I knew what I had to do to get you back. I knew what they’d ask for.
So I… I called the lawyer. I called him to dissolve everything.
It didn’t matter, the land, the revenge.
None of it mattered when the price was too high.
When the price was you.” He rolls his forehead against mine, his fingers pressing into my cheeks.
“I was still hell-bent on dyin’ though. Still hell-bent on destroyin’ myself.
Thought I’d go away somewhere, live the rest of my godforsaken life away from all the people I’ve hurt.
Away from you. So I didn’t hurt you anymore, didn’t make you cry.
Didn’t break your heart. But then you…” He keeps rolling his forehead against mine, his breaths choppy and sweet.
“You showed me a better way. You showed me that Rosie could live and—”
I capture his words with my mouth. Because they’re so precious, so fragile and spun from sugar, that they need to be protected at all costs.
They need to be kept safe inside of me, on my tongue, in my bloodstream, so I can remember them forever.
I can remember that he’s the only one who’s ever chosen me.
Over and over and over again.
I don’t even know how I found him or how he found me, but I’m not letting him go.
I’m never letting him go. And I tell him that with my kiss.
I tell him when I fill his lungs with my air and he tells me back when he does the same.
We kiss and kiss until the world stops and time loses all its meaning.
Until I whisper, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” he whispers.
“I’m not letting you go. No matter how much you argue. I’m coming with you to Black Rock.”
“Yeah, you are,” he rasps, followed by the sweetest words anyone has ever said in this world. “Till death do us part.”