Chapter Thirty-Two. Daye
Daye
The nightingale was singing when Rory leaned down and pressed his lips to hers.
For one suspended moment, Daye was still tangled in the nightingale’s song. It took her a second to register the feel of his lips against her, warm and soft and damp; a tiny summer storm that got lost and wandered into spring.
Oh. The thought was like a stuttered breath, a surprised inhale. Not quite a thought, but the gap before one.
“Was that okay?” Rory whispered. His eyes spelled myriad messages as they searched hers, shifting kaleidoscope-fast: worry and distress and joy; a deflated surrender shifting into a fervent sort of want, only to collapse into doubt and start all over again.
Was it okay? She didn’t know. How could she tell? This was new.
Rory had never kissed her on the lips before.
She wanted to ask, What does kissing on the lips mean?
and Why have we never done it before? and Why did you do it now?
But her hands were tucked between their bodies, and she didn’t know how to free them without pushing Rory away.
And the thought of doing that made something within her crumple and squeeze.
Rory had been … different lately. Absent.
Abstracted. Withheld. Like a snail retracted into its shell or a touched clam snapping shut.
Sometimes he looked at her, and his eyes crinkled and softened.
Sometimes his mouth curved in something like sorrow.
Sometimes his eyes tracked across her skin in a way that reminded her of Owen, like he was looking for seams he might pull apart.
Sometimes he wouldn’t look at her at all.
But no matter how she asked, he wouldn’t say what was wrong.
At times, it seemed like the only moments he would meet her eyes were when he was asking how close she was to falling apart.
He was gone to the city more than ever now, a week out of every three.
And at home, he seemed to melt out of rooms, fingers stained green and eyes focused elsewhere, whenever Daye entered them.
Some days Daye could coax him to their fortress or for a walk or to skate on the lake.
More often, she couldn’t. They simply drifted in and out of each other’s days, rhythmic as breathing.
But he was here now, so very close, so very there. Looking at her. Smiling at her. And the possibility of losing this, for something as small as a question, made something panicky hitch inside her.
Daye exhaled. She couldn’t tell what it meant, but she could tell it was important to Rory. That it was something he wanted. It had been so long since she had anything to give him, other than trying to survive as long as she could without falling apart.
So she nodded.
“Is it okay if I do it again?”
He looked like he wanted very much for her to say yes, so she nodded again.
Maybe it would even make him stay here, with her. If only for a little while.
His lips were warm against hers. And then they were moving, friction and pressure and a hint of wetness that made them slide against hers.
Rory made a sound deep in his throat and gathered her to him, pressing arms and chests and legs together until there was no distance between them.
She couldn’t remember the last time they’d been this close.
“I love you,” Rory whispered, fever-bright, his nose bumping hers. The words seemed to escape him like balloons, his lips snapping shut too late to hold them.
Rory had told her he loved her dozens of times.
He’d say it when he went away to the city and when he came back, laden with adventures and small, strange treasures.
When they were younger, he’d whisper it on nights when he missed Wynne or his parents too much to sleep, and the two of them huddled in his bed, holding each other.
And later, he’d mumble it into her neck as he shook and trembled with the echoes of nightmares, his hands clutching her close while imploring her to go back to sleep.
Rory had told her he loved her dozens of times, and she’d signed it back dozens more. But there was a new, fervent note in his voice that made her think that this might be different. That this time, Rory’s words had somehow sidestepped their familiar meaning, becoming something strange and unknown.
Daye hesitated for a moment, hands clenched between them, but Rory seemed to be holding his breath as he waited for an answer, body vibrating with tension; holding himself just far enough away that her hands could move between them. So, haltingly, Daye signed, ‘I love you, too.’
It seemed to be the right thing to say, because he was beaming, and then he was kissing her again, his hands curving around her, holding her close as if she might fly away.
Behind them, the nightingale, almost forgotten, wove garlands of sound in the air.