Chapter 24 #2
My hands work to remove his shirt then shove away his pants, and it’s quick. We’re naked and I’m seated on the cool granite and he’s between my legs, and I know everything is fine right now.
Everything is okay when I’m with him, and I think that’s what it’s supposed to feel like when you’re with someone like this. When you…
This is what is to fall, maybe. I think.
I asked him to show me he wanted me, but I think one of us misunderstood.
Or maybe it’s simply me who plays dumbs because I know that whenever we’re like this together, he doesn’t just want me.
He’s telling me he loves me and I don’t know how to say it back.
I don’t know if I can, or if I even deserve to.
“Christ, sweetheart,” Rowan hisses against my lips.
“Rowan,” I breathe and he pushes inside of me—a slow glide with a delicious stretch until I’m utterly full. “Yes.”
His arms keep my body flush against his, our skin at risk of melting into one.
My arms around his neck to keep him close—to keep me close.
I don’t know how, but he moves inside me like that’s where he’s meant to be.
Like we were both perfectly sketched and molded for one another and that is why there has never been a better fit for either one of us.
And it’s scary. I’m not sure what this is—what it means—but there aren’t words for the way this feels.
“Natalia,” he breathes, nudging my nose with his.
“Rowan.” I brush my parted lips against his.
“Please,” Rowan says, and even though I don’t know what it is he’s asking me for, I want to give it to him, all of it. Whatever he wants. He can write it down on a list and I’ll check each one of them off. “Please,” he says again. “Natalia.”
“I…” I croak. “Rowan…”
His thumb wipes the corner of my eye. “I’ve got you, sweetheart,” he pants, his thrusts slowing but moving deeper than ever. “Fall, baby, I’ve got you.”
Rowan holds me together as I splinter apart, shards of my existence scattering all around us.
And I hold him close with my limbs tubed around his body, allowing him to break over me all the same, our broken off pieces colliding together.
The pieces shimmering and reflecting like light and glass, making me think that we might just be able to make one if we glue those pieces together.
It’s scary and it’s beautiful, and I’m so lost in it all that I don’t know what to do.
Please, I beg myself. Let me have this, please. And I pray that I listen.
#
I’m attempting more hairstyles for my curls by day five. I’ve mastered the perfect messy half-up, half-down look with carefully placed strays framing my face. I’ve worked on braids and perfect slicked-back buns. Today, I’ve let the curls down and done two braids on top with a middle part.
Rowan twirls one of my curls around his finger. It seems it’s become his favorite pastime, and I don’t totally mind it. In fact, I think I really like it. And I especially love the way I’m curled up at his side with my head on his shoulder, his arm around me, and the movie playing on the TV.
“Your hair always smells so good.” He inhales.
I giggle. “It’s the grapefruit deep conditioner.”
Another deep inhale. “It’s so good.”
“You’re such a creep.” I playfully poke his side and pull back to see his gorgeous face. “Sniffing my hair like a weirdo.”
“I like your hair like this,” Rowan murmurs with a small smile.
“You do?”
“I like your hair no matter how you have it,” he says. “But this hairstyle, it’s cute—with the two braids”
“I’ve been trying new things,” I admit. “I feel like the curls always look the same tossed aside.”
“Your curls are beautiful.” Rowan smiles, capturing a spiraling curl between his fingers and gently pulling. When he releases, it bounces back up and his smile widens into a grin that is contagious. “I love that.”
“Hmm.” I kiss his jaw. “I think you’re just obsessed with me.” I kiss just beneath his jawline, brushing my lips down, down, down.
“I always have been.”
I leave a wet kiss over his pulse, scraping my teeth. His hand on my thigh tightens. “Natalia,” he groans. “You know this—”
“I know,” I say, and climb over his lap to straddle him. “I can’t help it.”
He brushes his smile across my lips. “Me either.”
“How was your day?” I ask suddenly, his lips at my neck.
“Good,” he mumbles on my skin. “Yours?”
“Better.”
He flips us so I’m on my back, and everything is better. Everything is always better next to him. But this is a fantasy. This is me and him playing house before reality strikes us and it all crumbles.
#
I’ve never been religious. Never prayed other than making the occasional wish to help me on an exam or for a miracle of some sorts.
But I’m looking at this lush, extravagant altar with depictions of saints and stories of the bible, and I feel like falling to my knees and asking why.
I went for a walk this morning and ended up in the town’s church, and I don’t even know what I believe in or do.
I dream of standing on a cliff most nights, not to jump, but I stand on the edge, take a deep breath, and use everything I have to scream. I imagine the sound echoing through my skin, the sound combining with the echo of the waves, stretching on and on until it reaches the atmosphere and beyond.
The sound would reach the edges of the universe and it might just sound like I’m declaring war. And maybe I should declare war on the universe, make it repent and apologize for everything it’s done and ruined for me.
But what about the things it’s given me?
Good and bad don’t outweigh each other, I think. But sometimes they do. And maybe the million bad things aren’t so terrible when there is one good thing that turns it all around.
After all, I have good dads. As complicated as I feel, I have great parents who love each other, and me. I have an amazing group of friends that would kill for me the way I would kill for them.
And then there’s this one blond, golden boy that prances around with a boyish grin and hands out rays of sunshine left and right to anyone and everyone.
But for me? For me it’s like he hands me the sun itself and says, “Here. For you, sweetheart. I’m giving you the sun.
” Silly him and silly me because I’m holding the sun every time I hold him.
I suppose maybe, it’s an apology then. To have someone like him love me in this life. Or perhaps, even a reward for surviving.
Heels of someone’s shoes click against the marble flooring, the sound echoing off the walls and painted dome above. As each step moves closer, I don’t bother to check who it is, not even as two feet stop beside mine. My eyes track the figure, moving up and up and up.
And when I finally reach his eyes, I find myself face to face with an angel.
Then he takes me home.