Chapter 26 Natalia #2
The weight of her head on my shoulder is gone.
I lift my eyes from our hands and they slide right to hers.
Those eyes destroy me as easily, as they drown me, and just as easily, they break my heart.
The hazel color is surrounded by a sad shade of red.
Her eyes are swollen and lids are reddened and sore.
Anything—I’d do anything to take that away. Someone just tell me how, please.
I can’t bring myself to look away from her, no matter how much it hurts to see her this way. Sad or not, she’s my girl and I’m always going to be next to her.
“I just wasn’t planning to,” Natalia rasps, and my heart is in pieces scattered all around us.
“I know.” I sniff. “But I’m glad that you made it. I don’t know what this town would be without you. My days would just be…”
“Be what?” Natalia whispers.
“Cloudy,” I confess quietly. “Sad. Empty. You and me, Natalia—”
“You think we’re the same?”
I smile to myself. “I think we’re perfectly different and it makes us the same.”
“I don’t think we’re that different.”
“You don’t?” I’d arch a brow if she were looking at me. But I want her head right where it is, resting on my shoulder.
“I think you get me,” she whispers. “I don’t think you would if we were all that different.”
Maybe grief is different from what she feels. Or maybe what she feels, and what grief makes me feel, are one and the same, and that is where we meet. This is where we turn ourselves inside out and show each other what’s underneath.
Broken recognizes broken.
Although, I don’t feel as broken as I used to, she feels like ruins. And I’ll help her reconstruct.
“I don’t know who I’d be without you,” I rasp.
“You can’t possibly mean that.” She wipes her cheek and nose with the back of her other hand, using her sleeve.
“I mean every word I ever say to you, sweetheart,” I rasp. “All of them.”
“Oh,” she breathes. “I mean almost everything.”
I huff a laugh, a small smile. “That I’m ugly?”
“No, not that,” she says, and I feel her cheek move as she smiles against my chest. “Not that.”
“I hear things you don’t say.”
“Weirdo.”
I snort—the sound encourages a giggle out of her. And her laughs are so contagious, I can’t hold back a few quiet ones of my own. Regardless, the sounds echo off the bedroom walls and it’s a song I need on repeat.
“What things don’t I say?” Natalia asks quietly.
“I’m afraid if I tell you,” I say, “you’ll run away from me.”
She sniffs. “Am I that bad?”
“I wouldn’t call it bad.” I hold her hand in both of mine, memorizing its weight. “You have a tendency to—”
“I know,” she rasps.
“I know you though,” I whisper.
“It scares me.”
“I know that too.”
Natalia sighs heavily, her chest rising and dropping slowly. “I don’t like that, Rowan. Don’t…I can’t…”
“Natalia,” I murmur. “Sweetheart.”
Her arm tugs at her hand, an attempt to take it from mine, but I hold it firmly. She’ll just disappear from me again if I let her go.
“I have anxiety.”
“I know,” she whispers. “It’s okay.”
“I’ve had it my whole life,” I say. “It’s gotten better, but mix everything else into that, and it’s…”
“It feels like dying while breathing,” she croaks.
I nod as I squeeze her hand. She squeezes back. “It’s exactly like that,” I rasp. “Like I’m suffocating.”
“I know,” my sweetheart murmurs. “But you’re safe here, with me. I can help you untie that weight at your ankles, Rowan. I’ve got you.”
“And I’ve got you,” I whisper back, and kiss the top of her head. “Okay,” I say, “now you.”
Natalia sighs.“I feel guilty for wondering about my birth parents sometimes. I shouldn’t be wondering at all, really. But today… I don’t know. Today, for the first time in a long time, I wondered why they didn’t want me. That’s why I went for a walk.”
“Natalia, I don’t think—”
“I don’t know that they didn’t want me though,” she adds, sniffing and wiping her cheek.
“I don’t know if it was because of circumstances of life, or lack of emotional stability, or uncertain financial stability.
I don’t know any of that, and I know it’s not always that simple, but most of the time, my mind goes straight to assuming they didn’t want me. ”
“I don’t know how anyone could not want you, Natalia,” I say. “I can’t tell you what to think—I can’t tell you what is true or not, but I can tell you how loved you are. Everyone in this goddamn town loves you, sweetheart. I—”
“Don’t say it.” She breathes quickly. “Not today.”
“But you know.” I sigh, my chest weighed down with everything I feel for her—words I need to get off my chest so she can hear me say it. “You have to know.”
She lifts her shoulders just slightly. “I know.”
I run my fingers up and down her arm. I think about all of my wildest fantasies.
How she’s made me want a future. She makes me want to be a husband, a father.
We’ll be happy, I know it. I’ll make her smile every day and I’ll love her until I die.
Until the love I have for her is the only thing that kills me.
And even then, I’ll come back to life just to love her again.
She might laugh if she could hear my thoughts—a cute little flustered giggle she’ll try to pass off as her calling me delusional, but we all know, she loves it. I love her, and she loves me, even if she has a hard time showing it. Even if she is unsure how to.
I bring her hand to my lips again and repeat those words to myself, writing the millions of promises on her skin with my whispers.
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you know?”
I blink, brows furrowing.
“Do you know,” she says, “what I know?”
When it clicks, my heart settles.
“I know,” I whisper. She loves me.
“Good.” She sighs quietly.
The sheets rustle behind her as she slips out from under them, pulling on a sweater that fits her like a dress.
“Wait—where are you going?” I ask, grabbing onto her fingers.
She comes in close, eyes on eyes. “I’m going to take care of you now.”
I bring that same hand to my lips. My sweetheart. “Stay in bed then,” I say. “I only need that.”
She hums, “Uh huh,” and kisses the corner of my lips. “I can cook too,” she says. “I just don’t because you’re better at it.”
The sound of torrential rain fills the once silent moment, but my need for her—how badly I just need to hold her and lie with her in silence, to just exist beside her, is louder than everything. And that kiss on the corner of my lips leaves an imprint on my skin.
“You make me feel better,” she whispers, her arms around my neck and fingers in my hair. “You make me feel like I’m getting better—like I can.”
“You can.”
“I know that now,” she says. “Because of you.”
I kiss her. “You did that,” I say, “on your own. You’re doing it.”
“I couldn’t do it without you, though.” She kisses me back. “Now, let me get started on something sugary and not at all nutritious.”
“Hmm.” I watch her walk through the bedroom doorway. “Something loaded with cholesterol?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Tonight, I let her cook. Nothing burns, nothing is a disaster, except the dishes in the sink, and I’m proud. She kisses me freely, and I’m proud. I’ll always be proud. Especially when she’s particularly proud of the meal and desserts she’s put together.