Chapter 29 #2
“I’m afraid to tell you what I hope we’ll do, Bea,” he quietly replies, the pads of his fingers gliding down the divot in my back. “Everything I want . . . I should probably follow your lead here. Let you set the pace.”
I use the prompt he once used on me. “What do you have to lose by telling me?”
“You,” he says, no hesitation. “Everything. Because I could lose you.”
“I promise you won’t.”
He sighs, mouth resting in my hair, palming my backside with soft, soothing strokes over all the spots where I’m still sore from countless injections.
“I should really push you to make the calls here, but . . . fuck it. I want to give this a shot. I’d like to be with you.
Date you. I know you said you don’t want to start a relationship right now, that it wouldn’t be fair to the Martian—”
“Deeply unsure about that nickname sticking, for the record.”
“—but it’s unfair to yourself if you deprive yourself of me.”
I nip his collarbone, beaming. “Arrogant.”
“Determined,” he corrects, petting me continuously.
“Determined to be good to you. And I don’t need a genetic connection to the baby or some legally binding tether to you to be in this, but .
. . the part I’m afraid to scare you with .
. . If you asked me, I’d give you any of it, Bea.
If it made you feel safe, I’d put it on paper.
I’d—to put it delicately, I would put it in a cup and tie myself to you through DNA. ”
“Silas.” Him and his nonexistent self-preservation.
“But. I don’t think you want that. And I would never put that pressure on you or expect it, and I definitely don’t need that in order to love them.
I . . . goddamn it, Bea, I already do, okay?
They’re a figment of my imagination, and still, I can see it.
I’d love to pretend like I’m all calm, collected, and measured about this, play it cool like I’m not obsessed and like I don’t daydream about how life could be.
You, letting me take care of you. Of you and a baby.
A chubby hand in my scarred one, little arms around my neck, blowing raspberries into a little belly, getting up early on the weekends, scooping the cat out of the crib all the time .
. . I can see it all, and it wouldn’t matter if that baby didn’t look a thing like you or me.
They’d still get one of our smart mouths. ”
I’m breathless but don’t put another millimeter of space between us.
Letting myself imagine this, even in the briefest flash, it’s a hit of pure euphoria, painful in its intensity.
I’ve been trying to stay so careful. Trying to guard myself against the full force of this hope.
But the way my heart keens inside my chest, I don’t know how I’m not glowing in the dark.
“You don’t want me to postpone?” I ask. “You’re okay if I keep going forward with this right now?
I’d be getting pregnant a week from today. ”
He’s the one who leans back, finding my face and cupping my cheek.
“God, yes, I want you to keep going. After everything you’ve put yourself through?
Put your body through? I don’t want you to postpone.
It’d be the easiest thing in the world to keep on loving you, to love anything you bring into it. ”
I bring my hand over his and lay a biting kiss to the thickest part of his palm.
Nothing of what he’s said is lost on me.
He’s all but told me he’d legally and biologically father my baby if it gave me a sense of security, and he’s said he doesn’t expect it.
I’m tempted to agree, to show him what a gift I truly think he is, that I’d be honored to share this with him, regardless of where our relationship could end up.
But I don’t think it’s fair or smart to make that choice rashly when we’re still at the beginning of this.
To completely remove any way out for him.
Not when we’re balanced on the precipice and high on the brain chemicals of new—love.
New love. Calling it anything else would be a pathetic lie.
My face scrunches, embarrassment whipping through me when I remember how I asked him to fuck me while we were in the throes. I could have put everything at risk. Clearly, the chemicals are powerful and some safety measures are prudent.
“If you don’t want to put a label on it, that’s okay,” he goes on in my silence.
“We can just . . . What if we keep going like this? What if we continue staying here, together, for however long you want and . . . What if we keep asking each other for what we need? And what if we just keep showing up?”
I kiss his chest, emotion boiling over into scattered tears. “What if I keep on loving you?”
I feel his breath catch in his ribs. He guides my hand to his face now so I can feel him smile into it. “Yeah?” he asks. “You love me?”
“Yeah, Silas,” I say. “I love you enough that if you’d asked me to postpone, I .
. . I think I would have.” It frightens me to recognize it.
The admission feels like dangling off the edge of some great height, with only him to catch me.
I don’t know how he does this, laying himself bare the way he consistently does.
This man is hope in action. Bravery in human form.
“But I’m . . . I’m happy you didn’t. Thank you. ”
“Say it again,” he whispers.
“I love you,” I tell him easily. “Now you say it properly.”
“Did I not?”
“You technically haven’t said it at all.”
“I have. At least a hundred times in my head in the last hour alone. A hundred thousand times before it. Across miles and years. I love you, Bea.”
I root around until I find his lips again.
“Mm,” he hums into a grin. “That was proper enough for you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that was good.”
“All right,” he says hoarsely, just as he starts sliding down the bed and my body. “For efficiency’s sake, let me be improper about it, too.”