26. Charly #2
“I don’t know. Maybe. A little.”
“It’s you. I asked you because you’re you.” His thumbs catch the tears under my eyes. “I can’t picture a single day for the rest of my life that doesn’t have you in it. That’s it. That’s the whole reason. There was never another one.”
“You say that now.”
“And I’ll say it tomorrow. And the day after.
Every day, that’s the thing I signed up for.
” His voice is shaking now. “We have kids someday, I’ll lose my whole mind over them, you know I will.
We need help, then we get help, I’ve got the money, we throw everything at it.
And if it never happens at all.” He stops.
His voice just breaks, the steadiest man I’ve ever known cracking right in front of me.
“Then it never happens, and I’ve still got you.
You were always the part I wanted. The rest was extra. It was always just you.”
And that’s what finishes me. Because I believe him.
Not all of it, not the part of me that spent thirty years being the backup, the spare, the one nobody picked first. But enough.
Enough to slide off the couch into his lap, enough to grab his face and kiss him with my whole wrecked ugly-crying face, enough to finally set the thing down after hauling it around alone all week.
He catches me like he’s been waiting there the whole time to do it.
“I’ve got you,” he says against my mouth. “I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere, you hear me?”
The kiss changes somewhere in there. It starts as me just hanging on, a way not to drown in all of it, and then it turns into heat. The salt of my tears gives way to him, to the warmth of his mouth, and my whole chest goes tight and then loose all at once.
His hands slide up into my hair, tilting my head back to kiss me deeper. I make a low, wrecked sound against his mouth and fist my hands in his shirt and pull him in, until there’s no air left between us at all.
He hooks his arms under my thighs and lifts me in one move. I wrap my legs around his waist and lock my ankles behind his back and hold on like he’s the only solid thing in the room. We make it down the hall in a blur, bumping the wall once, and neither of us says a word about his ribs.
He lays me down on the bed slow, careful, his eyes on mine the whole time. He doesn’t drop me. He sets me down like I matter, then hovers over me for a second, breathing hard, close enough that I can smell him, rain and cedar and the one I can’t name that’s just him.
He starts with my face. He doesn’t go straight for the heat. He takes his time, kisses my forehead, my eyelids, the bridge of my nose. When he gets to my cheeks he kisses the tears away.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says against my skin. “My beautiful, brave girl.”
I shiver, and a sob catches in my throat, and he catches it with his mouth and kisses it quiet, slow and deep. His hands start moving, tracing my hips, the dip of my waist, and every touch feels like a promise. That I’m seen. That I’m wanted. That I’m safe.
He moves lower, his mouth trailing down my neck to my throat. I arch up, my fingers digging into his shoulders, pulling him with me. He gets to my breast and his breath goes warm against my skin before he takes me in his mouth.
“Please,” I breathe.
“I’ve got you,” he says against my skin. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. Just feel how much I love you.”
He gets the rest of our clothes out of the way, his eyes never leaving mine, and when there’s finally nothing between us the warmth of him against me feels like coming in from the cold. He doesn’t rush a single second of it.
He settles between my thighs, knees parting me slow. He leans down until his forehead rests on mine, our noses brushing.
“Look at me,” he says, soft. I open my eyes. “You’re everything. You hear me? Everything.”
Then he pushes into me.
I gasp, my eyes falling shut at the full stretch of him. He doesn’t shove, he waits, lets me get used to him, holds himself still even though it’s costing him.
“God, you feel so good,” he groans. “So perfect.”
He starts to move, slow and sure. He isn’t just having me, he’s worshiping me, kissing me deep while he drives into me with a steady pressure that builds and builds.
“You’re mine,” he says, his voice cracking. “Tell me you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” I sob. “I’m yours, please, don’t stop.”
“I’m never stopping,” he says, moving faster now. “I’m never letting you go again.”
It winds tighter and tighter until I can’t breathe, can’t think. I come apart under him, and it shatters me, but the good way this time. I cry out his name, my fingers clutching at his back.
He holds me through it, and then he goes right after me, spilling into me, his whole body shaking with it. He holds on so tight there’s nothing left between us at all.
He kisses my eyelids, my cheeks, and then my mouth.
“I love you,” he says. “I love you so much it hurts.”
After a while he rolls onto his side and pulls me with him. I tuck my head under his chin and listen to his heart come back down to slow. His hand moves lazy through my hair until it goes still, and his breathing slides off into sleep.
I stay awake.
I lie there in the dark with his arm warm and easy across my waist, his chest rising and falling under my ear. I shift my hand a little and feel the cool of the ring on my finger.
For the first time since that cold little room, I’m not lying here counting down the minutes until he leaves. He’s not going anywhere. I know that now. Or I’m getting there.
But staring up into the dark, the one question I still can’t answer just sits there. Whether I’ll ever really believe I’m worth staying for.