Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
TATUM
Maeve slept pressed tightly to my chest with my arms wrapped around her until the sun came up.
As sore as I felt from the surgery, I still didn’t move.
I just sat and watched Forensic Files on the TV until one of the nurses made their rounds every so often, checking on me while careful not to wake the sad girl on my chest.
She looked like she had seen a ghost when I glanced up to find her standing in the doorway.
Seeing her cry like that nearly broke me.
She was sobbing so hard she was trembling just trying to catch her breath, and not one single piece of me liked it.
Of course I was concerned about what could have happened while I was in surgery to have made her so upset, but that could come later, when she woke up with a fresh head after some sleep.
When she eventually stirs, I don’t waste any time reaching over to grab the tiny pink cup of water that’s been sitting on the rolly table next to the bed, knowing she’ll probably need it after crying most of it out earlier.
A raspy groan leaves her lips as she weakly pushes up from my chest, and as she sits up, I get a better look at her face.
Her beautiful brown eyes are puffy underneath, squinty as she looks up at me as if she knows and can feel it, too.
Her brows pinch together as a look of panic takes over her features, but I’m handing over the cup of water before she can start to fret.
“I don’t have a toothbrush or anything,” she whines, her hand coming up to cover her mouth.
“Drink this.”
“But I—”
“Please drink.”
She swallows thickly as she pouts, before gently grabbing the cup and taking a sip without another word. She cradles it like it might break as she drinks from it a few times, and then she puts it back into my already waiting hand.
“I don’t wanna have morning breath,” she croaks after a moment of staring apprehensively at me, talking with her head at an awkward angle, and it makes me want to laugh.
“I don’t care about that right now,” I tell her, my hands coming up to rest on her shoulders as I rub and knead them gently with my thumbs. “I care about how you’re feeling. Talk to me? Please? Tell me what happened.”
Her swollen eyes grow softer, widening just a bit as she fidgets with her hands in her lap.
I slide mine from her shoulders down her arms, grasping her shaky hands in my fingers and squeezing them as I wait for her to speak.
She toys with her bottom lip between her teeth as she takes a few deep breaths, and the sudden fear of what she’s going to say ripples through me.
She’s going to leave.
She’s going to tell you that she can’t do this.
This is it.
“I have to tell you something, Clark.”
She sounds so sad that I grip her hands a little more firmly, scared that if I let go, she’ll slip from my fingers for good.
“O-okay.”
“I’m so sorry for the ups and downs I’ve put you through these past few weeks,” she mumbles, peering down at our hands as a few seconds tick by. “I know I’ve been confusing and unsure and speaking for you at times and making assumptions during others, and I… I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize for figuring yourself out,” I tell her, and I mean it.
She needed that during this trip. Maybe she hadn’t realized it, and I didn’t realize it until a week or so ago, but she needed this trip to figure herself out.
To help herself heal a little bit more. To free herself of the restraints she’s had on herself for so long.
She deserved to live without having to put on a mask for others to see.
Maeve cocks her head as her bottom lip trembles, but she doesn’t look up at me. I pull our intertwined hands into my lap to get her attention, yet she still doesn’t lift her head.
“But I do,” she croaks out, “because I… I know I’ve been so confusing. So all over the place with my thoughts and feelings. You deserved better communication, better boundaries, better all of it. I should’ve given you that before we…”
“I’m a big boy,” I murmur, bringing our hands up to press my lips to the back of hers, “I knew what we were doing. What I was getting into. Maeve, if I had a problem with any of it, I would have told you that.”
Her lips purse as she nods, over and over again, like she’s trying really hard to accept what I’m telling her.
“I slept in the waiting room the whole time.”
I frown. “You didn’t get a hotel room?”
She shakes her head. “I wanted to be here when you woke up. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Mae,” I urge in a soft voice, letting go of her hands and cupping her face, forcing her to finally meet my gaze, “that couldn’t have been comfortable. I was okay. You should’ve gone and gotten some rest in an actual bed.”
“I did,” she says, “in yours.”
A tiny laugh escapes me at that before I can even help it, and I lean forward, pressing a chaste kiss to her lips.
She melts into me, something she’s always kind of done, but this time, it’s like her entire body presses into me with an urgency she’s never had.
She furthers the kiss before I can even break it off and wraps her arms around my neck, forcing me to readjust my hold on her face.
I want to ask her what’s actually wrong now, why she’s kissing me this way…
Is this a goodbye kiss? My thoughts are silenced, though, when she loosens her arms around me to fist her fingers in my hair, tugging me closer.
“That wasn’t really what I needed to tell you,” she pants as she breaks the kiss, pressing her forehead to mine. “There’s something else.”
Oh no.
“Yeah?” I rasp. “What’s wrong?”
“The other stuff was just to preface this part,” she says, taking a shaky breath, “you know? Like a build-up to what I really needed to tell you.”
“Maeve,” I whisper, but it sounds more like a plea. She’s going to leave. She’s going to leave and it’s actually going to be the end of this. I’m not going to go back to Pennsylvania and have her waiting there for me.
Oh no, no, no.
My chest feels tight as I wait for the other shoe to drop. For the bomb to obliterate me. An eerie sense of no control and dread fills the large pit in my stomach.
“Oh, no,” Maeve urges, sitting up straighter as her hands drop from their grip they still had in my hair. “Tate, no. I don’t mean it like t-that. This isn’t coming out right. It’s not bad, at least, I don’t think it is. I don’t know, actually. Maybe it is bad—”
“Maeve, you’re killing me here.”
She stops talking abruptly, her mouth clamping shut as her features soften.
Her jaw clenches as she swallows thickly, her hands fidgeting in her lap again like they were doing earlier.
She’s working herself up to speaking again; that much is obvious by the way her body rocks faintly, almost like she’s revving herself up.
“Seeing you sitting here in this bed, even though you were okay…” She trails off for a moment. “I don’t know what happened. I just…couldn’t stop crying. And then I…”
I wait as patiently as I can for her to continue, even though I feel like I’m about to explode from the adrenaline pumping through my veins, preparing me for the worst.
“I’ve been awful, Tatum.”
My lips part to speak, but nothing comes out. She’s been the opposite of awful to me. There’s not an ounce of my being that could ever think of her that way.
“I have no fucking idea where to go from here or what to think or what to do. I don’t know what this means for me in terms of healing the broken parts of myself or if I’m doing this all wrong,” she says in a small voice, and I’m taken aback for a second until she adds, “but…all I know is I can’t deny anymore that I l-love you. ”
My face goes numb, or maybe it’s paralyzed, I don’t know. All I know is it falls, void of any emotion but pure shock. There’s a ringing sound that starts off muffled in my ears until it’s all I can hear besides the harsh thudding of my heartbeat.
She loves me?
I stare at her, probably resembling a deer in headlights, and she stares back at me, eyes just as wide as mine, like she can’t believe she just said that.
In fact, her hands are visibly shaking now, and soon after, so is her head.
“Oh, God,” she moans out, “I’m so sorry—”
“I love you,” I rush out.
My heart is thudding so hard that I swear she can see it reverberating through my body as I watch her gape at me.
“You love me?” she squeaks.
The loudest scoff I’ve ever made in my life leaves my mouth as I lean toward her, ignoring the pain in my abdomen, and grasp her face in my hands as I smash my lips into hers.
Her hands feebly grip onto my hospital gown as I kiss her like my life depends on it.
I’m stealing every breath that leaves her mouth as my own, claiming her tongue with mine.
“Of course I love you,” I breathe against her lips, pressing another soft kiss against them before adding, “Can you really not tell, Maeve? Can you not see how helplessly in love I am with you?”
“In love?” she rasps, and I kiss her again. “You’re in love with me?”
“Mae, I think I’ve been in love with you since you kissed me that first time.”
She pulls back from me completely, hands still gripping my gown for a few moments before she loosens her fingers, resting them against my blanket-covered thighs instead. Her dark eyes study me like she’s contemplating what all this means. I can practically see the wheels turning in her head.
“We’re both working toward our careers,” she finally says. “That could lead us to two different places. Different paths.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, I’ll have medical school and class and studying and probably be up to my neck in stuff, Tate.”
“Okay,” I repeat.
“What if we go off to two separate places?” she adds. “What does that mean for us? For this? Long distance? I don’t know how many relationships really thrive like that—”
“You’re freaking out over something that hasn’t happened yet,” I remind her gently. “We can take everything as it comes. It’ll work out the way it was meant to.”
“Tate—”
“I know you want to have it all figured out right now. I know that’s how you are. I know that’s what makes you feel better, knowing what’s going to happen and planning everything out, but I don’t care about any of that stuff, Mae. I just w-want you.”
Maeve’s shoulders sag as she soaks in my words, her head tilting slightly as she peers at me through her thick lashes. Her lip pushes out in a pout almost before going back to normal. “But it’s not going to be as simple as that, Clark.”
“I don’t care.”
“It might be really hard.”
“Don’t care.”
She lets out a really long sigh, so I reach over and brush her cheek with my thumb before she can come up with another reason to talk herself out of this.
“Nothing you say is going to change my mind,” I say, brushing her cheekbone again, and again. “I told you, I just want you. All of the other stuff is just hurdles. We can get over hurdles.”
Where I expect her to keep fighting me, keep reaching for excuses that won’t matter, I’m surprised to see her give up instead.
Readjusting her legs on the bed, she twists until she can lay down, her head resting on my lap as her hair fans out enough for me to run my fingers through it as I smile faintly down at her.
I won.
I actually won.
“Just hurdles,” she mumbles.
“Just hurdles,” I repeat.
“Tatum, I’ve never heard you talk so confidently before,” she teases a bit, side-eyeing me before she looks straight ahead again. “Who are you right now?”
My smile widens as I comb my fingers through her hair, starting from her hairline all the way down to the roots, doing this for a few minutes before I finally respond to her question.
“This is who I am when I’m with you.”