Chapter 26
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Let’s make one thing clear. Zakery Harry. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Maelin
Heavy breaths flow through Zakery’s chest while he lies on his back in bed, arm surrendered to me. It’s been thirty minutes since I barely caught myself from face-planting at the top of the stairs and rushed down the hall to his room.
He has just stopped crying. He hasn’t made much headway where words are concerned, but he has stopped crying, and he let me coax him up into bed with me, so…that’s something.
His fingers clutch my right hand while I etch over the lines of ink on his arm with my left fingertips, painting the pictures again and again.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
I still, for just a moment.
When I heard those words after my ringtone woke me, I was certain that was it. He was breaking up with me over the phone. He’d come to his senses.
Now I know better.
Even though he’s done nothing but let me exist as freely as I wish, when he needs help, his first instinct is to apologize for existing.
Tilting my head, I rest against his shoulder and go back to tracing the space in his skin. So much pure black with scarce a star or two coming through.
“I’m so sorry.” His eyes close. A lone tear streaks down his cheek. “I don’t mean to be like this.”
Angling my face, I kiss the trail, lick salt off my lips, and whisper, “I like who you are, Zakery. You don’t need to apologize for any part.”
He squeezes my hand, turns toward me, pulls me into the cocoon of his body, tucking our joined hands up under his chin. “I’m scared I won’t be good enough for you. I’m scared to lose you. I don’t want your parents to decide whether or not I can keep you. How do I make myself good enough for them?”
Oh, Zakery… “I’d be very surprised if you’re not good enough for them.”
“How do I make sure?”
“Well…” I murmur, all snuggled up, engulfed in his scent, “I could call them? Right now. And ask.”
He stiffens. “Wh-at?”
“I could call my mom. Tell her all about you. And ask what she thinks.”
He shakes his head. “Absolutely you will not wake your mother up in the middle of the night. That’s sure to make her hate me.”
“Moms are supposed to be woken up in the middle of the night to settle their children from nightmares. It’s the job they signed up for.”
He peers down into my eyes, gripping me tightly. “But…she’s not my mother, and I haven’t had a nightmare.”
I kiss his nose. “If we get married, Zakery, she will be your mother. And panic attacks are kind of like awake nightmares.”
“I don’t want a mother.” He grips my night shirt, balling his fist in it. “I don’t.”
“She’s a good mother.”
“I don’t care.” His voice wobbles, strangled. Then, forcibly, it softens. “I…do not want one, Maelin. Please.”
My heart hurts, the pain exacerbated from the helplessness I can’t quell. I nod. “Okay. No mother then.”
“I’m sorry…”
“You’re okay.”
“I’m not.” He takes in a labored breath. “I ruin everything. How can I expect you to join my family if I am unwilling to join yours?”
“You’re healing from what your parents did to you. Maybe, someday, you’ll want to adopt my parents. Maybe not. They’ll love you as a person and a son whether you claim them or not.”
“You don’t know the half of what my parents did to me,” he whispers. “What if I never heal enough? What if I’m always right on the brink of this soul-crushing fear? I can’t expect you to live with that. Not if I claim to love you.”
“Live with what?” I ask. “A person? A complex person with trauma and baggage and feelings just like everyone else?” Drawing his hand to my lips, I kiss as I hold his eyes. “You might not experience emotions the same as everyone else, Zakery, but you still feel a whole lot. And I am not going to fault you for that. Ever.”
“What if you should ?”
“Are you going to start telling me to shut up when I talk too much?”
His brow furrows. “You never talk too much. Sometimes you talk too little, and I lose the context between when you paused and when you start up again. I wish you’d say every thought in your beautiful mind, so I could let your words lull mine away until all of this pain is a memory lost to me.”
“Covering the pain doesn’t help you address or heal from it.”
“Perhaps not. But it does help me get up in the morning.”
I let my lip jut. “I thought I was here to help you get up in the morning.”
He exhales a soft laugh. “No, Maelin. I’m positive you will convince me nothing in the waking world could possibly compare to staying right here in bed with you.”
I’d be inclined to agree, if Morana would not walk all the way out here and kill us both if someone doesn’t pick her up before she’s supposed to start work. In…roughly six hours.
I wish there were something I could say or do to make everything better, but, after Harry, I’m unwilling to promise that I’ll get married regardless of what my parents say. I mean, all things considered, they approved of Harry . If they don’t approve of Zakery, I’m extremely blind, and I should probably stay single forever because my ability to judge characters is abysmal, and…
I blink.
“Zakery.”
“Yes?”
“My parents approved of Harry . Are you really going to lie here and tell me that you’re scared they won’t approve of you—a celebrity comic book artist with an estate full of mansions and millions of dollars at his fingertips—when they approved of a burgeoning wolfkin who has worked at McDonald’s for the last four years?”
“I have a great respect for the employees in the service industry,” he says.
“Zakery,” I drone.
“I have no respect for Harry. Appalling who they let in the service industry these days.”
I smile. “Everything will be fine,” I murmur. “I promise. You are a thousand times more kind, and genuine, and loving than Harry could ever dream to be. Even his best pales in comparison to your worst.”
“But I bet Harry let you sleep through the night,” he mumbles.
“Actually, no.” I curl up against him. “He’d call me periodically in the middle of the night asking for favors , often when he’d been out with friends and had had one too many drinks. I’d turn him down. He’d cuss and say I didn’t love him. I’d be up all night, feeling sick and confused, wondering if I was wrong and society had moved so far away from putting any weight on physical intimacy that I was the one making a big deal out of nothing.”
“Out of nothing?” Zakery whispers. “Maelin, it’s your body. Your body is the most precious thing you possess. What you choose to do with it…that’s no one else’s decision, least of all society’s.”
Yeah.
There.
That .
That’s why I’m in bed with this man and completely at peace.
“My parents are going to adore you, Zakery,” I say, stifling a yawn against his chest. “You never make me question myself or my choices. You never make me feel less than. You have had every opportunity to take advantage of me or coerce me into doing something I don’t want to, but you haven’t even tried. My parents liked Harry, so, you know—” I stifle another yawn. “—the bar is in—” I curse. “Refrain from playing limbo with the devil, and we’ll be just…fine.”
With that, sleep arrests me, and I tumble willingly into its warm embrace.