Chapter 53 Monk #2
“I can see how that would be hard to let go.”
She rests her head on my shoulder, hiding her face from me, but she can’t hide the tears soaking my shirt. “I didn’t want to scare you away, to freak you out.”
“I wasn’t freaking out.” I pull back, lift her chin so we’re looking into each other’s eyes. So I can see her and she can see the truth in my eyes and my answer. “What scared me was it happening and you not getting what you needed, you not trusting me with it.”
“We’re just getting started and I didn’t want this to ruin what we’re rebuilding.”
“Nothing’s ruined.”
She sighs and shakes her head. “I know better. It just got away from me.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. This is a complicated situation.
One you’ve been dealing with—and really well—for years.
I remember you saying stress and lack of sleep can contribute to this happening.
Don’t forget you’ve been working on the biggest project of your career and trying to develop something new for this overall deal. ”
I bend to kiss her hair.
“All that combined with the confusion of the love of your life reentering the picture,” I say with a straight face. “I mean, I know the sex is phenomenal, but that’s just one more thing to deal with.”
She snickers and pinches my arm, but doesn’t otherwise respond.
“Are you laughing at me being the love of your life, or me saying the sex is phenomenal?” I ask, only half joking.
“You are the love of my life,” she says, her expression sober, but some humor lighting her eyes.
I wait for the second part, and when she doesn’t confirm the sex is phenomenal, I press her back into the couch.
“Don’t make me prove how good the sex is,” I mutter into the curve of her neck.
She giggles like I hoped she would, arching into the gentle kisses I leave along her collarbone.
This won’t be the last time we deal with this, and I want her to know it doesn’t have to feel like an existential crisis.
I trace the sleek line of her brow with my thumb.
She stills, closes her eyes, leans into the contact like my touch is exactly what she needs.
“You know,” she says, eyes still closed.
“I was sitting at Tessa’s side, and all I could think was that I almost lost my best friend.
” She looks down at her hands. “And then I kept imagining you sitting where I was. You worried that I was dead or had done something stupid. That’s not the life I want for you, Monk. ”
“You are the life I want.” I lift her face so our eyes have no choice but to lock on each other. “You tell me I get to have you, but this is what we’ll navigate, I’ll take it. No questions asked. I got shit we’ll have to navigate, too. Things you’ll have to put up with from me.”
“Like your snoring?” she deadpans.
“Dammit, I had a cold!”
We both laugh, letting the moment lift as we lay in the security of each other’s arms.
“I have a lot to learn about bipolar,” I say, serious now. “But I know it doesn’t go away. It’s for the rest of our lives.”
She lifts her head from my chest, peering up at me tentatively.
“Our lives?”
“That alright with you?” I ask, tensing, but forcing myself to wait, to give her space to articulate whatever is turning over in that beautiful brain of hers.
“I love you, Monk. God, so much and for so long.” A tear streaks over one smooth cheek. “But I don’t… what if we don’t want the same things?”
My heart stutters and my hand automatically seeks hers, squeezing like that will stop her from leaving me.
“You don’t…” I clear my throat of the disappointment, the fear that makes it hard to speak. “You don’t want to be with me?”
If there was uncertainty in her eyes before, it dissolves. Her hand lifts to my jaw, caressing, then cupping it. She strokes her thumb across my mouth, her gaze pinned there before she lifts it back to meet mine.
“I want to be with you more than anything.”
“Then what—”
“But as much as you like to deny it, you’re pretty conventional when it comes to family. You want the fairy tale. The fifty-year anniversary your parents never had. The picket fence. The kids and the dog.”
“Babe, I don’t even like dogs.”
“You monster,” she says, grinning. “My point is that you’re going to want marriage, and that terrifies me.
The idea of someone chaining themselves to me, thinking they can handle all my shit, and then it gets bad and they realize it’s too much and they feel trapped, or leave. I can’t take that. Not from you.”
“I would never leave you.”
Her laugh is bitter, shattered into a thousand fragments. “So many partners said the same thing, only to end up in court fighting for shared custody with someone who doesn’t want them to have access to their own children anymore.”
“That would never be us.”
“That would never be them, but it was.” She bites her lip and drops her eyes. “I don’t want to create that situation. We don’t need a piece of paper binding us to each other. When you want to go, you can go.”
“What if I never want to go? What if no one else has ever been in my heart the way you are? And never will be? What then?”
“Can we just take it day to day? And then tomorrow and the next day and not worry about forever right now?”
Can I do that? Discard the shape I thought commitment should take?
What I want with Verity is not a construct.
It’s a promise between our hearts, something soldered in our souls by the heat of devotion.
She’s been through a lot, through more than I knew or suspected.
She wants space to figure out what she needs, and she deserves space to heal.
It will take time for her, not only to trust me, but, with the complexity of her diagnosis and what she witnessed with her parents, to trust herself.
Love is patient. Love is kind… not self-seeking.
Snatches of the verse from my childhood sift into my memory and anchor my resolve to give her time; to not only consider what I want, but what my girl needs.
Love keeps no record of wrongs.
Love doesn’t keep score.
It can forgive and create second chances like the precious one in front of us. Verity is it for me, and I choose to believe this is only the beginning of our forever.
“I can take it day to day, yeah,” I agree. “But it’s just you and it’s just me? For as long as I have you, I only want you.”
“And I only want you.” She hesitates. “And if you start to want something different, you have to tell me. I know you want kids.”
“I don’t—”
“I know you do. I’ve seen that look you get when you talk about your nieces and nephews.”
“What can I say? I’m a terrific uncle.”
“You’d be a terrific dad.” She swallows, her mouth moving with no sound, as if the words don’t want to come out. “With someone else.”
“I don’t want someone else, Vee.” I tilt her face so we’re looking into each other’s eyes. “I want you. I want a life with you. And some imaginary kid doesn’t outweigh that.”
“It’s not some imaginary kid. It would be your kid.”
“Not if it’s not yours, too,” I say softly, surely.
She studies me, her frown deepening from whatever she sees. “You really mean that.”
“I do.”
“What happens when you change your mind? It’s been a dream for you since you were a kid. You can’t know—”
“I know this is love.” I place her hand over my heart, letting her feel how it races under her touch and at the possibility of her keeping it.
“Knowing things won’t always be easy and still wanting to be there for all of it.
You say I want to do what my parents weren’t able to.
You’re right because I want us to last, and they didn’t.
That piece of paper didn’t save their relationship.
They left each other, but I want to stay. ”
“With me?” she asks tearfully.
“Yeah, with you. Be mine. Let me be yours. Let me love you. I don’t need the paper or the ceremony. Just you. Just this. Can you give me that?”
“It might get hard. There could be times when you want to leave or wish things were different.”
“So like any other committed relationship where you don’t know what the future holds, but you know you want it with this one person? Kinda like that?”
She narrows her eyes in a half-hearted glare, but her lips twitch. “I hate you.”
“You actually love me.”
“Yeah, I do.” She sniffles and cups my face, pressing a sweet kiss to my lips. “I think as hard as I tried to stop, maybe I always have.”