Chapter 36
And so we spend the week together. Or maybe it’s been two weeks, it’s hard to tell. I’m living so fully in the moment, enjoying each one more than the last, that I lose all track of time.
I’m falling deeply, deeply in love with him.
Like Dallas said, with the force of a thousand suns.
With the combined effects of his love and his lust, his beauty and his body, his gifts and his thorough and undivided attention, trying to slow it down would be like trying to swim against a tsunami. I’ve given up trying.
The clothes arrived and Dallas had the delivery people organize all of it into one of his walk-in closets (he has three and two of them are empty) that’s bigger than the entire Hotel Thibodeaux bar.
Every time I go in there, I feel like I’m dreaming.
And every time I come out, I think about what a gift it is, to become the best version of yourself because when you’re dressed for it, you can become the best version of yourself.
It gives you wings. I’m still adjusting to their feathery, luxurious weight.
We’ve got a schedule now. We go out to dinner at one of his favorite restaurants, that always give him the best table and none of them include prices on their menus.
We’ve been to two different Broadway shows, Ragtime and Hamilton, which have honestly been two of the absolute highlights of my life.
We saw a play about Abraham Lincoln’s wife that had me rapt the entire time, that people can even be so talented.
We’ve been to two different art museums, the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art.
At MoMA, which blew my head off, Dallas told me one of my paintings would be in here one day.
When I told him to get real, he said we were adding that to our list of wildest dreams.
We had dinner with Colton and Lila and some of the rest of the Maddox family and they’ve become unlikely friends, especially Dusty, Ivy and Lila—and especially Lila.
They said they all know what it feels like to be swept off your feet by …
a maniac, is how Lila put it. We laughed and left the description at that.
Sadie and I have kept in touch every couple of days and things are going well for her but she’s still waiting to hear back about the auditions. We haven’t managed to catch up in person yet but we’re planning to soon.
When we get home in the evenings, Dallas and I stay up late, talking about every topic under the sun, having hot sex until all hours of the night.
Sometimes we talk as we’re having sex. Then we sleep in.
In the morning, we have more hot sex. Sometimes he wakes me up as he’s having sex with me. And sometimes I do that to him too.
Not once have either of us brought up the topic of the Plan B again.
I’ve thought about it, of course I have.
Or at least I did in the first few days, when I was allowing the decision to make itself.
I don’t know if my cycle is regular enough for it to actually happen.
But every time I’ve thought about doing something about it …
to stop it … I think of Sabine. And I think of Jack.
A piece of me craves them in a way I don’t know what to do with.
I dream about them. Their little faces and their blue-green eyes.
I wake with a start.
My heart’s beating fast and my face is wet with tears. It takes me a few seconds to get my bearings.
It’s the middle of the night.
I’m with Dallas.
I’m safe.
The babies aren’t crying. We’re not getting kicked out onto the streets because our secret room has been discovered.
I’m not alone anymore.
The thing is, losing your family, your home, your possessions, and everything you’ve ever thought was stable and real … it’s stressful. Only now that I’ve stepped out from under the weight of it all can I fully appreciate how scary it was and still is.
New Orleans has a gritty, very real danger to its underbelly. As a young, broke, down-on-her-luck female who’s very much alone and in many ways always has been, I’ve felt that danger acutely, every day of my life.
I don’t know if the bank account Dallas created for me is even real. I haven’t tried to use it yet. But I can admit that the thought of it, sitting there, acting as a buffer against me and all my deepest fears, is the greatest gift of all. Theoretically, at least. If it’s true.
If any of it is true.
I have no reason to doubt him. But this isn’t the first time I’ve woken in the night.
Dallas’s big, warm body is wrapped around me and he deepens his bearhug. “You’re okay. I’m here.”
He knows all about my backstory and my nightmares. And he’s had plenty of his own emotional hardships. He’s no stranger to pain. We’ve talked a lot about both.
But he’s never had the floor drop out of his entire life.
What if it happens again?
If it can happen once, it’s more likely that it will happen again. Who knows, maybe it’s like a chronic illness that keeps coming back.
What if he sets me up with all these clothes and the bank account and those new friends that are his friends first and this amazing life he lives and then he just … pulls the rug out again?
“Stop thinking like that, Amelie Thibodeaux. I can hear your thoughts.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, sweetheart. You’ve been scared for a long time. It’s a hard thing to let go of.”
Dallas holds me as I cry my heart out. I cry like I cried that time I took those overpriced flowers and placed them at my family crypt a year to the day after my father died before he even hit the floor. “I hate him so much.”
“That’s good. You’re allowed to hate him, honey. Hating him means you’re working through your grief. Which is something he never managed to do.”
Dallas and I both watched our fathers die in slow motion. They both died of grief. A very specific kind of grief caused by lost love.
I start to catch my breath a little. And I look up into Dallas’s eyes. “Do we really want to put ourselves through all this? Maybe we’re just setting ourselves up for the same kind of fall.”
“Maybe we are. But it’s worth the risk.”
“It is?”
“Of course it is. Your only other choice is to hide from it and fade into nothingness. I know what that feels like and so do you.”
I’m beginning to see that it’s true. When I started saying yes instead of no to life, it bloomed from a closed-up bud into a huge hothouse flower. “I think I was hiding myself away in my hotel to shield myself from feeling too much. It hurt too much to feel. Or to live much at all.”
He blinks dark lashes at me. “It also feels better than anything ever could, once you let yourself do it. You taught me that, little love of my life.”
I ease him onto his back and climb onto him, kissing his mouth, letting my drying tears wet his face. “It feels like we’re jumping off a cliff,” I gasp, as I slide down onto his rock-hard length, taking all of him.
“Then hold on tight, baby girl,” he growls, gripping me, thrusting into me, so he’s deep, deep inside me. “We’ll jump together.”