Chapter 14
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Cotton candy dreams.
Kyran
I was bluffing.
I had no hope that Morana would say yes to staying with me tonight. I was making offers and being over the top, like usual. She just looked so pretty in the fairy lights that I got this picture in my skull of her looking pretty in my clothes in the fairy lights, and I lunged for it.
I should have known better.
I should have known how little she wanted to go home in the dark.
I should have known that just like I know how she likes pretty things and cute things.
Because of course she does. She builds tiny towns to facilitate her chore charts, and she draws little doodles on the cards she makes, and she has a heap of adorable stuffed animals, and she made my room into this cotton candy dream.
I should have known this place was everything like us.
Just like I know that she already trusts me. More than she wants to admit to herself. Even when there are a hundred reasons she should be cautious.
She’s trusted me since before she said that trusting me would be what made her fall in love. She’s already in love with me. It’s just the part where she admits it that’s lacking.
She trusts me. She likes me. She wants me.
She’s just scared I’ll treat her in the ways that other people she’s liked and trusted have.
So I can’t.
I absolutely cannot prioritize what I want tonight.
I just can’t.
The second Morana steps from my bathroom wearing nothing but one of my button-up night shirts down to her midthighs, a low hissing curse exits my mouth.
Flushed red as a sunset, she presses her lips together and tries to adjust a gap that keeps forming between the buttons at her chest. Her glass green eyes flick up to me, then lower. “I…I wasn’t honestly expecting your clothes to be so…big…yet also small. On me.”
This is how I die.
I just know it.
She crosses her arms, hugging herself. “This is…a horrible idea, isn’t it? There’s no way something doesn’t happen. I should just…”
Go home?
In the dark?
And cry alone?
Absolutely not, my love.
I clench my fist at my side. “If you aren’t comfortable sharing with me, I’ll sleep in the guest room where my old bed ended up. You’ll stay here. And then, in the morning, we’ll have breakfast together with everyone.”
Her attention lifts, from the floor, to the walls covered in clouds. The wide space, while friendlier and more furnished than it was before, gapes. Once her eyes meet mine again, I can already see the plea in them. She doesn’t want to be that alone, either.
She wants to be near me.
And I wish we were married and there wasn’t a single worry in her head where it concerned what might happen tonight. I wish nothing were off the table. I wish she’d never been hurt. I wish no one had ever made her feel like losing the people she loves most is inevitable.
Taking a breath, I approach the most beautiful woman in the world, untangle her arms, and clasp her hands. “I love you.”
Her breath catches as the red in her cheeks deepens.
“Loving you means being there for you, when you need me, how you need me. I will endure the blissful torture of wanting you in other ways so you can have me in the way you need.”
She blinks, and a teardrop skates down her cheek. Another clings to her lashes, and she jolts, pulling her hands free to scrub her face. “Sorry…I…” Her eyes squeeze shut, and pain leeches into her expression as she bites her lip. “Sorry,” she croaks. “This is stupid. I’m being stupid.”
I pull her into my arms. My hands remember the shape of her, and it hurts to get a full breath. “It’s not stupid to not want to be alone,” I tell her.
Her arms lift, around me, and her fingers latch in my own night shirt, fists balled against my back. Face pressed to my chest, she battles to contain herself.
She’s over half a foot shorter.
So small, soft, warm…
Everything I have ever wanted, right here.
“Come, dearest,” I murmur. “Let’s get you to bed.”
Fragile breath enters her, but she doesn’t fight me as I bring her toward the fairy lights, move the gauze back, the comforter down, and settle her into the plush warmth. Tucked, she peers at me, royal and frightened, like a princess if ever I’ve seen one.
Moving to the other side of the bed, I settle myself between the sheet and the top blankets before I relax on my side, facing her.
Nose poking above the bedding, she says, “You…aren’t getting in all the way?”
“Why tempt fate more, right?”
“Right…”
Tempting fate more, I lift my hand to her cheek, watch the way her eyelids lower as I trace the shape of her face. My thumb finds her bottom lip, and I go drunk and delirious at the sight.
Morana is in my bed, in our room, a room we’ve spent the past week building together. She smells so sweet. And she’s looking at me…
She’s looking at me like I mean so much to her.
I wish I could write like Viktor, spin something poetic out of thin air to express how much I love her.
Or I wish I could sing like Lukas and lull her away from her fears.
I wish I could paint like Zakery and forever imprint in her mind the way I see her upon canvases.
I wish I had a green thumb like Kaleb and could plant gardens in her honor, building her a sanctuary of flowers, weaving them into her hands and hair.
Pity I just play games in front of live tween audiences.
“Why do you like me?” I ask, soft enough to sound sincere.
Sincere enough for her to forget that she’s not supposed to admit how much she likes me at all.
Glowing, eyes downcast, she whispers, “I just…do. You’re genuine.
Funny. Kind. You’re so nonchalant most of the time, but it never escapes me how much you care.
You’re not a pretender. You’re honest, to a fault.
Gentle…but rough when I least expect it.
Like when you threatened Clara’s awful brother. ”
I’d forgotten about threatening that dweeb.
Morana’s whole body angles toward mine, getting closer by fractions that cause her limbs to press against me beyond the thin barrier of the sheet between us. “I just like you, okay?”
I scoop her nearer, holding her as tight as I can. “I’m pretty loyal, too.”
She tucks her face against my chest. “Yeah, you are.”
“And I give good hugs.”
She pauses. “What…are we doing right now?”
“Listing my many wonderful traits, and why you’re obsessed with each of them.” Duh.
She lifts her face; it is inches from mine. “Ah, is that so?”
I run my fingers through her hair. “Oh no. She’s become self-aware again. She’s reverting back to denial. Brace for impact.”
Her eyes roll. “While we’re on this stupid topic, why do you like me?”
Where to begin… “You’re funny.”
“Right. I forgot. Humor is really important to you.”
“It is. You make me smile, Morana. Do you even understand how rare that is? When I’m with you, something warm bubbles up in my chest, and it just happens.
I’m an entertainer. My coworkers are all professionals in the field of making people happy.
But you are the one who keeps actually reaching inside my chest and filling me up in ways that matter enough for it to come out.
” I sigh. “Really… I work with people who are publicly known as ManicPixieBlockBoy, but you’re the one who makes me laugh. ”
Her wittle nose does its wittle scrunch. “Publicly is a stretch. Manie doesn’t show his face or reveal personal details about himself.”
I touch our foreheads together. “You’re missing the point.”
“I’m…not.”
“You’re just willfully ignoring it, then?”
“Yeah.”
“I suppose that’s your prerogative.”
She melts against me. “So…I’m funny. Is that enough?”
“Yes, but that’s not all. You’re also smart, witty, creative. You turn life into a game.”
“Yeah, so I’ll actually be inclined to participate.
It’s not a quirk. If I didn’t gamify everything…
I just…wouldn’t. And I don’t think I’m all that smart.
I almost didn’t graduate high school. I almost dropped out and made a case to my parents about why I was wasting time and should just go for my GED—all because of…
stupid people and the stupid feeling of not wanting to be anywhere near where they might be.
The only thing that changed my mind was Maelin getting picked on the very same day my feelings hit a peak.
I couldn’t leave her alone there, so I pushed on, but that doesn’t change the fact I let my emotions blow me one way or the other and they’ve yet to hand me an ambition. ”
“Who needs ambitions?” I murmur, going drowsy on the sweet scent of her hair.
“Says a man who owns half the internet.”
“I have a couple million followers. That’s hardly half the internet.”
“Five million isn’t a couple.”
“Sigs’s pushing twice that.”
“So you own half, and he owns all. I don’t see your point.”
“My point is, I’m a niche gaming content creator who had that ‘ambition’ shoved down my throat.
I had to, from a young age, make a case as a public figure before my parents.
It wasn’t about ambition; it was about survival.
Which is why I took that year off when they died.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t have to do anything.
My videos were still bringing in cash. My brothers were still working, and they’d take care of me even if everything dropped off.
I had no reason to do anything, and I didn’t want to. Until, one day, I did.”
Soft, she asks, “What was that like?”
I shrug, nestle my nose in her hair. “I just woke up and wanted to create something. It got me out of bed and back in my gaming room. I stood in the doorway for ages, peering in at all the untouched pieces of my past. I was thirteen when I started. I spent five years under their thumbs, having my content curated, my ideas judged, the trends forced on me. It was traumatic to just look at it all and see something I had created against my will overflowing with support from strangers.” My chest tightens.
“I texted Emmet that I didn’t know how to come back.
He and Xander had been keeping up with me, checking in, the whole time.
They never let me fall off. They spent the entire year inviting me to play off camera, not for content, just to be with them.
Emmet told me that I’d never left, so I could just post again and act like nothing had happened.
He told me that I was still me, and if I wanted to get back into creating, I could just do it.
That made me realize that I wanted to create things.
Stupid things. Nonsensical things. Useless things.
If they made people happy, I wanted to do it.
So I did.” I exhale, let my eyes close, feel Morana’s warmth.
“It wasn’t about ambition anymore. I’ve never had ambition, that was all my parents’.
I just wanted to make something, and I got lucky enough that people wanted to watch. ”
“I think that’s beautiful,” she murmurs.
“I think you’re beautiful. I think you’re similar.
I think you make things because you want to, too.
I think you compare yourself to your sister too much because she makes things that can be considered more ‘functional’.
I think if you just let yourself look at what you’ve created without thinking how someone could have done it better or made something more of use, you’d see it all in a different light.
I like you, Morana, because I think you’re amazing and incredible and I never know what you’re going to come up with next even though I’ve spent months engraving your habits into my brain and can predict some things you’ll do or say before you do or say them.
You challenge me. You’re special to me.” I lose my air as I skate my fingers down her back, feeling her through the blankets that separate my touch from her skin.
“And to top it all off? You really are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Everything about you…” I murmur, fixated on her warmth, her scent, her nearness, and how…
terribly tired I am becoming. “Every…thing…”
Words slip through the cracks of my fingers as the fairy lights beyond my eyelids dim and disappear.