Chapter 24
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It wouldn’t be a romance without a little third-act breakdown, right?
Kyran
“Did I mess up?” I ask the very second both Morana and I have finished getting ready for bed and closed the door to her childhood bedroom behind us.
Stuffed animals of all kinds take up every inch of floor space, blankets collecting them in bunches all around the full-size mattress we’re about to share.
Eyes glued to her phone, Morana echoes a distant, “Mess up?”
“I didn’t know how to spring I talk to your parents all the time on you, so I figured I’d just let you find out organically since you wanted to see them anyway.” I catch her arm, stopping her from sitting down. “I’m worried now that I made the wrong choice and I’ve hurt you.”
Pocketing her phone, she meets my eyes and deflates, before dipping her chin. “You…haven’t hurt me. I hurt myself.”
“Can we talk about what you’re feeling right now? I don’t like seeing you pull away like this.” I lift her face, close inches between us. “I can’t handle the idea of distance from you.”
Her watering eyes close, then she dissolves against me, wrapping her arms around my chest. “I haven’t really talked to my parents for months.
Maybe years. I don’t know. It’s always the same sort of thing when either of us calls to check in.
Life’s fine. Job’s good. Maelin’s happy…
I’m…whatever. Per usual.” Her body tightens.
“I love my family. They’ve always been there for me.
I don’t worry that they’ll abandon me, but apparently I still…
” She crushes me, tight. “Apparently I still distance myself from everyone, even them. My own parents don’t know my favorite color.
It shocked me when Maelin recently told me I liked pretty things.
I couldn’t believe she knew that about me, and she’s my twin sister.
I’m so scared of being seen for what I am that I don’t let anyone in.
Before you, I felt more in control of that separation from everything.
Before you, I didn’t realize how much of an outsider I’d let myself become.
” A shaking breath rocks her. “I didn’t like finding out about your relationship with my parents like this, but I can’t stop thinking that I’ve created no opportunities for them to tell me themselves.
I haven’t talked to them once this entire time, Kyran.
And you’re right. On your end, there’s no normal way to bring it up, especially since it started before I was entertaining any ideas with you.
It would have been unbelievably weird to oh by the way and mention that you talk to my parents all the time.
Especially when I…don’t.” Her fists close into my night shirt.
“I wish I weren’t like this. I wish I were brighter.
I wish I weren’t so harsh. Why can’t I just trust people?
Why do I have to build walls up so high and then get so—” She swears.
“—hurt when the people I care about don’t crash through them for me?
I’m asking for x-ray vision. It’s—” She swears again.
“—psychotic. I want to be seen through metal and cement, yet when I am? When my own sister notices something about me, I’m shocked by it?
Ugh.” She downs air, sobbing. “I hate myself, Kyran. I…” Her voice breaks.
“I hate myself. I don’t even know why you bother loving me.
Why you bother going to all these great lengths for me.
Why you care so much. Do you not see me?
Do you not see how horrible I am? And then…
if you don’t…” She pulls back, tear-streaked face quivering in pain.
“…what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to go on if you don’t actually love me? ”
Dipping as moisture gathers in my own eyes, I kiss my wife, gripping her as close as our clothes will allow.
“I love you,” I whisper, voice raw. “I want to see you so badly it’s an ache in my chest, and you already know how I feel about crashing through walls in order to get to you.
No boundary is going to keep us apart. Not now. It’s too late.”
“But I’m—”
“Beautiful.” I kiss the corners of her eyes, taste salt on my tongue.
“You are beautiful, Morana. If you don’t believe me, show me more.
Let me see every ugly part. Let me fall madder in love with each of them.
’Cause even here, even right now, while you are tear-stained and breaking, I have never loved anyone more. ”
“I want to be better for you.”
“You’re already enough.”
“But I want to be more, for you.”
I fill my chest with her lavender scents.
“You give so much to the people you love already, Morana. I’m afraid I’ll lose you in your efforts to please me more than you already do.
Nothing would make me happier than if you saw yourself the way I see you and grew pretentious in light of it.
” Holding her gaze steady on mine, I say, “You are loved. At your best…and at your worst. You ruin me. Whether or not I actually love you is never in question. I would do anything for you. I would do anything to prove myself to you. My very breath hinges on your command, mistress. My heart is yours to tell to stop or beat. Utter a word, and send me to my knees. I am hopeless without you and hopeless for you. Love me, and let loving me become everything that matters to you until loving others is less scary. Love me, and know that your love will always be respected and returned. Love me without risk. Love me so much that you can’t bring yourself to deny it anymore. ”
She sniffs, and her lip trembles. “I wish…we were home. The walls are paper thin here, but all I want to do is drown in you and forget everything else. Even though I know that’s not a healthy coping mechanism.
It’s just so much easier to flood my brain with those kinds of feelings than it is to… to process these.”
“Processing these now will be best for you eventually. Also…” I glance toward hundreds of glass and fabric eyes. “…I really would selfishly be all for the deflection option, but…the audience.”
A fragile smile touches one corner of her mouth. “Yeah. A great point.”
“You know you don’t have to block the feelings out, right?
You also don’t have to face them alone anymore.
I’m right here. Always. And we’ve days with your parents yet.
You can talk to them. You can rebuild a relationship with them.
Explain why you’re scared to love openly, why you want to do better.
You are not alone. Not now. And not ever again. ”
She swallows. “Yeah.”
“You okay?”
She dips her chin. “Getting there.”
Several minutes pass while we stand in the middle of her childhood bedroom, holding each other close, then she says, “There’s something I’d like to do on Sunday, before we head back home.
It would mean either letting me borrow your car, dropping me off, or waiting for me in the parking lot for probably an hour, maybe more…
maybe less. I don’t know. Whatever seems best for you. ”
I weigh those vague options, then say, “I’ll wait for you. What are you going to do?”
Breath escapes her before she says, “Tightrope walk through flames.”